Flip Phones Are Having a Moment (theverge.com) 104
What's old is hot again, and flip phones are so very hot right now. From a report: These phones are a far cry from the phone that you mastered T9 texting on in college. Today's flip phones are garden-variety 2023 smartphones that happen to fold in half -- plus a screen on the front cover. They've been making a kind of comeback over the past few years, but until now, they've existed in the shadows of their bigger, pricier fold-style counterparts. That's understandable, considering that their small cover screens haven't been good for much more than checking the weather and pressing pause on a podcast. But that's all changing this year: in a round of updates from Motorola, Oppo, and very likely Samsung next, cover screens are getting much larger and way more useful. And that's a big deal.
Samsung will likely announce its fifth-generation Z Fold 5 and Z Flip 5 this week at Unpacked, which has become its annual summer foldable-fest. They'll be thinner and lighter than last year's models -- that's what TM Roh told us, anyway -- and will both likely use new hinges that fold totally flat. The Z Flip 5 is heavily rumored to come with a much bigger cover screen than previous generations. The Z Fold 5? Well, rumors point to a very boring update, frankly. [...] The previous generation of flip-style phones felt like a regular phone with a smartwatch on the front -- good for checking quick information but not a lot more. The new flippable cover screens sit in a more comfortable place between a smartwatch and a full-size phone. They're big enough to provide a lot more information at a glance than a watch, but you can't comfortably do everything you'd do on a normal phone screen. As a result, you get a little bit of your attention back that you would have spent mindlessly scrolling Instagram when all you wanted to do was check the weather.
Samsung will likely announce its fifth-generation Z Fold 5 and Z Flip 5 this week at Unpacked, which has become its annual summer foldable-fest. They'll be thinner and lighter than last year's models -- that's what TM Roh told us, anyway -- and will both likely use new hinges that fold totally flat. The Z Flip 5 is heavily rumored to come with a much bigger cover screen than previous generations. The Z Fold 5? Well, rumors point to a very boring update, frankly. [...] The previous generation of flip-style phones felt like a regular phone with a smartwatch on the front -- good for checking quick information but not a lot more. The new flippable cover screens sit in a more comfortable place between a smartwatch and a full-size phone. They're big enough to provide a lot more information at a glance than a watch, but you can't comfortably do everything you'd do on a normal phone screen. As a result, you get a little bit of your attention back that you would have spent mindlessly scrolling Instagram when all you wanted to do was check the weather.
Thinner and lighter? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Thinner and lighter? (Score:5, Insightful)
Nerds are only a small fraction of their market; so to be frank, they don't give a shit what you want.
> The phone companies want me to want thinner and lighter because that costs less to make
I don't know if that's true, as usually it costs more to "compress" past a certain threshold, as manufacturing tolerances have to be tighter.
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It's really hard to say this is what the masses want, especially since there's no choice in the matter. It's kind of like touch screens in cars. They sell well because they all have them, even though they all suck to varying degrees and are horribly distracting in all forms.
It is true that the desires of the masses are contradictory. If you asked them if they want a phone with long battery life, everyone says yes of course. Then if you ask them if they want a phone that's light and thin such that it's ea
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> It seems to me most people just go for shiny and new these days, regardless of what that is. A status symbol, really.
When they figure out how to implant direct cellular-to-brain chips, there won't be anything on the outside to show off. Talking Swahili at the Swahili restaurant?
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Does anyone consider ANY type of cell phone to be a "status item"?
I mean, these days...a cell phone is pretty much a commodity item, no one looks really to see "which one you have"...you know?
I suppose if you have something unusual like a flip phone that might garner some attention, but still a phone today considered anything more than a commodity everyone has....?
I don't think so ....do
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Not true, I have a truly old phone, it was a throw away when I got it years ago. My daughter insults it constantly.
On a more sinister note I have definitely seen people go into debt to buy a flashy phone that they could not afford, if there wasn't an element of status then why do it?
