Ooh, look at my shiny, new uPhone 24. It’s so thin, you guys! (proceeds to put it into a bulky-ass case)
“why don’t we make it fold in half? It won’t actually do anything useful or resolve any issues with the current phones, but rich people will trip over themselves to buy it!”
whoa, slow down there! I love my folding phone, lol. I can do a lot of things I couldn’t do otherwise on a non-folding phone (i.e two apps at once for things like a calculator and budgeting app, notes and messaging app, I can go on and on lol)
I am aware I can do this on a normal phone, but the additional real estate on the screen is something that will factor into my next purchase when it’s time to get a new phone
I choose to see that as (potentially) “glass half full”.
If that gimmick breaks people’s perception of “thin = premium” or whatever logic, then maybe there’s a chance people will accept a few extra mm on their devices and flip-out keyboards could make a comeback. All the ones I can find now are specialty phones and have their own drawbacks.
I have heard that we have Steve Jobs to blame for that. They pressured screen manufacturers to make thinner and thinner screens because they marketed thinness as quality and since making a machine that makes screens is a huge investment the rest of the market was stuck with those thin screens as well.
We could easily have phone screens that are 3mm thicker that you can drop all day without it ever cracking. But no. Marketing ruined everything again.
My Pixel 7 was too thin to be properly usable until I put it in a bulky case. There was no way to hold it securely without interfering with the screen. Between that and the slippery fingerprint resistant coating I kept dropping it when trying to use it. I had to keep it home until the $15 dollar case from Amazon arrived and fixed the problem.
My pixel 6 was so big and so thin that it twisted easily. It’s super scary to twist it back!
That is basically my experience exactly. My older, bulkier phones still went into cases, but they were also usable and non-slippery when used without. My current phone is in a bulky case (out of necessity) and is chonkier than my older phones that didn’t strictly need the case. Like, I just don’t understand the obsession with thinness being so prioritized.
I remember I bought a Moto X back in like 2014 and spent the extra money to get a bamboo back, was shopping for a case and was like “why did I spend money on a wood finish just to cover it with a case?”
I haven’t used a phone case since 2014. To be fair, I did eventually replace my moto x because I dropped it and broke the front glass, but I haven’t had a cracked screen since.
