We’ve seen foldable phones for a while now, but 2022 could be the year they become popular.
We’ve seen foldable phones for a while now — after Samsung launched its original Galaxy Fold in 2019, a few companies have made various attempts to make moldable mobiles a serious part of their output. Samsung launched a couple of flexing smartphones since 2019, and Huawei and Motorola have both launched multiple; Xiaomi, Microsoft, Royole and recently Oppo can’t be forgotten about either. But despite the existence a good few foldable phones, they’re still not the ubiquitous gadget we thought they would be more than two years ago, and we haven’t even seen half the flexing mobiles we expected to — where’s the iPhone Flip? Where’s the Pixel Fold? What about the devices from Vivo, OnePlus, Realme or TCL that we expected? Well, for fear of repeating something we say every year: it might change soon. We really think 2022 could be the year when loads more foldable phones launch. Without a doubt, one of the biggest hurdles that put people off foldable phones in the early days of the design was the price. The original Galaxy Fold debuted for $1,980 / £1,900 / AU$2,900 and things stayed that bad for a while from various brands. In 2021 we saw the first ‘affordable’ foldable phone though — it may be a stretch to call the $999 / £949 / AU$1,499 Samsung Galaxy Z Flip 3 affordable since that’s still a lot of money, but it’s also a lot less than the original Fold. Why has the price reduced so much? Well the Z Flip 3 is smaller than the Fold, but the real reason is that the technology is older, and manufacturers have found ways to produce the parts for less. New tech is always pricey until it’s been made for a while, and for bending screens and hinges it’s no different.
