I am an old IT guy. This was a hard and fast rule: Never buy version 1.0 of anything.
Same goes for the first model year of vehicles
100% this, leave the first generation to the professionals (eg. reviewers) to find all the obvious flaws - then pick up the 2nd or 3rd iteration once they get most of the kinks ironed out.
This shouldn’t be a 1.0 version of a phone with a folding screen, though, android phones have been doing this for a loooong time now and they are not and haven’t been flaky tech for some time now. I guess you’re right about Apple and this SKU, though. A bit surprising, I’m not an iPhone person but I always expect them to do pretty rigorous QA.
It is ver 1.0 for Apple. Same as touchscreen for laptops. Apple hasn’t done it.
They’re always a few versions behind, but somehow manage to get credit for the “innovation”.
“it just works” has been wrong for so long
Every phone maker seems convinced that if they can be the one to make this work, they’ll be the champion of world forever, or something.
I can’t understand why a user would even want this. How many users do want this?
I like the idea of it, but I can live without it.
A foldable phone has the benefits of a tablet (screen size) and a phone (more compact), allowing you to alternate between the two at will. I can see the appeal.
Kinda. They tend to result in a phone that is too big to be comfortable, that open to a tablet that is too small to be all that useful.
The Duo has a cover screen that is 5.4 inches and it unfolds to 7.6", while being thicker, bigger and heavier than a 18 pro max with a 6.9" screen. Is the pro max a tablet already then, it’s quite dang close in screen size after all.
To me, it’s the aspect ratio of the screens.
This passport style ratio is what I want from such a device because that’s how all paper looks like in my country. We use the ISO paper standard being A sizes. They’re like the Goldilocks shape for books and media. Modern smartphones right now is closer to cinematic ratio of 21:9, but most TV content are still 16:9. Letter boxing is at the left and right side and I somehow dislike this.
This more bookish shape puts the letter box on top and bottom and somehow that’s more preferable for me.
It also fits a lot better with papers and documents as A4 paper size is proportional to the passport ratio.
I’m going by the assumption that the duo is following the ISO paper ratio though. IIRC the Samsung fold 8 outer screen does follow it, but due to engineering the inner bigger screen is 4:3, which is not ISO paper ratio, but close enough.
All this to say that a 7.6" screen with a 20:9 aspect ratio will not fit the same way with a 1:1.4 ratio for non progressive web content. And I prefer the latter.
Why not make something like the 3DS? Like, it flips open and you have 2x screen size. It doesn’t actually have to be one continuous screen, with all the failure points that entails; you’re allowed to have two separate screens that join into one. Every dual monitor home PC setup works this way.
Heck, take it one step further and have a little keyboard that can slide out from the bottom if you’re feeling brave.
That’s what I think. I miss physical keyboards on phones, and generally don’t mind a phone on the heavier side.
People absolutely hate bezels though, so it’d never fly with the flagship phones.
Guys, we had the optimal form factor, the LG Wing, years ago! No folding displayed required!
I’m not even joking. I used mine for years and loved it.
I like the Surface Phone 2 form factor. Having the display be glass helps a ton, and the bezel inside is pretty small. It would be even better with an e-ink outer display; that’s plenty for most phone things, and then you could open it up for videos and such.
That’s because users are trying to use normally accepted folding methods and not Apple approved proprietary iPhone folding methods.
Looks like Apple should have made sure their precision engineered hinge was also accurate engineered.
I haven’t heard an accuracy vs precision joke for years, that’s brilliant :D
That’s the exact failure that happened on the bend test for Zak on JerryRigEverything. Crazy it’s happening without the full-muscle stress test.
The article says that the best guess is there’s a physical part of the hinge about there that must be perfectly aligned, and if it isn’t then that specific screen is eventually doomed.
Yeah, this boils down to a manufacturing engineering problem. There’s some process happening during assembly that’s resulting in these slipping by… or being allowed by.
EDIT: And I mean, yeah, the thing could’ve been designed better from the get go, but that ship sailed long ago.
Tbh, I figured Apple taking their time on these was because they were trying to improve the engineering over the Android folding screen offerings.
Now I wonder if they just wait because everyone assumes Apple would try and make it better, and then they just sell a bunch + the Apple tax, even though it’s just as bad of a product. Like, the marketing team just saying: “wait a couple years”.
They still have to develop the software.
Even if they just clone the hardware.
Apple usually do the software more integrated than Android shipping phone companies.
It makes sense that it takes longer to do those integrations.
For me the price point is just becoming insane for even basic iPhones and the battery life is terrible
Apple usually do the software more integrated than Android shipping phone companies.
And yet the software rollout has been very bungled, and added more fragmentation into the app store, adding a “designed for iphone duo” label and poor support for existing apps. About 10-15 years ago, this is something which Apple fanboys made fun of Android about.
Given Jobs didn’t even want a larger iphone form factor, he’s probably rolling in his grave by the fragmentation this causes.
It’d be interesting to see a different world where Jobs were still alive and what Apple would have done differently. Jobs did have a history of hypocritical statements which basically boiled down to “Feature X sucks, no one wants it” until Apple would come out with the same feature, and then he’d say “Now that Apple re-engineered Feature X, it’s perfect, buy it from us”. I could see him selling the iPhone Duo but the difference would be he’d push for better app integration over the last 10 years ahead of launch so that it’s not so janky.
I’m so glad I never fell for this gimmick. The tech looked sketchy from the beginning.
When the screen is fully floppy, that’s when Im in. Flexible electronic paper exists. Why not in a phone?
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I’m sure you’d get more than three days out of it…
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Hardly matters, the sort of people who buy such a pointless, gimicky and overly expensive phone will keep buying Apple regardless.
I like tech, I think it’s cool, and expensive features almost always become cheap or standard features in the future.
When someone figures out how to do this well, I will definitely want a folding phone. Although I want a phone that folds half the size of a normal phone, not a normal phone size that folds out to a tablet.
I had some issues with a Fold3 and had it replaced for some micro-cracks showing down the middle of the crease, but now I’m beating the shit out of a fold 7 and it’s been perfect for a year so far.
apple got something wrong with the hinge design here, you’d think they’d get it right after holding off on folders this long though.
Apple is slow on everything and manages to act like they’re top shelf.
It’s a first generation product. Remember the first Galaxy Fold and what a disaster that was? It’s kinda like that (only more expensive).
Apple should have the benefit of hindsight but apparently not.
This is hilarious to me because all I hear from Apple fanbois about why iPhones are always years behind Samsung et al on new features is because “Apple don’t release things until they work properly”
