I’ve been using the Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 7 for the past week, and I think I can finally say it: I get folding phones. The Z Fold 7 so slim and so nice to use, that I’m looking at the whole category in a whole new light. It’s great timing, because it looks like phones with two sets of hinges might be on the way. Huawei did it first, of course, but Samsung seems serious about launching its trifold in the near future, and Chinese brand Tecno just teased an enticing-looking concept. And you know what? Bring them on.
Don’t get me wrong, I love a small phone. I plan to keep my iPhone 13 Mini until it becomes a security hazard. But big phones have clearly won the battle, and if I have to carry a giant phone around then I think it should do more for me. It should have more screens, more ways to prop itself up. I should be able to run two apps at once. Maybe three! My phone should literally bend to my will. But I also don’t want it to be bigger than a regular big phone. A tall order, I know, but then I tried the Z Fold 7. Finally, a foldable that feels so much like using a regular phone that it makes the inner screen feels like it’s all upside.
If you asked me a few weeks ago what I thought about trifold phones I might have told you that it seems like a gimmick. Who needs all that inner screen? What do you even do with it? I get those questions about the single-hinge Z Fold 7. But here’s the thing: you figure it out. We’re so used to doing things on small screens that I think it’s hard to imagine what to do with a bigger screen until it’s in your hands. Here’s an incomplete list of things that I’ve used a folding phone’s inner screen for in the past week:
- Playing Sudoku while I keep an eye on my Uber driver’s arrival
- Refering to an instructional video while putting together an e-bike in my garage
- Publishing quick posts to this website when Wi-Fi at Samsung’s Unpacked event utterly crapped out
- Playing Diablo Immortal, which I discovered I actually enjoy on a bigger screen
Some of these things are basically impossible on a regular slab-style phone. I watched my colleague Victoria Song try to use WordPress on an iPhone and it did not go well. But some things are just nicer on a big screen, and when something is nicer you might actually do that thing more. I’ve seen more than one Uber driver with a folding phone mounted as a kind of second display on their dashboard. You can do that with a regular phone, but the extra real estate on the inner screen makes a real difference.
You’ve been able to do all of this with a folding phone for years now, but I can’t emphasize this enough: doing these things on a phone that feels about the same size as a regular phone when it’s folded is a huge deal. I could carry my laptop around all day if I wanted constant access to a bigger screen, but for obvious reasons I don’t do that. This is what has converted me to a folding phone believer.
So bring on more hinges, more screen, more reasons to not get up and find my laptop when I need to do a “big screen” activity. The trifolds are coming. I’m ready to embrace them.
