about folding phones right now.
So number one, sales of these things
are up every single year
despite them being overall a pretty tiny fraction
of overall smartphone sales.
And number two, it is still very much early adopters
and enthusiasts that are buying these things,
maybe with one exception, but that's just because
they're so expensive and they also clearly still need
some material-science breakthroughs
in order to feel like a regular phone.
But the most interesting thing of them all
that I really wanna talk about here
is how it so clearly feels like Samsung steers the ship
in this particular category.
So we got the very first real foldable,
what, around 2019, not that long ago?
Stuff like the Royole FlexPai.
It was a hilarious phone, but hey,
it was technically a folding phone
and we could clearly tell that the idea was pretty sick.
So the question became,
what if these things started to get really good
so that they no longer feel like a science fair project,
but that they get to the point where it's like
just a normal phone that happens to fold in half?
That would be sick. So let the R&D begin.
So now it's 3 1/2 years later
and we have a bunch of different folding phone options
out here now and what I've noticed
is they've basically coalesced into three form factors,
three different, distinct models or versions of this.
1, 2, 3.
So it's the fold, the flip, and the others.
So the fold.
This is something normal that opens up into something big.
That's the basic idea.
And so the standard among these is Samsung's Z Flip 4.
The competition is getting closer
and there's one notable one
that I'll talk about in a second,
but basically all of them
are starting to look like this one.
I've been using the newest Fold 4
on and off for a few weeks now.
It looks basically exactly the same as last year
with slightly more trim bezels.
It has an updated chip set, new cameras
and a more well-hidden, internal, selfie camera.
So the new chip set has done wonders for this phone.
Performance is consistently very smooth, and the battery,
while it is the same physical size as last year,
is getting 15 to 25% more battery life
because this Snapdragon 8+ Gen 1
has just been so rock solid and efficient
while also being more powerful.
And then the new cameras,
while they look almost exactly the same
as last year from the outside,
they do offer an improvement as well.
Nothing game changing.
I mean, they're flagship-quality cameras
as far as detail and color and freezing motion,
which is huge, but that's what it is.
The rest of the hardware evolution though
has basically come to a stop.
Like, we had a much smaller cover screen to start.
Now it is a full, corner-to-corner cover screen.
This one, this final version here
is three millimeters wider than last year.
And the main screen on the inside,
it stays at 7.6 inches diagonally,
but it changes slightly in aspect ratio
from 22 1/2 by 18, to 21.6 by 18
It's still a good looking OLED,
it has a slightly visible and feelable
crease through the middle.
And the main improvement
is that it's gotten stronger and more durable
over the years from being one of the most fragile components
on any phone ever,
to being able to actually support a special stylus
and not breaking immediately.
And at selfie camera that they hid
under this display in this fourth version,
it feels kind of like a gimmick
but it is also now much more impressive visually.
Like, it's much harder to see during everyday use
that there's a camera back there at all.
You're just looking at the content. It's almost invisible.
But it still takes some of the worst-quality selfies
I've ever seen from a modern-day phone.
Not even exaggeration at all.
You know, it's functional for video calls.
I can get behind its existence,
but you should really just be using the back camera
to take selfies on this phone.
The absolute best thing about this new Fold 4
and I'm not even joking, is the new dock at the bottom.
It's great.
It has massively improved how easy it is to multitask
to the point where I actually want to do it more
while using the phone.
It can be a little awkward sometimes
that it sits right above the gesture bar
but you get used to it pretty quickly.
And it is endlessly convenient
to just set up a bunch of custom apps,
ready to go whenever you want
plus some recent apps on the right.
Maybe the iPad should experiment
with a permanent dock like this.
Either way, this is also coming to older folds as well.
But guess what.
This still comes in at 1,799
so it's more expensive than most other phones
and it's still thicker than most other phones.
But there is competition. There are alternatives.
So the Oppo Find N which I did a video on
is basically a Z Fold but slightly smaller
with a more passport-like ratio.
So that makes the cover screen
feel more like a normal phone, a little bit more reachable,
but it also makes the inside screen a bit smaller.
There's also the HUAWEI Mate X2 which is the fold
but a wedge shape.
So you can see they do it a little differently
with the weight distribution
which definitely feels different in the hand.
It has its advantages.
It's also a little bit bigger
which means the outside screen is extraordinarily tall
but the inside screen is now up to eight inches diagonally.
And the vivo X Fold, which I don't have in front of me
but I've seen videos, feels like a fold
but with slightly less of a crease.
But then there's the new Xiaomi Mix Fold 2
and this one has been extremely impressive to me
and it actually has possibly real arguments for it
over Samsung's standard Z Fold 4.
This is the thinnest and prettiest fold
in the world right now yet it somehow packs
a larger 4500 milliampere battery inside
which is incredible
and it also takes a bit of a different approach
to the hinge where it's a little more fluid
and once you get past 90 degrees,
it really wants to snap open,
and once you get close, it wants to snap shut.
