Stop this baseless talk. I would not even consider fold-able iPhone for next few years if the price is what it is. Has to come down under $1500.
I doubt Apple would even consider a foldable iPhone until a number of technical hurdles overcome. The current foldables just launched stumble directly into those hurdles.
For Apple, it needs to fold flat. It needs to be relatively thin. And there cannot be a whiff of a crease.
The only flex i need in a phone is so it will curve to my left cheek and then back to flat when it leaves my back pocket. I can’t see this as anything but a solution searching for a problem.
I don't see Apple jumping on this bandwagon until it is popularized and settled upon the thing won't break after a year of use, and sure they can infer this by early 2020, but I doubt Apple is in any rush to push such a device.
Better make that at least 3 years of use or the class action lawsuits will be huge, really huge. Even then there will be a certain number of people who will go out of their way to break the device and hope to get a ginormous settlement from Apple as well as their 15 nanoseconds of fame.
I wonder if we will see the same sort of things happening to Samsung and other early birds in this market?
Apple has been testing foldable phone prototypes for years - patents are proof of that. The challenge: it needs to be durable, and usable - it needs to last without problems and the OS and apps need to be modified to scale smoothly as it transitions from close to open for an excellent user experience. Apple will either build or buy the screen components - as far as we know Apple has no means of fabricating their own display inhouse, so Samsung is possibly the only supplier currently that can meet Apple’s spec & quality requirements. I think Samsung’s announcement of their ‘public prototype’ is to make it clear they are ahead in display technologies (no surprise to those that read about tech, but news to the average person). Whether this new model is polished enough to be viable in the market remains to be seen. But Samsung will learn from it. It will have problems. I don’t think Apple is willing to risk putting something on the market this early that is both unproven physically and from a customer interest perspective. Two generations from now (2 years), after the early adopters help provide valuable feedback, we will start to see more polished products that people want to buy - that is when Apple will introduce a product, likely better than the competition.
I think a far more usable form of this bendable screen technology is in devices that would benefit more from the extra screen real estate, such as watches/watch bands and other wearables. It will be interesting to see how Samsung manages production and warranty issues with a screen that bends in half (remember, people don't treat their phones with kid gloves) and I think Apple's best bet is to sit back and watch Samsung fail at this first.
AI should hold a high-school type essay contest titled: "We hate foldable phones because __________". Or, possibly: "Foldable phones will never succeed because ____________"
Last week Samsung introduced a future-thinking folding phone. Future-thinking in that nobody at present can think of a single reason why we’d want a phone that when folded has a small narrow display and is nearly two and a half times thicker than an iPhone. Future-thinking in that someone, someday, might think of a reason we want a small square tablet with a screen that when touched reminds us of a giant 1980’s membrane switch.
I know, I know, my Apple wool is preventing me from seeing the brilliance of Samsung’s move. All I’m able to perceive here is an attempt to be first. On that score Samsung has won yet another round, another pyrrhic victory for their side of the ledger. And yes, Apple may follow, but not down the same trail Samsung is blazing. For Apple to offer a foldable phone, there still exists some real challenges:
Appropriate hardware technology would have to be available.
First, the display would need to be covered with a non-malleable and scratch-resistant surface; there’s little chance Apple would return to a malleable and markable plastic display cover. The challenge is that the necessary display properties are, of course, incompatible with folding and are likely to remain so.
Next, the phone when folded will need to be as ready to hand, and pocket, as current iPhones, to which any foldable iPhone, in folded configuration, will be ruthlessly compared. The rumor that Apple may bolster battery capacity in the 2019 models could result in thicker iPhones, which would help in a comparison of a future foldable model. Apple would be settting the stage for a thicker handset with a meaningful enhancement to justify it. But it would still be a significant challenge to then add a second screen layer and not significantly increase the thickness. Perhaps a flattened battery on one side of the fold and all the electronics and cameras on the other fold. Not sure if Samsung did that, or if it’s even viable.
Next there’s the reliability aspect. iPhones, and high-end Android phones, are all very solidly constructed these days, with few or no moving parts. But that doesn’t imply even today’s phones are free of physical wear and tear or immune to extreme conditions. Extreme cold or heat will be significant issues to account for in selecting materials and designing folding phones to yield a similar lifespan compared to their non-folding counterparts. For iPhones that implies a five- or six-year lifespan. Not to mention tensile stresses of the folding process itself.
