KPH tech blog

As every tech journalist across the globe jumps on the hype wagon that we’ve finally got mainstream, flagship foldable phones – and while everyone else gulps at the whopping price tags – the only thing I noticed this week, was that Samsung’s new Galaxy Fold isn’t a foldable phone at all. And that Huawei’s Mate X, while more expensive, is a foldable phone.

Unfolding the Fold

Sitting just off-stage at a desk at Samsung Unpacked, one of the presenters demoed the Galaxy Fold in more detail in front of everyone’s preying eyes.

But before he even unfolded it, the first thing we saw, and the first thing I noticed, was how small the 4.6″ exterior screen was, surrounded top and bottom but two huge, thick and chunky bezels. The hinge to the left reminded me of the Nintendo 3DS (the original 3DS, not the newer 3DS XL).

But unlike the 3DS’s hinge which sits inside the device and between its two screens, the Galaxy Fold has its hinge on the outside (and thus behind the tablet screen).

The second thing I noticed, was the 3-across icon arrangement on the home screen and app drawer. The exterior screen looks like one hell of a narrow screen!

The Galaxy Fold’s exterior phone screen reminds me of the Edge panel on the Galaxy S9 Plus

If anything, the thin, narrow screen resembles the Edge panel on the Galaxy S9 Plus – an extra panel that you don’t really need, but which extends the usability of the device should you want that functionality.

Strangely, however, the 4.6″ exterior screen reminded me more of the Samsung F210 flip/slider feature phone, than a Samsung Galaxy smartphone (anyone remember the Girls Aloud marketing material for the F210?).

Who knows, may be that’s what Samsung were going for, with their design?

Then he unfolded the Fold to show the inside – the tablet screen. Straight away, everything looked normal. Not so narrow. Wide, but normal.

And this got me thinking…

Samsung may be releasing this as a foldable smartphone, but what if it’s actually not a foldable smartphone at all? What if it’s actually a foldable tablet, with an exterior phone screen?

Galaxy Fold demo – folded, and unfolded

As I was watching Tech Insider’s Unveil highlights video (above), I scrolled down through the comments and found another viewer (M M) who also had the same thought:

“It’s more of a foldable tablet that features a small front, as opposed to a foldable phone that features an interior tablet.“

Sentiments that were shared by Bloo95, who further explained:

“The phone experience looks negligible, and the tablet mode looks like the only way to functionally use the device.”

Functionality is the key theme here – while you can use the Galaxy Fold as a phone, it’s really more of a tablet that can be folded down into a phone.

Also, when you consider the price, the features, and all the technologies crammed into the Galaxy Fold, it reads more like the spec sheet for an iPad Pro, Surface Book or Galaxy Tab than a smartphone: 7.3″ Infinity Flex Display (Nexus 7, anyone?), 512GB internal storage and 12GB RAM (although lots of phones last year had similar specs – OnePlus 6T McLaren, Huawei Mate 20 Pro, etc.).

To be fair, Huawei’s spec sheet for the Mate X is very similar, but the wording of the presentation at Samsung Unpacked screamed foldable tablet, not a phone: “the interior screen is so large, that it powers a truly next generation experience, one never before seen on a smartphone.”

I realise the intended meaning is that it’s the first premium smartphone to offer the foldable experience, and the first phone in a long while to offer something greater than its rivals – something ‘next generation.’

But it’s also not that hard to read into this from a different perspective.

I’m not your Mate, X…

Like Huawei’s Mate X, the Galaxy Fold bridges the gap between smartphones and tablets. I know these are only the first-generation of foldable phones, however, Huawei’s implementation is better because of how it folds.

Unlike the Galaxy Fold – which has a foldable screen on the inside and the hinge and extra phone screen on the outside – the Mate X uses one screen on the outside, which folds with the hinge hidden behind it, with no extra screens and one half of the screen being used as the phone screen.

Huawei’s method also means the cameras appear alongside the phone screen as a tab on the outside, so they can be used as either the rear cameras (with one half of the screen) or double as the selfie cameras, which in the end means better quality photos and videos since rear cameras always seem to be better than selfie cameras.

