I really am interested in a folding phone, but i’m not comfortable with paying apple any new money if i can avoid it. I’ve completed my data migration off of iCloud and into self-hosted solutions, but i’m continuing to pay for iCloud until i’m confident i won’t somehow have issues with nextcloud and immich.
When my iPhone 14 Pro eventually fails to meet my needs, I’m planning on getting a Google Pixel 10 Pro Fold, not because Google is any better, I don’t want to be giving them money either, but it is compatible with GrapheneOS.
Be phone engineer
Finally manufacture one-atom thick phone
The screen is nearly entirely invisible due to its thinness
You can’t tap it anywhere or it immediately breaks into a million crumbs like filo dough
The components had to be spread over a 200 square meter sheet to fit all their atoms side by side
Present product to the board, instantly promoted to CEO
Product releases
Everyone buys the waferphone
“It’s so thin” say consumers
“Unparalleled convenience and an incredible feat of engineering” say reviewers
Third parties begin selling titanium insulation sheetcases to protect your waferphone
Too big and heavy to take outside, everyone stores their waferphones underground at waferlockers
All phones are now completely inaccessible remotely or physically
Technological nirvana attained at last
We think you’re gonna love it.
Two iPhone Airs sticked together for the price of two and a half. Great job 👏
I was actually looking at foldable phones a few weeks back, seems like 2 screens isn’t enough to make a difference, but 3 screens are. It’s either I get that or a foldable 1 screen phone (like a flip phone).
On another note, after Tim apple bribed Trump with a gold ball I’ve decided to no longer buy apple products again. And it’s kind of a big deal because I’ve had iPhones since 2008.
I’m not disagreeing with you but whose phone do you plan on buying next? Pichai + Brin also bribed trump (they were at the inauguration alongside Tim Apple and others)
I don’t know yet. I’ll get a new phone when this one dies. The point is that I used to buy iPhones as default, and that is no longer the case. I wonder how many customers they lost like me - theoretically I could have been a life long customer.
don’t forget to not buy new. buy a used device whenever possible, unless you specifically want to support a particular company
Was going to say this. Second hand phones don’t give money to corporations (except via usage, of course).
That gold trophy though really rubbed me the wrong way. And Ihate apple for that. And yes I know they all donated for ballroom paid for inauguration. They’re all shit but Apple is the shitiest IMO.
Only issue is gapps there are lots of phones not made by Americans.
Buy secondhand, especially if you still want iphones. Money goes to lower class (something like Facebook marketplace has no tax), no money to “less bad” competing companies, and you’ll get a much cheaper product which still has the “appleness” you want.
It makes huge difference. I’m on Fold since Fold 4 and would never go back to a slab phone mostly because I just read books or text web/social media. The square display is perfect for this as you get proper 80-120 character lines with large font and enough space for media etc.
Assuming he’s right (and boy, being sued by apple is a huge boost to his credibility), they’re keeping the stupid camera bump thing from the air???
The camera bump sure isn’t going away for a folding phone. cameras have fundamental volume requirements to maintain quality, if they don’t think they can justify making the normal iPhone thick enough to enclose the camera then there’s no way in hell they’ll think the folding phones doubled width can include it, if anything you’d expect it to be more prominent on a folding model
It does not surprise me that the Air is literally the folding phone without the second screen.
It slightly does me, given that the Air was (apparently) a huge commercial flop. You’d think they’d revisit the soundly mocked design instead of recycling it, or at least change it? The renders may very well be overstating it, of course, but still it’s an odd feature to carry over.
how do you propose removing it?
there are two options, 1) using a smaller,shittier camera, or 2) making an extremely thick phone. neither option is very “apple”, especially for a flagship model.
considering the vast majority of people use phone cases and will never notice the bump anyway, i think this whole thing is blown way out of proportion.
The marketing about it being an incredibly thin phone was a misstep - it just looked absurd to have such a chunky lump stuck onto it, and it felt very much like they were attempting a have cake / eat cake situation by claiming it had incredible camera stats (which werent very good) to justify the bump on an otherwise amazingly thin phone, and then that giant electronics bump had an external lens on it too.
Had it just been an ugly phone, I doubt it would have met with anywhere near the same criticism, but all the adcopy about how thin it was overtop of photos where you could see it had a giant lump on it felt really dishonest, and if this article is accurate it may count among the biggest apple flops ever.
(The thickness may just need to be accepted at this point. The S25 Ultra is 8.2mm, which is thinner than the Air if you include the bump. It seems like the camera wasnt the issue then, but that they hamstrung their design team with their drive for a thin phone. What elegance might even an extra millimeter of chassis space produced?)
are you talking about the Air? last time i checked all iphone models have a camera bump.
