this post was submitted on 30 Sep 2024
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There have been plenty of fads over the lifespan of the smartphone market. E.g. curved edge screens. I think curved screens are another and Apple is right to ignore it. There's too many compromises required for a foldable and not much benefit to be worth it.
My personal theory for the curved edges is, that samsung just wanted to prevent cheap off brand replacement screens.
Mine is that they wanted it to stand out, compared to all the other phones with flat screens at the time, especially with all the design clones.
You would look at it and go "oh that phone looks funny, must be a Samsung".
This is what it was when they introduced it. I used to work for an Android OEM at the time and the product people really wanted to get their hands on curved screens for the same reason. Eventually they got Samsung to sell them some but it wasn't as curved as the ones Samsung used on their devices to keep differentiation. It still cost twice what flat screens which ate a significant chunk of the profit margin.
I think part of the reason was to look good in stores. If you have a non curved and curved phone next to each other playing the demo video, the curved looks waaay more futurostic.
Foldable at least has theoretical benefit, curved screens on a phone are fucking terrible
Hey! What did you just say about the Nexus 4?
What I don’t understand is why nobody makes a foldable phone where it’s just two flat screens with an invisible bezel along one edge so they fit seamlessly together when fully opened.
It’s not like there’s a use case where you operate the phone half unfolded and require both halves of the screen to be seamlessly connected.
If the flexing feature wasn’t a gimmick and there was an actual use case for a foldable pocket iPad, someone would have released a phone like the Kyocera Echo https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kyocera_Echo to commercial success.
Microsoft had a dual screen foldable like that, then stopped supporting it
not invisible, but the Surface Duo line was pretty much that.
Is "invisible bezel with actual screen below" possible?
Exactly. And it wouldn’t have to be double wide since some components could be pushed to the other size. I’m fine with it just being like two apps open and not even one big one. Multitasking.
I guess what we really need is a phone case that has hinges and we can just buy two phones!
Interesting idea. Bezels have been made pretty thin and there have been curved display edges, but I don’t know if anyone’s ever tried a one-side zero-bezel design that you could hinge together. Bezels in the other sides are fine, but could we create a flush edge with no gap to click two screens against each other?