Yesterday’s presentation of the new Samsung Galaxy Z Flip4 and Z Fold4 was a statement of intent from this manufacturer. They are determined to prove that foldables solve a problem. The thing is, it’s not clear which one.

This is the huge debt pending of a format that is of course attractive but has not yet caught on. It’s a bad sign that the market still hasn’t embraced this idea after all these years, and maybe Samsung needs to revisit the recent history of our smartphones a bit: these three “revolutions” solved a problemAnd that’s exactly why they succeeded.

Folding cell phones and drops in the ocean

In February 2019, Samsung launched its first folding device, the Galaxy Fold, to great fanfare. I shouldn’t have, because soon scandal took place your wrong screen.

Samsung needed to come back and fix the problem, which caused delays in the final version of the revised device, which arrived months later. Our ambitious analysis based on five different experiences confirms that this Samsung revolution has some light, but also many shades.

Other manufacturers have wanted to do the same over the past three years and have produced folding devices as well, but Reception by users has been discreet.

folding sale they are a drop in the ocean: Samsung sold 10 million units in 2021, but that’s a respectable figure that contradicts the fact that 1,433 million mobile phones were sold worldwide that year, according to Gartner.

Anyone could argue that this is actually just beginning and it’s too early to draw any conclusions, but three years on mobile phones is a world and by now other “revolutions” had already taken hold they had conquered both the industry and the users.

they did because they fixed a problem. Even if it’s something we don’t know we have.

The difference: practical revolutions

And as we said, previous moves in the smartphone world have proven to be much more practical at their core: these changes they have proven useful and solving a specific problem that foldables haven’t done until now. Let’s see them:

1. big cell phones. It was Samsung who started probably the most important revolution in our smartphones since the format’s introduction. The launch of the Galaxy Note showed us a future where screens could expand beyond the 3.5 or 4 inches we’re used to (it would take Apple time to acknowledge this, but when it did, the jump in sales was spectacular). Now our mobiles have an average of 6.5 inch screens and they do so because people enjoy more and better video games and the video, text and image content on them, but it also allowed us to include larger batteries. While some of us miss the more compact mobiles, everything is better with larger mobiles.
2. More cameras, this is war. Cell phones are no longer cell phones, they are cameras that allow us to call and connect to the internet. The development of this section has been dizzying and we have moved from this “one sensor is enough” philosophy to mobile phones with two or more sensors. The trend today is to include three (main, wide-angle, tele—or macro—) and this (along with the magic of computational photography) has given more freedom and possibilities than ever to the photographic function, one of the greatest today. Arguments for spending more on a mobile phone.
3. outer frames. The home button and capacitive buttons have been with us for years, but we’ve seen gradual evolutions here. First to the Android on-screen buttons and some experiments with (almost) bezel-less and still displays, and then to the iPhone X, which hit the market because of both that philosophy and the controversial notch (which eventually disappeared). Android). Say goodbye to the start button and hello to gestures, a philosophy that has finally conquered us all and once again contributes to a better user experience with more knowledge in the same field.

We insist that any of these three “revolutions” has conquered the entire industry and users. They all solved a problem and they really made our cell phones more practical. They all proved this relatively quickly, and when we started seeing these improvements, the perception was that they really did make sense.

That’s exactly the problem with folding ones. Cell phones don’t solve any particular problems and aren’t really more practical (in a sense yes, but they do so by sacrificing weight and size/thickness) and we spent three years trying to convince ourselves It is the next big mobile revolution.

The thing is, at this point maybe it should have already.