With Samsung set to unveil its next foldable flagship phones on July 10 (here's a quick refresher on what was launched last year), it feels like an appropriate time to reassess the appeal of phones that bend in half. They typically cost more than standard flagships, but do they offer enough to justify that extra cost?
The answer can be yes—but not for everyone. Before you decide to put down a significant amount of money for a foldable phone, you need to be sure you're going to get enough out of it. What follows are use cases where a foldable phone really can make a difference, and if they make sense to you, a folding phone could be your next upgrade.
This list focuses mainly on book-style foldables—the likes of the Galaxy Z Fold 5, the Google Pixel Fold, and the OnePlus Open—but there is a mention of flip foldables, such as the Galaxy Z Flip 5 and the Motorola Razr, at the end.
This is one of the more obvious ones: With a screen double the size of a typical phone display, you can very easily get one app up alongside another. Whether that's actually useful depends on the specific apps you're going to be spending most of your time in—you don't get a whole lot of room on each side, so it can feel a bit cramped at times.
Bear in mind you can split the screen vertically as well as horizontally. It's great for watching videos while checking your email, or looking up articles on the web while also making notes, or keeping an eye on social media while you also update your calendar. Over time, you'll most likely come up with useful split-screen combinations of your own.
A foldable phone gives you a screen that approaches mini-tablet size when open, and that means videos play at a significantly larger size. There can be some heavy letterboxing, but the extra screen space top and bottom can come in handy too—it means you can watch YouTube clips while also flicking through the comments below the clip, for instance.
The previous tip mentioned watching videos in split-screen mode, and if you use your phone half-folded, it means you've got a video screen propped up for easy viewing (like having a kickstand on your phone, without the kickstand). The lower half of the screen can be repurposed for displaying comments or playback controls for what you're watching.
Another scenario where all that extra screen space can come in handy is with games. Most Android titles will happily expand to fill the extra space without any problem, and that means you can see more of the game setting: racetrack, space station, dungeon, or whatever it is. It's great for everything from basic puzzle games to open-world adventures.
The controls can often be easier to use as well, though this can vary from game to game. Remember that with a foldable phone, you're holding it with two hands when it's open—so you've got thumbs on either side, ready to take action. And if you want the traditional experience for any of your games, you can always close up the phone.
Most of us spend a lot of time typing on our phones, and it's a significantly different experience on a foldable phone—and one that's improved, in a lot of ways. You've got more space for the keyboard on screen, and you've got two hands to type with, so a lot of the time your typing speed is going to go up (though it does take some getting used to).
If you need to do a lot of writing on your phone, a foldable can mean you're significantly more productive. Emails, documents, comments, texts—whatever it is, you can get through them more quickly with a foldable. Keyboard options, including autocorrect choices and the phone clipboard, are also easier to access when the phone is unfolded.
Flip phones (like the Z Flip 5) go in the opposite direction to book-style foldable phones (like the Z Fold 5)—they're the size of a normal phone when they're unfolded, rather than when they're folded. That makes them easier to carry around, and perfect if you're low on space in your pocket, bag, desk drawer, or wherever you usually keep your handset.
These flip phones are still pretty usable when they're folded down to half the size, too. Recent models have decent-sized cover screens, so you can check incoming messages, control media playback, snap photos, set timers, check the weather, and more. You get a lot of functionality from a screen around half the size of a standard phone display.
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