There is so much smartphone news currently especially as the Mobile World Congress was on over the weekend. New product announcements from Samsung, LG, Oppo to name a few.

The majority of announcements are around your standard smartphone, including improved cameras (Oppo has a 10x optical zoom that i would like to try out), bezel-less phones (some with a hole, some with sliders, plus the notch lives on) and the first few 5G handsets.

One technology though that’s been announced is something that raises the question of ‘do I need a foldable phone?’. Both Samsung & Huawei have previewed their foldable phones over the last weekend, and Engadget compares these two with an already announced phone.

The concept of a foldable phone is quite interesting. In one layout it’s like a standard phone, but then once you unfold it, the phone turns into a tablet. This makes the phone into more of a multifunction device than what we’ve had previously. In fact it’s a better concept than when the phablet era of phones existed (carrying a tablet sized phone is hard), although it appears the phones are still bigger than what most people use.

When the foldable phones come out later this year, I do wonder what areas they are most useful in though. As a consumer I still prefer a seperate tablet to my phone, but others may prefer an all in one convertible device. I also see it’s useful for some industries eg. construction, IT support, and even the broadcast industry.

As these phones will be first generation devices, I do wonder what issues will come out from being a brand new technology. I hope that the screens are resilient enough for consistent use, as well no odd light reflections (from other external sources like lights) appear on the screen when it’s unfolded.

It will be interesting though to see how this foldable screen technology progresses & what potential future device designs come out. Other manufacturers are slated to announce their phones soon.

I do also wonder, once the technology improves, what the prices drop down to as currently a foldable phone is quite expensive compared to a standard midrange phone.

But for now, I wonder how many people actually will buy a foldable phone. Would you find a foldable phone useful?

This post was originally titled as “Do I need a foldable phone“