The marketing had nothing to do with it not selling. Pick one up, yeah it’s thin but it’s also a bar of soap to hold. Plus a ton of deal breaking trade off like less battery life and poor camera system compared to the alternative iPhone 17s/Pros.
No thicker than very popular and successful phones from just 5 years ago. They can use the extra space for a larger battery, so they dont have to nerf performance to maintain stability in older phones. They can also use the space to restore repairability.
But probably not for a folding phone, since making both sides that thick will probably be too much.
Phones 5 years ago have lightyears worse cameras than phones today.
But their thickness can accomidate todays cameras.
…no they can’t. Do you realize just how thick modern camera bumps are? Even not including the bump phones nowadays are thicker than phones 5 years ago.
The iPhone X was 7.7mm thick. The iPhone 17 pro excluding the bump is 8.7.
Damn, I keep forgetting that the iphone X was already 5 years ago. 10 years ago then. There has been so little improvements in phones in the ladt 5 years, it all just blurs together.
I think the point is, we used to have phones that were 9mm+ thick. Iphone 4s and iphone 5c from Apple and Samsung Galaxy S3 and motorola G phones were all that thickness. They even had replacable batteries and expandable storage. Some of those were even waterproof despite all of that.
I think the main driver of impractical thinness has been marketing, planned obselecence and cost savings.
The stupid camera bump thing they totally didn’t steal from Google
Edit: Yes, I’m totally butthurt about that guys. Fuck Tim Apple!!11
are we really going to start counting who stole what in all smartphone design.
“These assholes included an antenna and SIM slot again!?! HTC did that last season. So unoriginal.”
I would like a feature where you fold an iphone into a linux phone.
Gonna need to ask santa for that next year ;) you juuust missed the cutoff.
I’m quietly praying a certain launch goes so we’ll we see a steam phone eventually.
I’m just looking for a device that can also perfectly hold my tacos
There are a few people that Apple would love to delete from the face of the planet.
Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman, who’s consistently divulging Apple’s plans, is one. TF International Securities analyst Ming-Chi Kuo, who is always sharing information based on his supply chain checks, is high up on the list, too.
Apple uses Gurman for controlled leaks to build hype. He hasn’t been sued yet.
But YouTuber Jon Prosser is public enemy number one that Apple is trying to truly silence. And for good reason: the man who Apple sued in July for leaking iOS 26 and Liquid Glass keeps spoiling Apple’s unreleased products with high-quality 3D renders in his videos
Now Prosser, Apple definitely doesn’t use him for leaks since he is being sued. He’s just an idiot.
Breakthrough technology, never seen before in the mobile market. Apple, like always, surprises the word with the latest never seen before tech that will become mainstream in the near future, thanks to apple and its affordable pricing for everyday customers.
Now just slap that 2,5-3k RRP on the device and let it sell out in.
Apple’s entire history as an org has been as a fast follower, not a first mover.
The Apple Newton is a great example of why they avoid being a first mover.
They’ve also become really, really good at outsourcing R&D to other companies. This lets them outsource the expense of trial and error, and swoop down with a mature product once everyone else has paid for it.
15 years ago they famously patented, and then leaked that they were working on a fingerprint reader authentication method, and then they watched the Android manufacturers bend over backwards to implement it so they could say they did it “first.” In those early days of smartphones, being first to implement something and then claiming Apple copied it was a big deal for people who wanted to be first movers (today they are called “techbros”). Motorola Mobility ate the cost of R&D, was never able to recoup the costs, and ended up being sold to Google for their patent portfolio. By the time Apple released Touch ID two and a half years later, Motorola Mobility was a shell of itself, and ended up being sold a second time to Lenovo.
Foldable phones have been a thing for a while, and Apple just sat back and took notes on what everyone else was doing. Surface Duo killed Microsoft’s last attempt at a mobile device. Now it’s a relatively mature market (we have tri-fold phones for two years now and tablets that fold into a laptop with a bluetooth keyboard) and now Apple will swoop in and bring the rest of the market.
The money isn’t in being a first mover; it’s in making a reliable product that everyone can use. It shouldn’t be lost on anyone that Apple made a trillion dollars while OpenBSD (upstream for a lot of Apple’s ecosystem) struggled to pay its light bills.
Generally true - but multitouch was a real innovation. I’m not familiar with other manufacturers perfecting touch interfaces AND design paradigms optimized for it.