The only viable solution my limited brain can conceive is two separate displays, each pressed up hard against a lip on a hinge to prevent dust or cookie crumbs intruding. As the phone unfolds, at the last part of the arc, that lip recedes, allowing the two screen edges to come together perfectly, leaving not a single pixel width gap between. How incredibly precise would such a mechanism need to be... boggles the mind. But if it worked, every time, for five or six years, it would allow two glass-covered displays to perfectly come together as one, without a visible seam.
Finally, Apple would need to do one more thing that Samsung has not yet accomplished. Apple would need to determine the reason such a needlessly complex handset should exist. That’s where I take my bet off the table. I’m betting Apple goes a different direction.
OK Samsung invented or produced the flexible OLED and they are looking for a problem to sell their solution. A phone is the wrong problem to that solution: where will the folding display go, inside or outside? If it goes outside like Huawei's then there is a durability problem, scratches, drops etc. If it goes inside like Samsung's then there is a usability problem, one cannot use it without opening first.
The conceptual Knowledge Navigator had the display "inside" but that was a computer just like all laptops which have their "folding" displays "inside". So that folding display can only be useful on a laptop or a tablet, a device that has to be used in "open" mode.
1) Apple has had these foldable displays in their R&D labs for years and Samsung is not the only company to make them.
2) The major reason for not putting a foldable device on the market (besides the supply constraint for the huge Apple product volume) is that the screens are plastic and scratch very, very easily, like by harder plastics! There is no technical solution to this and I do not know of a theoretical one. Bendable materials are soft and soft materials scratch. Apple would never release a product with such a serious flaw because the backlash would be huge. Who would expect a $2000 device from Apple to have a display that scratches very easily? They have enough complains with the jet black casing of the iPhone 7. Samsung are calculating that it is worth releasing a highly compromised product, just to be first! The shipping devices are likely to need screen protectors that will either need to be replaced frequently or not cover the fold crease.
3) The form favor is intersting but let’s face it these so-called foldable “phones” are really tablets that fold in half and are meant to be used primarily in the tablet mode. If it was marketed as a “tablet” no one would be very interested because the tablet market is much less significant than the phone market. Android is terrible on tablets to the point that Google itself abandoned making Android tablets for years and is now pursuing Chrome OS as its tablet strategy.
Instead of a folding device, simply have a larger “virtual screen” that’s double the width of a standard phone screen. If you’re running two Apps the other App is “hidden” until you swipe left or right to switch “screens”. People don’t really need to show two Apps at the same time on a phone, but being able to quickly switch would be useful. You could also drag & drop from one App to the other and the screen would simply shift over to the other App.
Lots of developers already do something similar. You swipe from the left or right to bring in a “panel” with different options/content when you need while the primary content is what you see on the main screen.
UI changes are what Apple will do to improve productivity on an iPhone, not useless folding devices.
Apple needs at least 200-250 million units of these screens a year if they were to buy these. At the bare minimum even the iPhone X in its lifespan sold 60 Million.
LOL. are you just being completely sarcastic and silly?
foldable phone remind me the old day IBM punch card double the size in order to increase input (dated myself). Sir Ive, please get something better if ever foldable were used. Current format of sammy phone look like a book - but book you need hold by 2 hands, without input (how painful to holding it and writing on it)... foldable book like phone, unless is feather light, it odd try to interface it unless you put it down flat on surface (bend your head down to have stiff neck in the process). Besides the reliability issue back in my mind. I'll wait to see the field feedback.... but I don't see a similar handset come from Ive pocket ;-). I need Ive pull out something like IBM mainframe magnetic tape input instead of double sized punch card. IMHO. (Tim promise mind blowing stuff, may be someone can pick pocket of Sir Jony Ive?)
samsung display sent it also to huawei and oppo. Not only to Apple .. and dont forget that Apple is been the first to patent a foldable phone (start in 2011).
Return to sender—unopened. Not out of the realm of possibility for Samsung to claim patent infringement when Apple comes out with their own foldable phone. Although I don’t see a compelling reason why they would.
Apple is the first to patent a foldable phone (start in 2011). Real data. And samsung sent the display also to oppo and huawei and others..
Comments
Or, possibly: "Foldable phones will never succeed because ____________"
The most innovative answer wins...