Re: Thinner and lighter? (Score:1)
Re: Thinner and lighter? (Score:1)
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So yes, people do judge others based on their phone.
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It's really hard to say this is what the masses want, especially since there's no choice in the matter.
No it's not because you're begging the question. There's plenty of choice on the market. Plenty of thick phones. Cheap phones. Phone with headphone jacks even. In this case flip phone, non flip phones. Large phones. Small phones. Phones that are UL listed for explosive atmospheres. Phones that Cat drove their Cat over with Cat branding on it.
Everything is there where there's even a slight critical mass for adoption. The market chose thin, light, with lots of surface area. These aren't the only phones on the
Re: Thinner and lighter? (Score:2)
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Here you go [unihertz.com] or it's big brother [unihertz.com].
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Sure. Yes the market is saturated with low-quality rubbish phones which are chunky and appear to be rugged (but are not, have poor battery life, terrible screens, awful touch digitizers (I've tried several of these kind of phones), horrible audio quality, terrible software, ancient Android, no updates, etc. They do sell in some markets. And I've tried a few over the years. They aren't really aimed at the mass market, though, and it really shows.
I'll concede that the masses are accepting of super thin, br
Re:Thinner and lighter? (Score:4, Insightful)
No it's not because you're begging the question. There's plenty of choice on the market. Plenty of thick phones. Cheap phones. Phone with headphone jacks even.
Not really. I mean yes, you're technically correct — the best kind of correct — but you're ignoring a rather important detail with that statement.
What approximately everyone complaining about those missing features is actually asking for is a current-generation flagship phone with a modern CPU so that they actually get a tangible benefit from that bigger battery. They want a current-generation camera. They want a best-in-class OLED display. They want reasonable amounts of RAM and SSD storage. They just want it to be thicker, with a bigger battery and a headphone jack.
Nobody is actually doing that. Instead, the thick phones with headphone jacks are generally older designs with slow CPUs, crappy cameras, non-OLED screens, etc. that companies just keep selling because they can build them for next to nothing and sell them similarly cheaply. They come with approximately no long-term OS support, because they're ancient designs that are only being sold to people who don't know any better.
Nobody wants to buy a sh*tty phone with a headphone jack that's only thicker with a bigger battery because of the need to power and dissipate all the heat from that ancient 14nm CPU. Nobody wants to replace their phone every year because that $150 toy no longer gets critical security updates. But your choices are pretty much between those sorts of abominations and flagship phones that are too thin and lack important features.
I mean, sure, there's a spectrum between those two extremes, but there's just not a lot of diversity in flagship phones; by the time you get to the high end, they're pretty much all the same, and that's a bad thing, IMO, because it means the free market can't actually decide anything.
Re:Thinner and lighter? (Score:4, Informative)
If all you want is a bigger battery and thicker phone, buy a case with a built in battery. There are loads of them for popular flagship models.
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If all you want is a bigger battery and thicker phone, buy a case with a built in battery. There are loads of them for popular flagship models.
Making a phone more rugged by adding an extra case is a workaround, not a fix, and it has significant disadvantages.
First, when you add a case to your phone, it gets hotter, and the battery ends up failing much earlier than it otherwise would.
Second, your battery remaining indicator doesn't know about the external battery, and when your internal battery gets weak, that means you're at 100% until the external battery runs down, and five minutes later, you're at 0%. They just don't work very well at all in p
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> Second, your battery remaining indicator doesn't
> know about the external battery, and when your
> internal battery gets weak, that means you're at
> 100% until the external battery runs down, and five
> minutes later, you're at 0%. They just don't work very
> well at all in practice, at least in my experience.
That''s only completely true if your external battery doesn't play nicely with the OS. The external battery I have for my phone connects magnetically, not by a case, so it's a slightl
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Re:Thinner and lighter? (Score:4, Funny)
Nerds are only a small fraction of their market; so to be frank, they don't give a shit what you want.
