Hello, I just came back from Barcelona, where everyone has apparently decided that
Huawei made a better foldable phone,
than Samsung did.
And of course, I'm here to tell you that:
that is false!
Huawei's design makes for a worse product,
but a better business decision.
And if I seem to be making no sense at all right now,
then hear me out.
🎵 -intro- 🎵
So the Galaxy Fold was announced a few days before MWC,
and it generated lots of hype, understandably.
This was the first real foldable phone we have seen
from a major manufacturer.
But, just a few days later, Huawei announced the Mate X
which sucked all of the excitement out of the air
for the Fold.
Every poll I have seen online shows, that geeks
are more excited about the Mate X,
then the Fold.
I made one on Twitter too, where
around a thousand of you voted with very clear results.
There's also an article, that I've linked in the description,
that lists 13 journalists (including those from The Verge and Engadget),
and 12 of them say the Mate X is cooler,
while one says it's too early to tell.
That's about as decisive as it gets,
which is not hard to understand.
The Mate X looks more impressive when opened, and even more so,
when closed, by avoiding that huge bezel the Galaxy Fold has.
And of course, I'm usually the first to point out
that ’the opinions of geeks’ do not usually, in any way
reflect the opinions of the rest of the world,
but I think in the case of foldable phones,
the entire audience of these devices are geeks.
So these polls and opinions,
they actually can be seen as a measure of success.
And geeks definitely seem to like the Mate X more,
so the PR victory goes to Huawei.
But here's the thing:
from everything that I can tell,
the Mate X is actually also the worse product.
Hear me out.
A product,
-in the sense that is an object that you can actually use-
should be functional, and should perform a task reliably
over its expected lifetime.
And there are currently two functional challenges that foldable screens have.
1.) Glass doesn't like default, so they are made of softer plastics,
which will presumably scratch really easily.
And 2.), the screen has to switch between
a stretched, and a compressed state.
And it appears that in the compressed state, the excess material
kind of bubbles up to create a sort of crease.
And the design of the Galaxy Fold, as far as I can tell,
mitigates both of these issues much more effectively.
The Mate X has its plastic screen on the outside and
has it exposed on both sides,
and even on the edge of the device, which
presumably means it will become scratched very easily,
even from normal, day-to-day use.
Cuz’, reminder: this is what exposed plastic screens and phones used to look like.
The Fold, instead,
keeps the plastic screen protected when stowed away.
And second, on the Mate X,
the wrinkling happens when in tablet mode,
while on the Galaxy Fold, it presumably happens
when it is folded up,
when you don't actually see or use it.
This is actually a picture of another phone from the TCL,
with a similar episode of setup, but you can
kind of see what I mean.
When the phone is open-up and in use,
the Galaxy Fold’s display is stretched.
From the prototypes that I have seen,
and the videos of Samsung has shown,
it appears that the crease is therefore significantly smaller,
and kind of goes into the device,
instead of bubbling up and out of the screen,
like it does on the Huawei.
This seems like a much more durable,
and less annoying approach.
And Huawei says that they'll try to make this crease smaller,
but I think that is just wishful thinking at this point,
because their brand-new product, which has barely been used,
already shows the crease and the bubbling,
I have a very hard time imagining that
a product that you would use over two years,
that you just fold and unfold all the time,
wouldn't get worse over time.
In other words, the Fold looks less visually attractive,
but its design means that I will probably not scratch as much,
and it probably won't bubble up as much either.
Oh, and it's like $600 cheaper, and will come to market sooner than the Mate X.
Sure, the small screen with the huge bezels looks silly,
but I think functionally,
the Samsung phone is more superior as a,
’day-to-day’ product.
And yet, I think Huawei won this round.
Because nobody should buy either of these phones as real, functional products.
They should be bought as collector’s items, or
party tricks that people show at dinner parties, that
I'm too poor to be invited to…
The ONLY purpose of both of these devices, is to
grab headlines, to build the brand,
and to show that one company has technological superiority over another.
And in this sense,
I think the Mate X did a much better job.
But you, if you hear from any tech journalist,
or influence,
or anyone who concludes from what we've just seen,
that one company is much better at
doing a foldable than the other,
then dismiss those claims.
We just don't know that yet, because
all we know is that these two companies try to achieve different things.
I think Huawei engineers went into this trying to
create the most impressive device possible,
and Samsung engineers tried to create an
an impressive device, that would also be
-at least somewhat-
sensible in day-to-day use.
I just wish they managed to make the
bezels around the small screen a little smaller.
Anyway, do you have a preference?
Let me know in the comments below, or
tweet it at me at @TechAltar,
and I don't have a sponsor for this video,
so all I can say is come follow me at Twitter.
I hang out there all the time, you can have a conversation with me,
it's a little easier there,
and i'll see you either there, or in the next video!
Oh, and thanks for the fantastic MrMobile,
who generously let me use his footage to demonstrate my point.
Subtiteled by.: Dominik