Foldables: The Slowpokes
In the early 2000s, Nokia was one of the most unanimously famous brands all over the world due to the astonishing popularity of the 3310. But in 2004, Motorola flipped the market (pun intended) with the Motorola Razr. It was an instant hit and got extremely famous among youngsters. All Motorola did was slim down the already small feature phone with the famous hinge mechanism. It was more of a fashion statement for people who bought and it also leveraged the company to cycle the Razr through different colours and reboots. But this all comes to an end when Motorola hit rock bottom in the late 2000s because of the inevitable “smartphone revolution”.
But like clockwork, the popularity of foldables was regenerated in the year 2019 with the launch of the first-ever consumer folding smartphone by Samsung and this time they have got their hands over a big fish because this was such a product that was never seen before. A foldable which had a full-sized folding OLED screen supported by a hidden hinge beneath with a large outside cover screen for those times when you don’t need the device to be completely opened up. And in terms of size, once folded the first Samsung Fold was a few millimetres thicker than the standard smartphone at that time and when it opened up, it was thinner than those.
In recent times, it is noted that the rate of innovation for these foldables has been slowing down lately after the first popular launch and the whole demographic feels very sterile now, especially the offerings from Samsung. Why do I say that? Let’s get into it…
When the first mass-market Samsung Fold was released in 2019, it seemed more of a revolution than a revelation because this concept of making a screen flexible to make a smartphone foldable was completely unheard of before. This was such a boom that the whole market was disrupted and a completely new market of foldables was released which was monopolistically ruled by the tech mogul Samsung. In due course of time, competitors did try to catch up, especially the Chinese ones, but with the early-mover advantage, Samsung doubled down on its R&D and software to provide smaller iterative upgrades instead of innovational strides. There is no doubt that Samsung did innovate but the amount of innovation people were expecting from the giant by retrospectively looking at their products was not fulfilled. Yes, they did innovate on the crucial parts like the hinge which is honestly the main part of any foldable and the screen, but then the phones seem stagnated especially after their third iteration of foldable devices.
In August of 2021, Samsung unveiled the Fold 3 and the Flip 3 which were one of the foldables in the market which made large strides in the aspect of consumer technologies. Talking about the Fold 3, it came with a 120hz cover screen along with a stronger hinge which also allowed them to certify the device as IPX8 dust-resisted. On top of that, it was also the first time for any company to accompany any device with a punch-hole, hidden in-screen camera which proved to be moderately decent for a technology which was highly skepticized. Even though the software required some refinements, it proved to be way above the class. Flip 3 also made some similar strides. It had a larger cover display which made it more useful for the users to use various optimised widgets. On top of that, the crease on the inside screen was minimised a lot to make it less intrusive while viewing any form of content.
But this was the very last when we saw Samsung doing something like this. From then, it seems that they’ve been copying rules from Apple’s playbook, especially about “refinement over innovation”. Of course, refinements are necessary for a product to be widely democratized for the masses but in this world of technology, new development is necessary for a product to be properly matured. And in this case, Samsung’s lack of innovation might feel a bit sterile especially when they have the largest global market share of 21%. But the changes they did in their latest Flip 5 with the larger cover display are commendable.
Also, it is only a matter of time before Samsung might lose its commanding lead in the foldable market because a ton of innovations have been made by various companies all over the world and they might prove themselves to be a better option than Samsung’s offerings.