Last week Samsung introduced a future-thinking folding phone. Future-thinking in that nobody at present can think of a single reason why we’d want a phone that when folded has a small narrow display and is nearly two and a half times thicker than an iPhone. Future-thinking in that someone, someday, might think of a reason we want a small square tablet with a screen that when touched reminds us of a giant 1980’s membrane switch.
I know, I know, my Apple wool is preventing me from seeing the brilliance of Samsung’s move. All I’m able to perceive here is an attempt to be first. On that score Samsung has won yet another round, another pyrrhic victory for their side of the ledger. And yes, Apple may follow, but not down the same trail Samsung is blazing. For Apple to offer a foldable phone, there still exists some real challenges:
Appropriate hardware technology would have to be available.
First, the display would need to be covered with a non-malleable and scratch-resistant surface; there’s little chance Apple would return to a malleable and markable plastic display cover. The challenge is that the necessary display properties are, of course, incompatible with folding and are likely to remain so.
Next, the phone when folded will need to be as ready to hand, and pocket, as current iPhones, to which any foldable iPhone, in folded configuration, will be ruthlessly compared. The rumor that Apple may bolster battery capacity in the 2019 models could result in thicker iPhones, which would help in a comparison of a future foldable model. Apple would be settting the stage for a thicker handset with a meaningful enhancement to justify it. But it would still be a significant challenge to then add a second screen layer and not significantly increase the thickness. Perhaps a flattened battery on one side of the fold and all the electronics and cameras on the other fold. Not sure if Samsung did that, or if it’s even viable.
Next there’s the reliability aspect. iPhones, and high-end Android phones, are all very solidly constructed these days, with few or no moving parts. But that doesn’t imply even today’s phones are free of physical wear and tear or immune to extreme conditions. Extreme cold or heat will be significant issues to account for in selecting materials and designing folding phones to yield a similar lifespan compared to their non-folding counterparts. For iPhones that implies a five- or six-year lifespan. Not to mention tensile stresses of the folding process itself.
The only viable solution my limited brain can conceive is two separate displays, each pressed up hard against a lip on a hinge to prevent dust or cookie crumbs intruding. As the phone unfolds, at the last part of the arc, that lip recedes, allowing the two screen edges to come together perfectly, leaving not a single pixel width gap between. How incredibly precise would such a mechanism need to be... boggles the mind. But if it worked, every time, for five or six years, it would allow two glass-covered displays to perfectly come together as one, without a visible seam.
Finally, Apple would need to do one more thing that Samsung has not yet accomplished. Apple would need to determine the reason such a needlessly complex handset should exist. That’s where I take my bet off the table. I’m betting Apple goes a different direction.
The conceptual Knowledge Navigator had the display "inside" but that was a computer just like all laptops which have their "folding" displays "inside". So that folding display can only be useful on a laptop or a tablet, a device that has to be used in "open" mode.
2) The major reason for not putting a foldable device on the market (besides the supply constraint for the huge Apple product volume) is that the screens are plastic and scratch very, very easily, like by harder plastics! There is no technical solution to this and I do not know of a theoretical one. Bendable materials are soft and soft materials scratch. Apple would never release a product with such a serious flaw because the backlash would be huge. Who would expect a $2000 device from Apple to have a display that scratches very easily? They have enough complains with the jet black casing of the iPhone 7. Samsung are calculating that it is worth releasing a highly compromised product, just to be first! The shipping devices are likely to need screen protectors that will either need to be replaced frequently or not cover the fold crease.
3) The form favor is intersting but let’s face it these so-called foldable “phones” are really tablets that fold in half and are meant to be used primarily in the tablet mode. If it was marketed as a “tablet” no one would be very interested because the tablet market is much less significant than the phone market. Android is terrible on tablets to the point that Google itself abandoned making Android tablets for years and is now pursuing Chrome OS as its tablet strategy.
Instead of a folding device, simply have a larger “virtual screen” that’s double the width of a standard phone screen. If you’re running two Apps the other App is “hidden” until you swipe left or right to switch “screens”. People don’t really need to show two Apps at the same time on a phone, but being able to quickly switch would be useful. You could also drag & drop from one App to the other and the screen would simply shift over to the other App.
Lots of developers already do something similar. You swipe from the left or right to bring in a “panel” with different options/content when you need while the primary content is what you see on the main screen.
UI changes are what Apple will do to improve productivity on an iPhone, not useless folding devices.