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Samsung’s Foldable Phone Is the $1,980 Galaxy Fold

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Re: Samsung’s Foldable Phone Is the $1,980 Galaxy Fold

#101

Post by sosborn »

NowThenGoodBad wrote: post #93
TheOtherHobbes wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You would have expected Apple to test its keyboard designs in the same way - we know how that turned out. Ironically - if that's the word - I think a larger laptop format device with a tactile folding hinged screen would be more interesting than this enormo-phone. This device will probably sell moderately in the nouveau Asian markets, but I doubt it's going to be a storming success, or the template for the next gener…

Fun story for you on that: I applied numerous time for their Failure Analysis Engineer, Reliability Engineer, and other similar positions but repeatedly got rejected (or simply ignored by their ATS, I don’t play that keyword game very well). My professional career in Materials Science and Materials Engineering has had a large focus on reliability testing and failure analysis. In parallel with inventing new technologi…

> I’m sitting in front of a 2017 MBP that has been used as a stationary desktop and babied with a keyboard cover and much TLC that has strange screen artifacts that seem to indicate that it was pinched

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT203671

Re: Samsung’s Foldable Phone Is the $1,980 Galaxy Fold

#102

Post by bootlooped »

franciscojgo wrote: post #3

That just seems gimmicky at best IMO. No ecosystem. I expect it will sell for 2-3 years and then die off and have them lose money on it. What type of niche market actually needs a phone that can display 3 apps at once and fold down to a brick sized phone? It's good that companies take these leaps of fate but they sort of seem reaching. Why not wait and keep pushing the tech until it's worth releasing a beautiful prod…

Early products using cutting edge tech probably often seem gimmicky, but I think it would be short sided to dismiss the whole concept due to that.

Hopefully enough early adopters buy this thing so that they keep iterating and improving on these. It's easy to see how a phone with a folding screen would be desirable to a lot of people... if it were thinner and cheaper. The first foldable phone is probably not going to be a great product, maybe not even the first 10 of them. In 5 years maybe they'll be great though.

Re: Samsung’s Foldable Phone Is the $1,980 Galaxy Fold

#103

Post by deathanatos »

dzhiurgis wrote: post #68
_coveredInBees wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

*For very limited workloads - And those synthetic geekbench scores don't really count

Try JS Octane benchmarks then. Or how do YOU benchmark devices? The real bottleneck is UI, not CPU's.

It isn't so much about the benchmark one uses. A CPU converts electricity to heat, and does computation as a side-effect. A CPU embedded in a laptop (or moreover, a desktop) is going to be able to convert more electricity into more heat — and more computation — by virtue of being able to better dissipate the heat due to having a larger surface area to do it over. (In addition to having active cooling — vents and fans — which I've yet to see on a phone.)

Modern non-phone CPUs can have TDPs of more than 80W. If your phone did 80W, it would burn your hand. So, forgive me if I'm skeptical of any benchmark that says a phone outperforms a laptop.

You're arguing that the phone CPU can get significantly better performance, do so with less power, and occupy a form factor smaller than what a laptop requires? Why would I not just manufacture a less space-constrained version of this chip (to make it cheaper) and stick it in a laptop?

I Googled the specific benchmark you referenced. I'm not able to find results on it, but one of the top hits was this: https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2017/04/googl...

Re: Samsung’s Foldable Phone Is the $1,980 Galaxy Fold

#104

Post by franciscojgo »

_bxg1 wrote: post #36
franciscojgo wrote: post #3

That just seems gimmicky at best IMO. No ecosystem. I expect it will sell for 2-3 years and then die off and have them lose money on it. What type of niche market actually needs a phone that can display 3 apps at once and fold down to a brick sized phone? It's good that companies take these leaps of fate but they sort of seem reaching. Why not wait and keep pushing the tech until it's worth releasing a beautiful prod…

Android is working on OS-level support for folding displays. This one's early, and will have limited support from apps, but I don't think the category will die as a gimmick. It has genuine utility, it's just been a technological hurdle. Personally, I'll wait another couple years for Apple to refine it a bit. Also, the smartphone market has started saturating and device makers are clamoring for a feature - any feature…

If they are working from the OS side that’s perfect. But I Im no way expecting to see anything but the most important apps have useful multi-app-in-screen interactions. Yeah YouTube, FB, Search, w/e but will that make it worth it?