There's less stopping halfway and using it halfway folded
like Samsung, which hey, some people don't really do anyway.
So then there's the flip,
the flip being a normal size phone that folds down
into something smaller.
This is actually currently the most popular version
of a foldable phone.
And once again, pretty much all the flips
are converging on the Samsung Z Flip form factor.
This being the latest version
which is a very iterative update from the last one.
There are new cameras again
for the wide and the ultra wide, both 12 megapixels
with slightly bigger pixels on the main camera
which helps images get just a little bit more light.
It's moved to a matte finish on the outside
instead of glossy, and there are more quick controls
and functionality on the outside display.
So you can send quick pre-written responses to texts
and use more quick-settings toggles
or call three of your favorite contacts.
Again, just slightly better, it's iterative,
and I would guess something that you probably can
or will be able to get ported back to a Flip 3.
But the biggest improvement
has absolutely turned out to be the battery.
So not only did it move up
to the Snapdragon 8+ Gen 1, but the improvements
to the hinge also left room for a physically larger
3,700 milliamp-hour battery this year.
You can finally use this form factor all day
without sacrificing battery life.
And speaking of the hinge, it's also better than last year.
I think this is the best one they've ever made.
It's just really firm and confident,
and of course, doesn't take up as much space.
The thing about a small fold like this
is that you have to open the phone to really use it
and depending on what type of person you are,
that's either an upside or a downside.
Like for someone like me, I use my phone all the time.
You could call me a power user, right?
I unlock it all the time.
This tiny outside screen is convenient
but it's not enough to do a lot of the stuff
I wanna do all the time,
so I have to take it outta my pocket
and then open it up, which doesn't sound like much,
but if you own the phone and use it,
it slowly starts to wear on you.
But there are some people who are intentionally trying
to use their phone less, which in this case
is actually a huge win.
It creates this small barrier
between you grabbing your phone,
how many times do you just check your notifications
and then 10 seconds later,
you're just scrolling through something mindlessly?
You don't even know what happened.
This phone can kind of prevent that, but guess what?
There's other flips too
and they all kind of look like this one.
So you've heard of the Huawei P50 Pocket?
It's a flip, but with a small, circular, outer screen
instead of a big rectangle.
You can still buy the older Z Flip.
It's still a pretty popular phone
from a lot of carriers in the US.
Even TCL made this foldable that they never shipped
but that also looks exactly like Samsung Z Flip.
For a little while, the only other flipper
that had any real character that was unique
was the Motorola Razor.
And I reviewed the early versions.
The first one-two generations
really leaned into the nostalgia bit
and I liked them, they were cool,
but now this third version is out
and not only does it make this hilarious noise
every time you open it,
but it looks and it's starting to feel more and more
like a Z Flip than ever before.
I mean, it still has some character,
but it's a lot less than the original Razors.
Is this because they're not creative?
Is this because they're copying just the most popular one?
Or is it because they're all converging
on maybe the most technically advanced design?
Or maybe it's a combination of all this stuff or more.
I mean, clearly each manufacturer
is putting their own spin on this.
They have to, but yeah,
they're all chasing the Samsung version
when it comes to foldables and Samsung knows it
for the folds and the flips.
So then there's other.
Just the other foldable phone stuff.
This is where it gets the most interesting
because there is no Samsung here.
So I'm considering anything
not in the fold or the flip bucket here.
And the most interesting thing about these
is their future is way more questionable.
So you have stuff like this
which is the Huawei Mate XS, really interesting foldable
but it folds from the outside.
So I did a whole video on this concept.
I'll link it below the like button.
Basically, I think it looks sick
but there's just no way this version can be as durable
as a normal phone
until material science advances significantly.
And there's also been some other concepts.
TCL has famously shown a working prototype
of like, everything they can think of.
Like they've made trifolds and rollables
and all kinds of weird stuff.
Never actually sold any of it
but just more proof-of-concept stuff
that you can do wild, creative things
with a pocketable, flexible OLED display.
At the end of the day, though,
it's risky to put lots of research and development money
into something that's not proven yet
on the off chance that it might catch on.
But that's why I think we find Samsung
kind of at the forefront of it, steering the ship,
because that's what they do.
Remember when they just were kind of the first ones
to make a huge phone?
They called it a phablet and they had,
like, the edge of the screen rolling off to the side?
And then suddenly a few years later, every phone was huge.
Like they've tried so many weird things
that some of 'em are bound to stick.
And so the Samsung thing is to just try more stuff
and they make so much money with the rest of their business
that they can sort of afford to subsidize the R&D
of some wild ideas.
So in the future someday, you know,
maybe we'll see a foldable Pixel,
maybe we'll even see a foldable iPhone,
but for right now in 2022,
Samsung steers the ship for the foldables market
until probably the next big material-science update
where these things really start to shrink and improve again.
And I would bet money that Samsung
is the one currently spending the most money
on finding out what that advancement is.
But let me know what you think about foldables in general.