> The phone companies want me to want thinner and lighter because that costs less to make
I don't know if that's true, as usually it costs more to "compress" past a certain threshold, as manufacturing tolerances have to be tighter.
I’m holding out for the crane phone, I don’t care what it costs. If I can’t fold it from a flat screen into a crane without using scissors, I don’t want it.
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want me to want thinner and lighter because that costs less to make.
What?!? First, it costs more to make thin and light; and second, when did they ever advertise that these 'features' would make phones cheaper? All it did was cost us a user replaceable battery and cheaper (as in flimsy) phone.
My current phone is so thin that it is actually not comfortable to hold without a case bulking it up - I would rather add structure and a replaceable battery (of which ironically I have already had to replace on my this phone).
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Re: Thinner and lighter? (Score:2)
Thin and light is cheaper, not more expensive, because you get there by using a smaller battery and less metal in the chassis.
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There is also the costs of better engineers to R&D to make the smaller lighter thing even a possibility.
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But because you are using a smaller battery and less metal you have to use higher cost high density batteries
None of the batteries are that much better. An iPhone a few years old is typically already tired. My Moto phone (it's a bit budget-y in that it's 720p and has a GPU to match, but it's octocore and still quite slim) is a few years old and it can provide a good four to five days of light use including some navigation with maps, and a fair bit of browsing with Firefox. The perceived quality of the battery is usually about how you care for your devices, mostly by not keeping them discharged for long. The chargi
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Additionally, thin phones have to be glued together. That makes them more difficult to refurbish, which ultimately adds to the cost to the consumer.
Re:Thinner and lighter? (Score:5, Insightful)
I want privacy
if privacy is your main focus then you shouldn't own a cell phone in the first place.
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Visiting the doctor's office for said task is just as inconvenient.
Use a land line? Do they still exist? Besides, they can be tapped as well - just like a cell phone.
e-mail/text messaging? Have you read the TOS of Microsoft's latest offerings or your service provider? You might be surprised, or not.
If you want to be able to communicate to anyone else in something resembling real time, you're going to have to use so
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The phone companies want me to want thinner and lighter because that costs less to make.
Err LOL WUT? I get you don't like thin phones but what you're saying isn't remotely true and there's a reason the cheapest phones on the market (including those with the lowest BOM) are far from the thinnest or lightest. In fact it's quite the opposite. Tooling and R&D is quite an extensive cost of making phones thinner and lighter. Companies do this because the market is there to sell them.
Corporate Arrogance. (Score:2)
I want privacy, security, ruggedness, and long battery life.
They could give you all that and still screw you over with software obsolescence.
You best learn to demand better than that.
love mine (Score:1)
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I want privacy, security, ruggedness, and long battery life.
Sounds like you want a Blackberry. Sadly, I had to give up my Blackberry Classic when the 3G network shutdown. iOS and Android are so awkward and clunky in comparison that if feels like stepping back in time.
While I can't make any promises related to privacy or security, if you still want 'ruggedness' and long battery life, you might want to consider a Unihertz phone. I have a Unihertz Titan Pocket [unihertz.com] myself. It's bulky, tough, and the battery lasts for ages. Their other phones are similar. Even the cynic
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Be true to yourself,
and don't fool yourself either, these are full fledged smart phones, it's just senseless hype for the form factor.
about being true to oneself at this point in time ... truth be told, since email and message apps are a thing there is hardly any justification for anyone to expect my immediate voice attention out of the blue, and they aren't getting it. i very rarely answer direct calls at all and that's actual people with a justification for wanting to talk to me, spam is already aggressively filtered out. so
Going to pass on the hinge waiting to break (Score:3)
Have had laptop hinges (or wiring within) go bad from too many openings and closings. How often do you flip open a laptop? Couple times a day? Now, imagine a phone? Flip open a couple of times an hour? Or dozens of times per hour? Just waiting for something to go wrong... Hard pass.
