Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

theverge.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

171–180 of 204 posts

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

#171

Post by SomeHacker44 »

DKnoll wrote: post #158
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)…

It doesn't seem any thicker than the phones we had in our pockets in the early-mid 2000s. I personally would mind that compromise.

"Would mind"?

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

#173

Post by ksec »

DKnoll wrote: post #158
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)…

It doesn't seem any thicker than the phones we had in our pockets in the early-mid 2000s. I personally would mind that compromise.

I remember carrying a Nokia 3310, which is ~20mm if I remember correctly. I kept thinking when could we get this to thinner. Later I had a Sony Ericsson Kxxx, I think it was Sub 15mm, it was still too thick. In ~2007 ish I had a Nokia 6xxx that was sub 12mm, then iPhone all the way to iPhone 6s, 6.x mm which was the thinnest iPhone before reverting now to 8.x mm on iPhone XS.

All of them were still too think. I think iPad Pro 2018 got it about right. Somewhere between 5mm to 5.8mm would be perfect. But a 18mm foldable phone 5" Phone, I am not too sure. I would much prefer to have a thinner version of 6.8" iPhone.

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

#174

Post by SomeHacker44 »

dstaley wrote: post #128
salimmadjd wrote: post #29

Slightly OT: IMHO, I think Samsung made a huge mistake announcing the Fold along with their other products. 1 - This is a new product category and I think it deserves its own stage. 2 - Fold is overshadowing everything else Samsung announced. Galaxy, etc. are their biggest sellers but they lost the main attention to the Fold. Basically Fold's hype will cannibalize market attention of their new announcement that will…

The Fold is $2,000, so I highly doubt it'll cannibalize the sales of the S10.

By definition a more expensive item cannot cannibalize sales of a less expensive one, at least when I learned it in business school. :)

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

#175

Post by ksec »

Both the Samsung S10 Series and the Fold are technical Marvel. Even if you are an Apple user one should appreciate how Samsung's technology are improving. The OLED is 1200 nit, while the reporting numbers are always off to actual testing results, it is still an amazing achievement to have 1000+ nit.

Purely from a Hardware Perspective, this is the best you can buy with no Trade oFfs. Apart from a slightly slower Single Core Pref Compared to Apple, the NAND, the RAM, The Display, 5G, WiFi 6, Battery, UnderScreen SuperSonic Finger Print, better Bezel less design, Best Camera Module on the front and the back. This is Samsung going all out.

Not sure how the market will react to it, but I sure hope Apple takes notes. You cant rely on iOS and Software forever.

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

#176

Post by malshe »

Rallen89 wrote: post #169
malshe wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am really intrigued when people claim that more students are buying Surfae books than MBPs. Where are those students? Do you have any statistics to back that up or it’s just “anecdata”? If it’s latter then I can add mine here. I have been teaching in 5 countries in 3 continents over the past several years and I teach subjects that require coding. I have to go around the class helping students out on their laptops.…

> On the other hand the number of students using macs ranges from 5% to 80% depending on the type of the class (undergrad, full time masters, executive masters, PhD) and the country Did you see a trend with the type of class, did the PhD classes have a Different distribution or was it other factors that affected it

I see most PhD students in business management with Windows computers. There Macs have 5%-10% incidence rate in my experience. I work with a few CS profs and their students and all the profs use Macs and their students use either Windows or Linux (I think) machines :) I spoke with two of them who use new MBPs before buying mine and they strongly recommended buying it.

In some executive teaching in Europe I have seen people using mostly Macs. It could be because of the industry where they came from. Among the masters students in France, about 50%-60% had Macs.

The caveat remains: This is "anecdata"

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

#177

Post by nickelcitymario »

esmi wrote: post #80
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)…

4) do the two screens wear uniformly? 5) what effect does putting a hinge in the center of the device have on the thermal capacity of the unit (thermal capacity is almost more important for performace than ram on a modern mobile computer architectures) 6) what are the long term ramifications of splitting the battery cell into two halves. It must be less capacity due to the extra packaging and safety overhead. I could…

I may have missed it, but do we know the battery is split in 2?

Personally, I would make one half of the device be 100% battery, and the other half hold all of the remaining components.

I'm not sure what the effect of that would be in terms of weight balancing, though. I'm not a hardware guy. I wouldn't be surprised if this led to the battery half being significantly heavier and feeling more substantial.

Still, seems like there are options beyond splitting the battery in half.

Solid points otherwise, though. Could you imagine have the screen wearing out faster than the other? That'd be a nightmare to look at.

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

#178

Post by bradenb »

jonplackett wrote: post #75

Considering a 512gb iPhone XS Max is $1450 I guess it's hard to call it any more overpriced than an iPhone. But both are too over-priced for me.

$1500 is a LOT for a phone, but $2000 is a whopping $500 more than that. It's not exactly a "little" more than the top iPhone model.

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

#180

Post by llampx »

splonk wrote: post #78

Honestly, if this is even vaguely usable, it's going to replace my phone and my tablet, simply by reducing the screen size for both while still having some modern hardware behind it. I find 5" phones to be just slightly too large to comfortably use one-handed (and forget about the larger flagship phones that come out these days). I at least have some faith that I'll be able to reach across the 4.6" screen, although w…

4.6" is the screen size on the Galaxy Fold, but the bezels are huge. The Galaxy S10e which is a solid small-ish phone has a height of 142mm. A Sony XZ2 Compact, for comparison is 135mm but has a screen of 5" vs 5.8" on the Samsung.
Post reply on HN