IS THE SAMSUNG FOLD A TABLET OR A SMARTPHONE?
Handson evaluation of the Galaxy Fold, Samsung’s foldable cellphone
Any new technology is bound to have wrinkles. On Samsung’s new Galaxy Fold, a smartphone that opens into a tablet, they include one prominent crease. It goes down the middle of the Fold’s remarkable flexible screen, like a pleat on polyester pants.
I’m sure it will dominate discussion about this muchanticipated gadget, arriving Friday. But after spending a few hours with the Fold, I made peace with the crease. You forget it’s there, like the notch on an iPhone X.
There’s more to iron out than the screen before the Fold is a phone for most of us. Its weight: threequarters of a can of soup. Its functions: far better tablet than phone. And its astronomical price: at $1,980, only for first adopters and the sorts of status seekers who might also buy a phone studded with Swarovski crystals.
Even if you’d never dream of spending so much on a phone, the Fold is worth your attention as a potential new branch on the evolutionary tree of the mostimportant gadget in our lives. Our desire to do more, more, more with our phones — working, gaming, watching TV — has outgrown our hands and pockets. To keep giving us more screen, Samsung had to figure out how to break beyond the rectangular slab and into a new world of origami shapes. Not even Marie Kondo generated this much buzz over folding technique.
We just haven’t had any details about how, exactly, it feels to use a device that’s both a 4.6inch phone and a 7.3inch tablet. Until now.
Earlier this month, Samsung executives visited my office and unlocked a briefcase containing a prerelease Fold. For a few hours, they let me poke, prod, fold and unfold the device ahead of its public debut. Afterward, I compared notes with one of my favorite tech industry analysts, Carolina Milanesi of Creative Strategies, who also got a chance to peek inside Samsung’s secret briefcase.
We were both impressed with the engineering. The Fold feels more solid and responsive than you’d expect from a firstgeneration device. It does things we’ve not seen before, such as make a hinge disappear inside a screen. But we had different views on a few of the Fold’s faults.
How does it work?
Think of the Fold as a taco. Now lay the folded tortilla on its side. That’s the front, or the “phone” part. It’s a smidgen taller (6.3 inches) than a “plus”size iPhone or Galaxy but only threequarters as wide. The Fold’s front screen fills only a fraction of that space, leaving unused space on the top and bottom.
It’s enough screen to make calls and look at very skinny versions of apps, but I can’t picture using it as much more than a lock and notifications screen. Why didn’t Samsung fill up the whole front with a screen? Then the screen would be even more skinny. So why didn’t they make the front wider? Then it would be harder to grip — one advantage it has as a phone over today’s obese iPhones and Samsung Galaxies.
Now open up your taco to expose the yummy bits. On the Fold, that’s where the “tablet” part is on a separate interior screen that’s a little smaller than an iPad Mini. It’s also the most functional part of the Fold, and
the screen I kept returning to do almost everything. But typing on such a wide screen isn’t really possible with one hand.
Can it fit in your pocket?
The Fold is about as thick as a stack of two smartphones, or twothirds of an inch. I ran around stuffing it in a variety of pants, jackets and even tunics — and it wasn’t as bulky as I had worried. You just might want to avoid putting it in skinny jeans. My bigger concern is the weight: At nearly 9.3 ounces, it’s approaching the weight of a can of Campbell’s soup (12.3 ounces).
How bad is that crease?
The crease is there and a little surprising, at first. But it doesn’t get in the way of reading a story or watching a video, and mostly disappears when the screen is lit up.
How does it feel to fold?
You can close it with one hand, and there’s a satisfactory thunk. Opening is more of a challenge. The phone’s hinge is stiff, so it’s a two-handed job and also not great for people standing on trains.
How do the cameras work?
There are six total: one for selfies on the front, three on the back for zoom, regular and wide shots, and two cut out from the screen on the inside for even more selfies. What I liked: In tablet mode, the back cameras are in the right spot for taking regular photos and give you that big lovely screen as a viewfinder. The shutter icon smartly moves to exactly where your finger needs it.
What about battery life?
We don’t yet really know. Samsung built two batteries into the Fold. Samsung claims it should keep the phone going “all day,” but it might depend on whether you use the Fold primarily as a phone or a tablet.
Do we need it?
To me, the Fold’s usefulness as a one-handed phone seemed to take a back seat to its capabilities as a two-handed tablet. The question is: How many people really need an Android tablet with them at all times?
Samsung was right years ago about the trend toward larger-screen phones, which not that long ago we used to jokingly call “phablets.” If it catches on, the Fold could be the beginning of an era where big phones really are just tablets.