Foldable phones like the Galaxy X aren’t the innovation I want

No one’s asking for it

There’s nothing inherently wrong with the way our phones look and feel. Every brand is capable of making an attractive phone whether it costs $200 or $1,000. You’re no longer stuck with a cheap, ugly product if your budget is on the smaller side. Now there are high-end, mid-range, and low-end phones that remind us how far design has come.

When there is a change in design for the mobile industry, it happens gradually. There isn’t a big influx of phones with a particular feature. And this is standard across all areas, including processors and cameras. Design, though, makes this slow-but-steady theory apparent.

Until the iPhone came along, the vast majority of mobile devices were made of plastic and sometimes rubber. Apple started the trend to make a product’s vibe match its price. Android’s partners slowly followed, notably HTC with the One (M7) in 2013. Still no one cared all that much because glass and metal are expensive to obtain and implement. But then Samsung’s Galaxy S6 hit in 2015. All of a sudden the gates burst open and those materials are expected from flagships.

So look at the time it took for a now-common quality to go mainstream. The same is occurring now for thin bezels, edge-to-edge displays, and the USB-C port. The mobile industry doesn’t believe in the expression, “if you build it, they will come.” It’s more like, “if they want it, they will come.”

Consumers have demanded their phones be made from premium materials while the fronts of them show a display and little else.

Consider all the phones that have shipped with a hinge connecting two separate displays. We’ve seen it done numerous times, most recently by ZTE with the Axon M. So let’s briefly focus on the Axon M to understand how little interest there is in this type of thing. ZTE hosted a big, fancy launch event for the phone in New York City. Hundreds of media members from around the world attended. Plenty of buzz was generated out of the gate, but now you never hear about the Axon M. That’s because the average consumer never asked for a phone with two displays to double how much they see and interact with at a single time.

Of course, ZTE doesn’t have as much brand recognition and loyalty as Samsung, but any industry-changing technology will catch fire if consumers care. The Axon M flopping indicates the odds are not in the Galaxy X’s favor. But, to be fair, Samsung is one of the few companies around that can spend a huge amount of money on something that doesn’t pan out too well. If anything, it’ll simply have wasted everyone’s time by releasing a foldable phone.

Really, no one but tech nerds would like a foldable phone. We’re happy with what we have.

Modern smartphone design isn’t broke, so it should only be improved incrementally. The Galaxy X will throw out everything we know and love about today’s phones for the sole purpose of being flashy.

Article source: https://www.technobuffalo.com/2018/01/16/foldable-phones-innovation-galaxy-x-no-thank-you/