So, what's stopping you from getting a foldable? [Poll]

It's a gimmick that makes phones less reliable and doesn't add value to the experience.

Why the fuck would I want mechanical stress?

The phrase "what's stopping you" implies we're all interested, but hesitant.

This is a really, really bad assumption.

Price. It's just too high to consider for me right now when I can get phones with the same computing power for half the cost

Uhh the price tag? I just bought a new phone after 6 years of honoured service from my old one, payed the new one a whopping 300€ and it already felt like a rip off. Ain't no way I'm paying four digits for a phone.

My current phone still works.

I don’t see the point of it. It might be smaller in height when folded, but it’s twice as thick. That doesn’t make it any easier to pocket.

It also seems unnecessarily over complicated. The folding screen technology also doesn’t seem mature (high crease failure). I would think at least one or two phone companies would design them so they just met at a bezel-less seam rather than trying to actually fold an oled/lcd screen.

They're prohibitively expensive, the aspect ratio is dumb, and the fold/crease is distracting as hell.

It reminds me of back in the '00s when people were getting the sidekick or whatever that "T" shaped phone was that Tony Stark had in Ironman.

The price, the line down the middle, the hinge. Generally just not requiring any more screen space

Price, durability, use case...

There's nothing about them that makes them worth sacrificing the first two above.

-Not durable (If you can damage the screen with your fingernail it's not durable enough. Period.) -No headphone jack

• No expandable storage
• No removae battery
• Lack of support for folding screens in apps
• Extremely high prices

Cost and durability

Cost

durability

Size

difficult to repair (if not impossible)

lack of sdcard (on such a large body)

No open source ROMS

price and reliability

I mean they cost at least a grand.

Price

They don't have the actual answer in their poll for me which is, you pay 1800 for the z fold but get the camera of the s23 basic model. Which is wild.

Give me the ultra cameras and I'll buy it

I don't pay more than £400 for a phone. So that.

1. My current phone works fine
2. I can't run CalyxOS or GrapheneOS on it
3. They are way too expensive

1. I'll break it
2. I dont need what a foldable offers

I've avoided the like the plague for all the obvious reasons, my mum has been using one for a few years now and ran into just about all of those reasons.

Permanant mid fold in screen.

Durability lasts far fewer actions than what was in the specs and warranty.

Refurbishing only introduced new issues and failed to resolve old issues.

I don't want one. It's a cool technological feat, but like a transparent monitor or flexible keyboard, it just doesn't make sense for my needs.

Honestly, I just don't find them very appealing, one of my coworkers has one and having the thing unfold into a shape more like a small tablet just looks like it'd make it harder to use one handed, and having a weird seam in the middle looks distracting. They look kinda cool and novel because I'm not used to seeing screens fold like that, but I don't see myself actually preferring one once the novelty ran out.

My current phone still works, too expensive, durability concerns (my current phone would not be working were it a foldable), center crease, looks like a pain to repair (right to repair hell yeah!), and most importantly...

...why? What do I gain by going with a foldable? My current phone doesn't need to fold to fit in my pocket, and it doesn't have so many compromises.

The main thing stopping me is that I don’t use Android phones right now. But even if I did, I personally find the whole foldable phone thing to be a bit gimmicky. I’d want to see it have staying power over some years before I’d even consider getting one.

I see them as every way inferior to normal phones. I don't get why they're popular.

As long as there's a noticable crease in the screen, I'm out. They also need to last more than two years.

I got one, but got rid of it after the screen cover plastic became rigid and creaky...twice. Worse, Samsung said they'd cover it once under warranty, and that after their ubreak ifix people were telling me it'd cost $200 to fix and I had to explain I had a protection plan to the braindead tech ten times.

Not worth it until they solve durability issues.

I simply don't like them. There's zero use case where I would consider a foldable phone superior, or even equivalent to a regular one.

Stresses me out each time I open and close my phone thinking the life span of the display is shortened by 1

It adds nothing of value. It's just a neat gimmick. I don't want a crease in my screen, I don't want to double the width of my phone in my pocket, and I have no valid use cases for it.

I'll fold when the price comes down.

Im not gonna buy a phone that's worth several months of salary in my country only to get mugged the moment I pull it out

Too fragile. Too expensive.

It all comes down to the gimmick not being worth an additional thousand euros to the price of my phone.

