hoangbre@gmail.com
When foldable phones first arrived on the scene, it was a durability disaster at Samsung. It took the company a few generations to fix the underlying hinge and display issues. And by the time the formula was perfected, every smartphone brand had already put their foldable phones on the shelf, except Apple.
As the design matured and clamshell foldable phones arrived on the scene, the price came down while the hardware kept getting more refined. But soon, Samsung hit a design wall, a well-known trope that continues to haunt Galaxy phone buyers to date. The situation at Motorola, the only other foldable phone seller in the US market, wasn’t too different.
Just a day ago, purported renders of Samsung’s upcoming foldable phones — the Galaxy Z Fold 7 and a cheaper FE model — were leaked. The latter looks identical to Samsung’s current-gen Samsung Galaxy Z Flip 6, while the former wants to play blink-and-you-miss-me with Motorola’s Razr 60 Ultra. Or it’s Razr 50 series rival. Or the Razr 40 Ultra.
Just take a look at the images above. The Samsung and Motorola phones look virtually identical, inside and out. The only difference? Motorola likes its branding on the rear shell, which it likes to experiment with. This year, it was Alcantara and wood. Last year, the company was experimenting with vegan leather in a variety of colors.
Samsung, on the other hand, hasn’t tried anything except glass and metal, with a matching tone of the metallic side frame. Your only chance of standing out? Pick one from the Samsung-exclusive colors with a black side frame (yeah, that’s the only difference) that is only sold via the brand’s website and colors.
On the outside, each brand wants to maximize the area of the cover display, which is a meaningful endeavor. After years of attempts, both brands (and a few from China) have landed at the exact same formula. An edge-to-edge screen with floating camera lenses and an LED flash module.
The similarity runs so deep that if you don’t carefully look at the rounded corners and sides, you won’t be able to tell a Motorola Razr apart from a Galaxy Z Flip later this year. The situation with the inner foldable display is even more difficult. But then, every slab phone is also starting to look the same, including Samsung and Motorola.
Does it make sense?
That’s a million-dollar question, and the answer would depend just how much work you can get done solely off the cover screen. Smartphone brands keep trying to one-up each other by claiming how immersive the secondary outer display on their foldable phone is. “Largest and smartest external display,” that’s what Motorola claims on its website.
In a few weeks, Samsung will be fighting for those bragging rights atop the Galaxy Z Flip 7, which takes the same design formula, offers thinner bezels, and goes for less rounded corners. Or in marketing terms, relentless innovation and pursuit of hardware excellence.
Now, just how much is your life going to change if the cover display goes from a 3.4-inch OLED panel to a 4-inch OLED panel? Not much, at least for me. For navigation and reading messages? Fine. For typing on a full-sized qwerty touch keyboard, you either wish your thumbs were more dainty, or the screen were a little bigger.
Either way, not what you would call an ergonomically pleasing experience.
The race for practicality
The biggest problem is scaling. Apps look weird, even if you can now run all of them on the landscape or square-ish cover screen. Try social media apps, especially those with vertical videos, and you will know the deal. Is there a solution to it? Not really, because consumers would prefer the biggest possible screen, even if they can’t get the best out of out.
It also looks a lot more polished, so it’s clear every brand is chasing after that edge-to-edge look. Interestingly, the problem of scaling was solved in a more natural way, not too long ago. Oppo launched a flip phone that had a traditional candybar-style secondary display on the back. It felt natural, and so did app interactions.
Huawei has done something similar on the Pura X, and so has a fellow Chinese brand on the Vivo X Flip. Honor thinks the cover display should not take precedence because it’s not the primary source of user interaction, so there’s a lot to experiment with the design. In all the outlier cases mentioned above, the phones offer a lot more identity and look playful.
It’s not going to please everyone, especially those who carry the banner of “function over form,” and if you try to with the argument that there’s a perfectly fine flexible display inside that’s just a flip away, it wouldn’t make sense. Call it a situation of misplaced expectations, but we are at a point of no return.
Clamshell-style foldable phones are going to look mostly the same moving ahead. The saving grace? If you don’t care too much about standout looks, they are getting more powerful, sturdier, and in some cases, a tad cheaper, as well.