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I don't know about the current crop of flip phones, but back in the 2000s I had the (now iconic) Motorola Razr V3. I flipped open that phone many, many times per day as SMS between friends was all the rage. And not only I did that, I flipped it open with full force, like I was pulling out a flip knife, swinging the screen as hard as I could, because it felt really good to do that on the Razr V3. After years of using that phone, it never showed any signs of bad hinges, it was really well built. Eventually, I
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I think most early flip phones had a pretty robust mechanism and it makes sense, the hinge on a flip phone then was around the same size as the hinge on a laptop and the laptop has a lot more weight to handle as well as having it's lever where it's engaged much longer so it takes a lot more stress.
Also in all the laptop's ive ever had hinges fail on it was never actually the hinge itself but whatever flimsy part of the laptop body it was attached to would break off or strip the heat pressed inserts right ou
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Have had laptop hinges (or wiring within) go bad from too many openings and closings. How often do you flip open a laptop? Couple times a day? Now, imagine a phone? Flip open a couple of times an hour? Or dozens of times per hour? Just waiting for something to go wrong... Hard pass.
Not sure what laptops you've been using or how badly you've been treating them but I've never had laptop wiring or hinges go. I've never even seen it once. Not saying that it doesn't or cant happen, but I am saying that it is nowhere near common. In 2015 when I moved country, I found a flip phone from 2003. It still switched on and played Snake. I still chucked it out because it was from 2003. Hinges have been no problem for ages now.
Having watched phones continue to grow into what we used to call a tab
Re: Going to pass on the hinge waiting to break (Score:1)
my razr lasted less than two years before the interior screen fully failed (touch screen input primarily) ...no damage...no dropping. just from normal opening and closing.
these displays aren't being improved. the hinges get a little better version to version. but the display is not going to last even half as long as a regular phone. and replacing a folding phone screen is not easy or cheap.
it's fun and even practical, but it's not worth the money. not unless you swap phones every year so you can avoid
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Heck, more to the point, I've had the hinges on 2000-era flip phones wear out
UI's are gonna change yet again (Score:1)
As foldables become more common, UI's will be reworked to put controls and menus on one side and content on the other.
Um ... who cares and, (Score:3)
How is this NOT slashvertisement?
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They aren't pushing a particular brand for one thing. Second, according to a Gartner study (Gartner is a leading technology consulting firm btw, check them out at Gartner.com or send them an email sales@gartner.com), about 68.53% of tech news relates to a product or service by a particular company, therefore you can expect a lot of the stuff on slashdot to have the appearance of slashvertising.
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They aren't pushing a particular brand for one thing.
The summary is clearly an ad for samsung.
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Gartner is a leading technology consulting firm btw
And a marketing firm. They were always talking up Windows NT in the tech press. But our company subscribed to their news letter (Not cheap. Something like thousands of dollars per month.) and they repeatedly told us "Don't use that NT shit. Not ready for prime time."
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Re: Um ... who cares and, (Score:1)
Logical Next Steps (Score:1)
How long until we get back up to the fourteen-inch-diagonal standard for screen space that we had in the early nineties?
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How long before you can figure out how to re-fold that street map?
These aren't really flip phones (Score:4, Insightful)
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Are they built to last as long? If I hadn't dropped my Motorola flip phone from 1999 in a toilet it would probably still work today, at least for calls and texts, which, for an emergency phone, is all you'd want anyway.
My G1 still works. Browsing is somewhat problematic but /. is usable. What more do I need?
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it would probably still work today, at least for calls and texts,
Well, actually it wouldn't since all the supporting technologies have been sunset. So best it could do would be to show you 'no service'.
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You'd think, but all those thousands of smart meters foisted on energy consumers to avoid all that tedious meter reading still use 2G in UK. Which is a whole other shitstorm: https://www.telegraph.co.uk/mo... [telegraph.co.uk]
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... my Motorola flip phone from 1999 ... would probably still work today, at least for calls and texts, which, for an emergency phone, is all you'd want anyway.
Don't count on it.