Sort of like the Touch Bar on MacBook Pros (which I have). Yeah it’s awesome to have on select apps like Photoshop, Safari, etc but it’s in no way so valuable as to build a whole product around - like this phone is trying to do.

You can take the Touch Bar away from me at any moment and I won’t mind.

Unless apps deeply integrate with this folding capability etc its just a gimmick that I expect will die pretty quick or remain a very niche product.

Re: Samsung’s Foldable Phone Is the $1,980 Galaxy Fold

#105

Post by photojosh »

Shorel wrote: post #71
djhworld wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I often read PDF versions of books (especially technical books) or PDFs of academic papers etc I've never been able to view these properly on a kindle. Well, last time I tried anyway, is it better now?

Kobo Aura One seems to be the right size for your use case.

Yep, I'm currently reading my EPUBs and PDFs on an ancient iPad 3. I researched a newer solution and settled on a Kobo Aura One (or perhaps the Forma which came out only recently) running the open-source KOReader [0], which is apparently much better than the built-in app on the Kobos. But I'm too cheap to upgrade while the iPad still works.

[0] http://koreader.rocks

Re: Samsung’s Foldable Phone Is the $1,980 Galaxy Fold

#106

Post by Invictus0 »

This is a classic case of the technology taking precedence over the functionality. Samsung's TV division has invested billions in developing flexible displays, thinking that this would be the future. Once the technology got to the point where it was actually feasible, THEN they started thinking about how they could market it.

Good product design starts by asking what the problem is and then building the solution. Samsung started with a technology and then tried to figure out how to sell it. The result is the gimmick you see here which, like all of the tablet-phone combos that came before it, does nothing particularly well and costs more than two solutions designed specifically for each use case (iPhone: 1000. iPad Mini: 400). When will people learn to stop jamming toasters and vacuums together?

Re: Samsung’s Foldable Phone Is the $1,980 Galaxy Fold

#107

Post by closetohome »

whoopdedo wrote: post #65
bunderbunder wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, probably not, but it could quite plausibly replace an iPad Mini. I could see even replacing a midsize tablet, for someone for whom that amount of bulk elimination merits a compromise.

At around 4x the price? It's not replacing anything.

The multiplier isn't as important as the total cost -- under two grand isn't exactly an impulse buy, but it's also not prohibitive.

Re: Samsung’s Foldable Phone Is the $1,980 Galaxy Fold

#108

Post by dragonwriter »

Invictus0 wrote: post #106

This is a classic case of the technology taking precedence over the functionality. Samsung's TV division has invested billions in developing flexible displays, thinking that this would be the future. Once the technology got to the point where it was actually feasible, THEN they started thinking about how they could market it. Good product design starts by asking what the problem is and then building the solution. Sam…

> The result is the gimmick you see here which, like all of the tablet-phone combos that came before it, does nothing particularly well and costs more than solutions designed specifically for each use case.

Aren't Samsung's long line of successful phablets (and the influence they've had on other flagship phones) a stark disproof of your claims about “all previous tablet-phone combos”. Clearly, the utility the market finds in them differs from the utility you find in them.

Re: Samsung’s Foldable Phone Is the $1,980 Galaxy Fold

#109

Post by [deleted] »

Niksko wrote: post #31
nickelcitymario wrote: post #22

While I won't be an early adopter for this, I think the concept is great. The things I'll be watching out for if this takes off: 1) How does the screen holdup in daily use? Does the Infinity Flex Display get work out or glitchy at the hinge after 10,000 folds? 2) Will the device get thinner? This is currently the size of two phones stacked on top of each other. I can't imagine carrying that in my pocket long-term. 3)…

If IKEA can build a machine that repeatedly flexes their chairs until failure, I'm forced to believe that Samsung can build a machine that repeatedly flexes their screen. Surely that's not going to be the failure mode, it's more likely to be grit in the mechanism or fragility after dropping.

[deleted]

Re: Samsung’s Foldable Phone Is the $1,980 Galaxy Fold

#110

Post by closetohome »

Invictus0 wrote: post #106

This is a classic case of the technology taking precedence over the functionality. Samsung's TV division has invested billions in developing flexible displays, thinking that this would be the future. Once the technology got to the point where it was actually feasible, THEN they started thinking about how they could market it. Good product design starts by asking what the problem is and then building the solution. Sam…

> costs more than two solutions designed specifically for each use case

We call that "integration," and it's been a feature of the tech industry for as long as there's been a tech industry.

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