Also, this design is not far away from recent phones such as the Vivo NEX Dual Display, which has 2 screens (one on each side) so that you can use the rear cameras to take a selfie without compromising photo quality.

Whereas, Samsung’s approach with the Galaxy Fold relies on the established method of front and rear cameras for the folded-up phone experience, but with an extra set of cameras at the top right corner of the inside tablet screen so that selfies can be taken whilst the device is unfolded.

Huawei’s design makes Samsung’s seem archaic. It might also be the reason why the Mate X can fold flat, but the Galaxy Fold cannot. Also, because the Mate X only uses one screen that folds into two, the bezels are smaller. In fact, when fully-folded, the Mate X’s phone screen resembles the almost bezel-less devices we’ve come to love these past 3 years, like the Pocophone F1, P20 Pro, iPhone X and Galaxy S9.

However, the Galaxy Fold’s exterior harks back to the bezels of the iPhone 4 – a great phone of its time, but one which now seems clunky, obselete and almost prehistoric.

As I said, these are only the first generation of foldable phones, so the technology is still in its infancy. We saw as much with the ZTE Axon M last year, which simply featured 2 screens with a visible hinge in the middle.

The Royole FlexPai, by comparison, was the first truly foldable phone, but also had one of the most frightening folding transitions – with the screen crudely flickering several times whilst being folded (giving the impression that you were breaking the screen, even though you weren’t).

However, after all the hype from Samsung over the past few years, with multiple delays to the release, I think I expected more. I recently heard one journalist say that a lot of Android phone OEMs may have the features first, and Apple may be late to the game, but Apple’s implementation will be better. True or not, I guess I expected this level of greatness from the Galaxy Fold.

In reality, it was Huawei who gave us a truly next-gen design, with Samsung merely opting for a safer option. Or, may be it’s also a marketing ploy: they’re starting off with a design that doesn’t feel that far-fetched from a phone or a tablet, that feels safe, so that their second iteration feels like a huge step forward.

Whatever the intention, Samsung’s current implementation of a foldable phone is very disappointing, and that despite its marketing, at the moment it’s more of a foldable tablet with cellular features, than a phone with an interior tablet.

From the Samsung demo, it seems like the sole purpose of the Galaxy Fold is to be unfolded, and to be used primarily as a tablet. Because, why wouldn’t you want to benefit from that extra screen real estate?

Wrapping (or should I say ‘folding’) things up…

And that brings me back to the small, narrow, exterior phone screen – if the intention is to have the device unfolded most of the time, you’ll only need the smaller screen for the essentials, and so that you can hold the phone to your ear without looking like an idiot. That means you won’t need it for the more intensive tasks, so it doesn’t need to be big.

If I’m being honest, it really does remind me of mobile phones of old – or, what we now call feature phones.

The Galaxy Fold’s 4.6″ phone screen resembles the small alarm clock screens that adorned phones like the SGH E330, the LG 440g, the Sharp GX10i, Motorola Pebl U6 or even the infamous Motorola Razr V3.

Their small exterior clock screens served a purpose, and some displayed more than the time, such as a photo – but it wasn’t the main screen: you had to flip the phone open to reveal the primary screen.

From what I’ve seen, the Galaxy Fold seems to follow this sort of design – but, obviously, with a usable touch screen on the exterior.

There’s no doubting its aim: the Galaxy Fold is a hybrid device. Half phone, half tablet. But Huawei’s Mate X does it better – why have 2 screens when you can have one that transforms between phone and tablet?

The Galaxy Fold certainly appears to be a tablet that can be folded up into your pocket, whereas the Mate X uses half of its tablet screen as the folded-up phone screen.

Really folding it up now…

I could go on and on with the comparisons (and to be honest, I already have), but I’ll end it with these two final notes: whereas the Galaxy Fold feels like a Nintendo 3DS redux, the Mate X feels like the future we were promised with the Royole Flexpai but which Royole didn’t quite deliver – a future of truly functional foldable phones that is arriving fast.

Also, unlike the Mate X, for me the Galaxy Fold is not a foldable phone that can be used as a tablet, but a foldable tablet that can be used as a phone.

– Chris JK.