I never believed in foldables. Now I’m obsessed

Foldable phones have come a long way since they first hit the scene. In the early days, they were flashy, experimental gadgets that often didn’t last. At the PhoneArena office, our experience with the first couple generations of the Samsung Galaxy Z Fold and Huawei Mate X taught us that while they held a great promise, they weren’t quite ready to be daily-drivers yet.

However, five years after the Galaxy Fold 1, foldable tech seems to have finally matured to the point of being reliable enough to support our digital lifestyles.

Ready for prime-time

I’ve been using the shiny and super-cool OnePlus Open for about six months now. Initially, I was somewhat paranoid and obsessing over getting rid of every single speck of dust off its beautiful body. As time went by and it kept working flawlessly, I came to realize that, maybe, these things are no longer so fragile anymore. Sure, better to not sit on it while it’s open. Scratch that – better to never sit on it in any situation, ever. But given some more or less normal everyday care, I’m pretty much convinced that nothing bad is going to happen to it.
Now is the time to share a ridiculous dream (nightmare!) I had once or twice, where I open my OnePlus only to find out that the internal screen has gotten completely unglued and utterly destroyed. Yikes! Laugh all you want!

But you know what? Аt the end of the day, I guess this dream is just a testament to how fun and useful foldables have become.

Whether it comes to splitting up the screen between two different applications, or just using and switching between single, full-screen apps, the foldable has definitely made things easier and more efficient for me, because it allows me to see so much more content at once. This is true for pretty much any use case.

Everything's better on a foldable

You may think you’re perfectly fine with surfing the web on your regular phone, but that too is a whole lot more practical and immersive thanks to the large, foldable screen. Most websites render gorgeously on the OnePlus Open’s 7.8” display, with large, beautiful images and more text that fits on a single page – the experience simply has that “pro” feel to it.

Typing on a foldable, with their wide and lovely QWERTY keyboards, is also a way better experience than on a normal phone for a number of reasons: you press bigger, better spaced keys, which allows you to type faster, more comfortably and accurately. This makes stuff like chatting and working with documents all the more fun. It’s like having the landscape keyboard of a normal phone, but you also see a lot of content on top of it, whereas with a normal phone, you end up seeing just one or two lines of text if you switch to the landscape QWERTY.
Gaming is also twice as fun on a foldable screen. It doesn’t matter if you’re playing some quick and casual title like Subway Surfers, or if you have an hour for a more serious title like League of Legends: Wild Rift; doing so on a larger display is a welcome, game-enhancing change.

There’s no two words about it: the large, foldable screen makes pretty much every part of the smartphone experience so much better, it’s crazy! The only thing better than a foldable will be a tri-foldable phone, but we’re probably a year or so away from those going mainstream.

Don't pay full price

The only issue I see with foldables right now are their prohibitively high prices. Still, manufacturers tend to offer significant discounts on foldables these days, which typically push their prices back into “mainstream superpremium” territory, if there is such a thing. For example, while the OnePlus Open is typically being sold in the US at around $1,700, we often see superb discounts of around $400, which makes jumping on the foldable bandwagon much easier to fathom.

If you’re the type of person who enjoys squeezing out every last drop of productivity and entertainment from their phone, getting a foldable like the Galaxy Z Fold 6 or the OnePlus Open is kind of no brainer – just make sure to snag it at a juicy discount!