A few months back, I mistakenly put my up-to-date phone in "no LTE" mode. I had a very hard time sending and receiving calls. Occasionally I could get through but most of the time I got a fast-busy outgoing and incoming calls went to voicemail.
My guess is the phone company has "just enough" bandwidth on their G2 (G1?) tower to handle the bare minimum to keep the regulators happy, and there wasn't any left for me.
I put it back in "voice over LTE" mode and made the call.
If you want someth
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I don't know if a 1999 era phone would still work. But the definitive test as to whether my current phone (4G LTE) qualifies as a "low cost" flip phone is that my carrier gave it to me for free when they sunset their 3G service.
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Fragility of the folding mechanism aside - given the number of broken screens I see out in the world I've wondered whether a device whose natural state doesn't expose the screen might be have better results for people.
From what I understand women's pockets are typically not as deep as men's so that may also make shorter devices more desirable for part of the population.
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misgaging their customer base (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm thinking, there's a chance here that the manufacturers will misunderstand what customers are actually looking for, and instead proceed with making their bloatware infested rectangles foldable, when their customers are actually looking for something simpler, that communicates well but doesn't nag you incessantly.
A folding phone fits better in a back pocket, where girls often keep them, and a substantial phone is less likely to break when stressed. But all the manufacturers know is thinner and lighter and more ads and more forced interaction, and all they're learning from this is that their customers want the item to also fold. They're totally missing the point.
Re:misgaging their customer base (Score:5, Insightful)
manufacturers will misunderstand what customers are actually looking for
Manufacturers have gone well beyond asking customers what they want. They tell the customers what they will get.
"Of course you want this foldable smart phone. It has Apps!"
"But I don't want Apps. I want to make phone calls."
"Of course you want Apps. Everyone wants Apps. Never mind those people grumbling about overly infested phones on various discussion boards. We'll buy their board, shut it down and replace it with one that brings you ..."
"... Apps!"
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That's it. That's it exactly.
On the other hand, manufacturers who sell products that people actually want, may be positioning themselves to be more successful.
I've had my Samsung since 2018, had the screen replaced twice, resisting the urge to go on to the next best thing, despite the phone sending me ads for Samsung products so often that the phone buzzes like a surgeon's pager in a combat zone.
The phone's biometric sensor has failed recently, and I'm strongly considering dumping it and going back to a du
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Eh? Somebody say something? Speak up, you whippersnapper!
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that communicates well but doesn't nag you incessantly.
Why is your phone nagging you? Both Android and iOS offer full control over all notifications presented to the user. Have you not set up your own phone correctly?
thinner and lighter and more ads and more forced interaction
It sounds like you're just ranting rather than picking a topic to discuss. Are we talking about phones folding, phones being too thin, or your inability to long click a notification and ban it? My phone doesn't nag me nor show me ads. I think you really need to learn to use yours.
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I'm thinking...when their customers are actually looking for something simpler, that communicates well but doesn't nag you incessantly.
Define 'communicates' for the emoji generation of texting addicts who win thumb-wrestling contests. Type it out if you need to, I'll be here validating the irony.
And how often IS 'incessant' for a planet addicted to social media? Are we talking like every 10 minutes for those vibrating flashing lights to come on, along with some shit marketed as 'music' punctuating that notification, or would that be absolutely insane to ask the addicts to wait THAT long for self-validation?
Just in case you were wondering
Buy an off the shelf Android (Score:1)
Heck I bought a Motorola from my carrier a few years back and there wasn't any actual bloatware. Just my carrier's apps and the aforementioned Twitter/FB, which I uninstalled. Not sure about i
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Why do you assume the customer base is monolithic? If customers want a cheap flip phone you can buy a pre paid model for $20 that makes phone calls, texts, and maybe a little bit more but "good enough". They're selling a premium product in a different form factor. If they don't want that, there's plenty of other options out there for the "but does it make PHONE CALLS" crowd.
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If I intimidated that every customer wants exactly the same thing, then I guess I need to polish my writing. That's not what I meant at all. There are absolutely different market segments for cell phones. I'm just arguing that there is a new one that has perhaps been unexplored.
