First of all, none of us asked for a folding tablet-smartphone thingy. There’s no demand for such devices. Yet here we are. And Samsung have just made this a thing. Foldables are coming. I cannot wait to see what will be happening in the next year or two especially with Chinese companies that are always quick.
Xiaomi’s foldable concept looked really good, remember. But it was only a concept. We are yet to see it in real life. However, post-launch, Samsung’s Galaxy Fold looks like the best design choice for a foldable. It is more practical and perhaps this is the design we will see many more companies fight to replicate in the coming months and years. Well except for the hideous front bezels when folded to phone size.
Last year, Google said Android will have native support for foldables going forward. Which means companies will only need to focus most of their resources on the hardware bit as the OS will do the rest for them. Which is good for companies that are looking to launch foldables. Because for them, they won’t have to do a lot of the stuff Samsung has really been up to with things like 3-App multi-tasking, and App Continuity where switching from folded to unfolded screen is seamless.
I am actually looking forward to seeing what people who’ll pay $1980 for the Galaxy Fold think of it, and what other companies will be doing in the coming months. Because like any other piece of tech, when the time has come, the time has come. It is a new era of smartphones, whether we like it, want it, believe it, or not.
Only close to two years ago it wasn’t deemed a serious thing to have under-the-display fingerprint scanners. It not only sounded impossible, it also seemed a waste of resources. The capacitive scanners we had worked pretty well, and were really fast. Nowadays, having such scanners is almost normal. And yesterday Samsung even announced the world’s first ultrasonic under-the-display scanner, effectively making optical scanners sound old.
As we’ve seen with fingerprint scanners, iris scanners, bezel-less devices, and now bendable displays, most times, it is not really about whether users want something, or whether or not it is a solution to an existing problem. Nope. It is about the joy of being able to do something, the excitement of our abilities as humans to innovate. Who thought in June 2007 that there’ll come a time when touch screens would be bendable? And who knows what people will be doing with bendables in the future?