There were decades of development of touch screen devices with UI paradigms designed explicitly for touch. Notwithstanding all of the Palm and Symbian and Windows CE devices, I feel like I shouldn’t have to point out that the Nintendo DS came out in 2004, three years before the iPhone.
It’s just that these were resistive screens and stylus based…
Except for the LG Prada.
They will “swoop in” like they did with the vr headset, that was dead on arrival.
That headset is certainly my a strange device. It definetly has that Apple magic to it. Incredibly impressive to actually use. But at that price it needs to solve a problem. It needs to justify itself.
A MacBook is a laptop. It does laptop things. An iPhone is a smartphone. It does smartphone things. An Apple Watch…well, I use mine for quick notifications, smarthome interactions and mobile payments but most people buy it as a fashion accessory. It’s amazing this product line survived to maturity. Then we get to the Vision Pro which does….what? It doesn’t solve a problem. It’s the most amazing thing to serve no purpose. Apple was figuring they would throw this device out there and someone else would figure out what to do with it. Obviously that didn’t happen.
Apple usually prefers to do it right rather than do it first.
You’re holding it wrong
We’re slowing down your phone on purpose… for your own good
We have to use a proprietary cable to protect our users from their own stupidity
The issue with the second one was their failure to notify users about the throttling. It is a decent solution for an end of life battery to throttle the device to prevent crashes.
Yeah I have zero qualms with my phone running slower if it means it doesn’t randomly reboot. That was the whole reason why Apple implemented it in the first place.
I said usually. And all of those complaints were overblown or taken way out of context. Like the cable thing? A cheap-ass charging cable from China catches an iPhone on fire, the headlines would read “iPhone catches on fire.” Any hardware manufacturer would be wise to block unlicensed chargers like that. But consider their hardware releases…
Smartphones prior to the iPhone sucked.
MP3 players prior to the iPod sucked.
Tablets prior to the iPad sucked.
Smart watches prior to the Apple Watch sucked.
I mean, do they even have a case against them? It’s not like they stole the information, or signed a contract with Apple.
Also, fuck Apple, and Google, and the rest of them. If they can’t keep a lid on their “secrets”, that’s on them.
I’m focusing on the lawsuit part, because IDGAF about new phones.
I’m prone to believing that a lot of those things presented as “leaks” are actually the company in question doing it by themselves behind the curtains - because let’s face it - people want sensationalism and they won’t shut up about something like that.
Someone forgot an unreleased phone at a bar? I call bullshit.
As if a foldable mobile was some kind of industry super secret anyway. Apple is a joke.
It too late for this product to succeed. If it isn’t absolutely perfect, it won’t matter that it’s great. It took so long to get here the public has unrealistic expectations now.
Meanwhile, the techbros and pretty much poisoned consumer electronics and everyone is looking for a way to jump ship.
I think we are going to see Linux phones get sales like the iPhone air did this year, which weren’t great for Apple but mean something very different for competition.
Whose making this phone. Nothing coming out seems decent yet. The best one has cut down specs from its none Linux version.
Well I’m pretty sure Android is a Linux offshoot iirc? Fair phone comes to mind but I’m not sure if it’s linux based
That is literally a Pixel Fold
Watched the video on mine. I was thinking the same thing lol. Only difference is the alleged no center dent, which, tbh, people make too big of a deal out of. Once you use it for a bit you don’t even notice it anymore. Meh.
Omg it is it even has the horrible curved screen and little notch. How could apple do this horrendous design. Oh wait they gave the notch.
iPhones are too locked down for the hardware they have. I’m writing this on an iPhone 15 …
The foldable I like the most I’ve seen are the Motorola razrs. That’s vertical. The best fat foldables are going to be Android because of all the video game emulators for Android
I don’t understand the last sentence. All the video game emulators for Android compared to what OS? Because at this point, RetroArch emulates pretty much everything, and is available for Android and iOS. Running anything that needs hardware caching on iOS needs sideloading of course.
So what is it that makes the Android foldable experience better for emulators than, say, an iPad?
Interesting, didn’t hear of that yet. Apparently, Apple changed their stance on emulators in summer 2024. Before that they had emulators banned completely from the iOS store. Now it appears that they allow them, at least Retroarch.
Removed by mod
A 5.5” screen is way too small to be worth it. If this costs more than an an iPad + iPhone Pro, this thing is gonna flop more than the Vision Pro did.
Tbh, I think that Apple makes stuff like the Vision Pro not to make money but to appear as if they have some kind of technological leadership.
They can claim that they have the best headset on the market. No need to actually sell any units.
(And of course other manufacturers could make just as nice headsets for that price point, but most other manufacturers actually need to sell units and thus they build them with realistic hardware.)
