The IT Pro Podcast: Are foldable phones more than a fad?

The average smartphone tends to look fairly unassuming, but recently, foldable phones have injected a bit of diversity into the market. These eye-catching new devices include foldable screens, and are aimed at businesspeople and power users.

But do foldable phones represent a genuine step forward for mobile technology, or are they simply a passing trend that will be swiftly forgotten? In this week’s episode, we dig into what makes foldable phones so unique, and look at whether or not they deserve a place in our pockets.

Highlights

“One of the big things for modern foldables is that for most of the time, they can just act as a normal, standard form factor smartphone with the standard 16:9 screen, and you can use all of your apps and whatnot in the way that you normally would. But when you need a little bit more real estate, if you're, for example, watching a video or taking notes, or whatever it is that you need a little bit more elbow room for, you can fold it out, and bang, you've got more space to work with straight off the bat, rather than having to hop between devices.”

“It does seem to me that these devices are bringing a bit more to the table than the previous PDAs; whereas they were tiny laptops, with these ones, it's not just, here's something that you can write an email on, and maybe make some calls. For example, I've seen with the Surface Duo, when it's in portrait orientation, that you could have a reference text on one side and a note taking app on the other screen. So that's quite useful, almost like the split screen function that you have on desktops and laptops, which I am a frequent user of.”

Read the full transcript here.

Footnotes

• Samsung aims for the mainstream with sub £1,000 foldable phones
• Is the world ready for foldable phones?
• Forget foldable phones - where's my foldable tablet?
• Will folding screens ever make it to the mass market?
• Samsung Galaxy Z Flip review: Flipping impressive
• No new Galaxy Note this year, Samsung exec confirms
• Microsoft Surface Duo review: Progress is a double-edged sword
• The Surface Neo is a tantalising glimpse of what might have been
• Cosmo Communicator review: For the few, not the many

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