Foldable smartphones have reached their fifth major generation, as heralded by Samsung’s Galaxy Z Flip 5 and Fold 5…
For me it’s definitely the durability concerns. I’ve valued my phone’s water and dust resistance since getting an ip67 phone years and years ago. My brother had a flip and a grain of sand in his pocket got under the display; when he closed the phone the display died. And they expect me to pay more for the privilege.
Marginal utility. If I was paying 2x or 3x for the 2x or 3x more useful functionality I might actually consider it. As I have before with better processors or cameras etc.
But more screen real estate and/or novel UIs for folded vs unfolded aren’t doing anything for me. Maybe if I was a billionaire, but honestly even then it might not be worth it depending on how many people actually develop for it. It could just end up being a constant frustrating experience of apps that do weird things because this use case was never considered.