I don't think durability would be a problem for me as I already baby my glass back device and I haven't been using screen protectors for years with no problem. The downgrade in cameras isn't that big of a deal for me as most pictures I take are macro, and as it turns out phones nowadays are horrendous dogshit at it anyway.

I think I'd enjoy the gimmick, I used to own a flip phone as a teenager, it's just not worth a thousand euros extra. I'd probably add another 150 or 200 euros to my pixel to buy a folding phone.

The fact the most of them are made by Samsung and I can’t stand the amount of bloatware Samsung put on their devices.

Price and durability. I don't know, I can maybe get one eventually if I really want to, but shelling out like ~$1500 USD for a unproven screen design is pretty yikes to me. Plus, since my LG V60 is still serving me so well I really see no good reason to replace it.

I want my phone to last more than 2 years

Durability and the fact you still have to make significant cuts to battery life and cameras.

Too expensive.

• Price
• Durability
• my feelings towards UI designers that now have to think "what if the screen just halved in size out of nowhere?"

I'm still not sold on the durability and the last thing I want is the screen to become a wear item. Even with most of them pretty much all switching from plastic to ultra thin glass, bending glass like that is asking for it to eventually break and replacement internal screens aren't cheap.

Secondly, a lot of foldables sacrifice battery capacity as the Flip 5 has a 3700 MAh battery and the Fold 5 has a 4400 MAh and powering a 2nd, larger screen is going to consume more battery. A normal smartphone you can typically find with at least 5000 MAh batteries in them.

The tech is cool and all, but it just seems more like an engineering flex rather than something that's practical.

I'm not paying a thousand plus dollars for a phone. I go through a phone every year and a half to two years. I don't want to spend $1,000 a year for a phone.

I don't want to have a never-ending phone payment. I buy inexpensive but good quality phones like Motorola's or second-hand pixels and I'm good.

I spend 160 something dollars a year on average on phones, and use the least expensive prepaid plans out there.

And this is not because I am poor, there's room in the budget for me to have the fancy iPhone and you know the top of the line plan or whatever, I just got better things to spend my money on than a fucking phone.

If a company comes out with a folding phone that doesn't have a lot of bloatware on it and is in the $200 range then the next time I buy a new phone I would consider it.

For me, they're too fat when folded and too big when open. I don't like the feeling of the crease, and the technology needs time to prove how reliable it'll be in the real world.

They're way too expensive. Moving parts such as the folding screen are just a focal point for stress, which is unacceptable given how expensive they are. I hate hearing that people can get dust in the hinge without anyway to clean it out.

You're also paying for extra screens such as the one on the outside and the folding inner screen. This is just added unnecessary cost when you'll never use both at the same time. I'm guessing the outer screens were added to reduce the number of times people unfold the phone over its lifetime, which gets back to my other point that adding moving parts just adds more issues than it solves.

Overall, I see it as a novelty at best. From the prices I've seen them sold at for the phones that turn into a tablet like device when unfolded, you can just buy a phone and a tablet separately for less. I think their purpose is to create a product more expensive than what the current flagship phones run, giving rich people something to spend additional money on to to show they have a lot of money and enough novelty for tech reviewers to discuss during reviews.

The fact that there will always be a seam in the folding screen. If I feel it while swiping over it or there's weird glare because the surface is uneven that would drive me bananas

Huh... the folding. I'm already mad that I can't get a solid 5 years out of a $1200 phone, there's no way I'm shelling out for a first wave foldy.

Simple: price. I think that is true for the majority of users. When there's a $200 foldable out there, people will try it just to see what the fuss is about. But that's not even on the horizon.

For me personally, they need to come wayyyy down. Like 1/3 of the current price. That would put them in competition with budget flagships like the Pixel 7.

Why would I care if my phone folds. Id rather have no crease in my screen. But I don't drop my phones often, is that the point of it folding? Cause it getting wider and shorter doesn't necessarily make it more convenient

Lack of interest in the form factor. Too thick when folded. Folds are too large for one hand when open. Cost is high for the chip sets and memory.

They're way too expensive and they're still early-generation devices. Plus, why would I trust Google to continue with the product line seeing as how they keep killing viable products and services?

If they get to the Pixel Fold 4 or 5 and the price is down to the $500-600 range, then it'd be a very serious contender for me. (Assuming the insane fragility is resolved)