I'd argue that burner phones have their specific market segments.
Most regular consumer flip phones tend to be marketed to the elderly, whom are a particular niche market.
Then there are the phones that have those elastic foldable d
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But what would they be offered that doesn't exist in the market today? Your other complaint is just about notifications or ads or something (I've bought both top of the line and cheapo phones recently and none had forced ads, and came unlocked) - you don't have to get a Jitterbug , cheap "sort of smart" phones exist.
If you're looking for a "text only" display or something like that, then yeah, I guess you're out of luck. Everything is probably going to run off some flavor of android because its simple.
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Interestingly, I listened to a podcast just today from a genz'er who said that "we are driving the push back to flip phone because we know we are online too much". This, I think, is the segment I was talking about, even though I didn't have the right terminology. There really is a young market segment that's driving the return to flip phones.
PR piece (Score:1)
Let's talk again after the sales numbers are released.
These folding phones cost more than the $1,000 premium regular smartphones... I can't see them convincing enough people to buy these.
Well maybe the first time the kids will buy them, then swear off them after the hinges and screens malfunction. Can you imagine all the warrantee claims...
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Can you imagine all the warrantee claims...
I bet that's why they're so expensive to begin with.
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Just find some way to roll them in with the phone bill, car payment, or mortgage payment. Most people seem to be more than happy to sell their future selves into bondage.
Your Granddad's Flip-Phone (Score:1)
From about 1981 [sciencemus...oup.org.uk].
Slashvertising (Score:2)
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I have seen exactly one in person (not in the store). Also, I work with a bunch of nerds/geeks in a technology company, so you would think we would be the first to own such a device, except all of us are waiting to see if they can fix the known issues first.
One question (Score:2)
Is the mid-screen crease gone?
No?
Then I'll pass, thank you.
Star Trek: Strange New Worlds flip-phones (Score:2)
Bit of a wink to them, one can imagine, in the most recent episode involving time travelers with latest Federation touch style communicators. Captain Pike prefers the flip style of his current one!
Re:Star Trek: Strange New Worlds flip-phones (Score:4, Informative)
Ditch flexible display for a hinge (Score:3)
A lot of these (Score:2)
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This is not even about flip phones. This is about folding phones, which are different. They have folding displays, which are a neat idea but which don't really work well. You get a crease, or a seam, you get premature failure and a high price tag.
Actual flip phone design peaked with the original Motorola RAZR. It was very small, it opened up to be a very good size, and it had good tactile response. It wasn't actually the best phone (in that neither battery life or reception was as good as those of some othe
What we really want... (Score:2)
What people really want is a much bigger battery, or a really easily replaceable one. We used to have these, till the companies figured out they could force us to buy whole new phones instead.
I'd love to know who buys them (Score:2)
These things are garbage. Yeah it's kind of cool you can have a fold out screen. Not so cool that they cost so much. Or that these phones scratch easily and the screen can distort, crease, crack or fail in other ways. And when that happens the cost and complexity of repair is so prohibitive they're basically e-waste. All for the sake of some shitty gimmick.
If the screen itself were a relatively cheap and replaceable part then perhaps that would mitigate the worst of this design. But that hasn't happened yet
yeah, sure, $1000+ phones (Score:2)
$1700 - $2000. NOPE !! (Score:2)
And by "hot", the author means . . . (Score:2)
Ah... (Score:1)
no, that's not a "flip phone" (Score:1)
It's a smartphone that folds. If one can't see a difference, maybe one should give up journalism to the career of flipping burgers (another thing not related to flip phones)
genz is driving the flip phone resurgance (Score:2)
I listened to a podcast just today from a genz'er who said among other things that "we are driving the push back to flip phone because we know we are online too much". This, I think, is the segment that manufacturers are losing, as a generation turns away from the busy rectangle to something smaller and simpler. And the folding smartphones miss the point.