An interesting discussion by David Pierce at The Verge:
As much as I lust over a true phablet, they still are not coming to Apple and the Android alternatives are unappealing with no one but Samsung having a working pen anyway. But I could see a folding iPhone Pro Max would be a killer device. Even the Samsung Flip is bigger than the S23 when open.
What are your thoughts?
I do like the flip phones for their portability. However, I use my pen quite a bit for short notes and don’t think I can do without it. My preference would have been a standard sized Note version of the S23 Ultra. The Ultra is just so big!!
I would jump ship, even to Android, for a Z Fold with the stick pen in a silo!
The classic Motorola Razr was my favorite phone of all time so a similar iPhone would be very tempting. I don’t currently have any use for a pen in such a small device since I have a iPad mini and when I’m out and about and I have a thought to put down I usually just dictate into my watch.
I need to start doing that…but Siri tells me it can’t help me with notes on Apple watch…
Yeah, I use Drafts. It’s very simple, can only append or prepend existing notes or create a new one, and you either dictate or write one letter at a time. Free, no ads, no in-app purchases. There’s a Pro version but I haven’t seen the need, for me.
Edit: it syncs across iCloud to the Drafts app on iPhone and/or iPad where you can do all kinds of other things to the text, email it, send it to Dropbox, etc. I think that’s where the Pro version comes in—more iPhone/iPad options. I can’t think of anything they could squeeze onto the watch.
Yeah I don’t know. Maybe I am stagnating in my middle age, but I don’t really need anything other than a simple slab phone (in this case a 13 Pro Max).
No moving parts to break, no wimpy screen with a crease. But I also am mostly in an office with an iPad Pro 12.9" and PCs everywhere.
It’s the “Pro Max” that is steering me towards folding phones. My next purchase will be the 15 Pro Max for the better cameras (especially 5-6x telephoto). The Max series is a real pocket stretcher, and the form factor of the Oppo Find N2 is just so much more appealing…but I fear I am at least 2-3 years away from a folding iPhone…
yeah…no.
I think a lot of the interest in flip phones is more nostalgia driven than anything and the Razr was one of the true “breakthrough” designs. But that was in the days of mostly texts or the most basic notifications.
And anecdotally many of those that bought the first wave of the Samsung Z Flip went back to the S series phones within a year or so according to multiple of our sources including best buy.
The true “fold” design as the Samsung Fold series still holds promise IMHO if they can get the weight and thickness down significantly as well as improve the ergonomics of the front display.
And android itself is still an issue with many apps being at least somewhat poorly executed on the bigger internal display.
I do think that if any company could solve these issues, it’s Apple, but it’s telling that they both have yet to release one, and for that matter after a big rash of rumors last year when the Fold 4 came out, those rumors have receded quite a bit.
and BTW @dstrauss one of my sources that has a fairly good track record with Apple, eg. the revised iPad mini and the 10th gen iPad, says that the iPhone 15 WONT be getting any type of periscope type zoom and that Apple is placing their bets on liquid lens tech to substantially boost the telephoto zoom of the iPhone.
Well, I can scratch that one off my Christmas list…
PS - even though it is thick when closed, the Z Flip design would sure be nice to have in an iPhone Pro Max that would actually FIT in your pocket.