the trend toward larger and larger phone screens cannot be stopped and something
needs to be done I mean it's clear at this point that you all would keep a
tablet in your pocket if you could but you can't
well okay you can but there's a wrong
way to do that and there's a right way
I'm going to be talking about my experiences daily driving a folding
phone over the last three years because I have a lot to say about it including
some bad stuff though with that said
obviously I can't seem to put these things down so I think it's high time
that I sat down and gave you all the reasons that I think you just might want
to consider a foldable even if you consider it and ultimately
do not pull a trigger but you should pull the trigger on supporting our
sponsor SolidWorks 3D experience SolidWorks for makers delivers
professional grade design tools for your hobbies personal projects experimental
prototypes you can't let the government discover and more check them out at the
link below starting with number one it's a tablet
that fits in your pocket actually no that's very obvious so let's move on to
something less obvious if you've never used one of these I do this all the
freaking time ah
and it's useful for more than just the flashlight how about if you want to take
a timed picture for example now instead of trying to find some random thing to
lean your phone up against and then hope it doesn't tip the wrong way and come
crashing to the ground you can just turn the whole device into its own stand or
if that's not necessary for you and you don't mind holding your phone there's
reason number two haha taking selfies
where you can actually see the preview on the front screen while taking
advantage of the more robust rear camera no more trade-offs between image quality
and making sure that you've got your shot framed right I mean don't get me
wrong to keep these things as thin as possible they don't always have the best
cameras around compared to slap phones but they're solid as long as you just
make sure that you don't drop them in the process of taking your picture a
downside of foldables in general is that especially if you have smaller hands
they can be just a little bit unwieldy
with that said for folks with bigger hands Advantage number three comes in
clutch the extra width if you're the
kind of person who struggles to type on your phone without turning it sideways
you are going to love having all of this thumb space without losing your chat to
the keyboard and needing to scroll back up and reread the last few messages
before you finish typing your reply everything is just right there and
speaking of chatting number four is that folds are fantastic for messaging apps
you get more of a I don't know how to describe it other than to say a desktop
like experience where you can both see your current conversation and interact
with someone and also your contacts list or your other recent conversations wanna
search for a phone number to text someone without closing your current
chat no problem can't remember who sent you that funny meme that you want to
pass along search away all without going offline to whoever you're actively
chatting with whether it's teams let's what's up Discord I mean everything is
just plain a richer experience on a fold
which I guess kind of goes without saying given how much they cost off
contract that would be a downside but we'll get into that a little bit more
later you know what's free Doom scrolling social media apps like Reddit
Instagram or Twitter which oh
sorry I am apparently legally obligated to call it X now anywho with a foldable
you can number five double your doom
scrolling power and use split screen to get two candy bar size apps going at the
same time it's not perfect things can get a little
cramped but it is certainly better than not having the option and when it works
perfectly it is pretty dang sweet kind
of like our adorable and compact new stubby LTT screwdriver lttstore.com oh
another here's one you didn't think of is retro content man I get so much use
out of this whether you want to emulate older games or watch episodes of your
favorite classic TV shows without the visual gags freaking cut off it's
awesome I mean okay six by five isn't
quite four by three but it's at the point where those annoying black bars
aren't nearly as annoying and if you want to watch more modern 16x9 content
the larger screen still helps whether it fits perfectly or not bringing us to our
next Advantage the screen it is huge and
there are a ton of ways that this is useful this is actually more like three
or four different points I mean looking at Google Maps reading comics are manga
even just for text reading I kid you not guys I legitimately started reading more
once I switched to a fold oh oh and the
productivity it is great for spreadsheets and greater rur for remote
desktop access like
my whole monitor up it's awesome there
are certain activities where more screen is more better
full stop one that comes up very frequently for me is sharing pictures
and videos with my elderly relatives all I gotta do is crank the brightness whip
open my pocket tablet and they can actually see their grandkids dance
performance instead of like smiling and nodding then when I'm done I slip it
into my pocket good luck doing that with
a tablet okay yes yes yes but but I don't look
ridiculous right now speaking of tablets while foldables are
notorious for not being perfectly flat number eight is still valid there is
plenty of space to draw or take notes on them and being in your pocket means that
you are much more likely to have one on hand compared to your full setup if the
urge to Doodle strikes you and it's that versatility that I love so much about
these things like how about number nine I'm not often the kind of parent to hand
my kids a device to keep them quiet but for my daughters with a foldable they
can both draw on the same Canvas OR the same color by numbers sheet which
actually leads me to number 10 two-player games
again I'm not super down with phones during family time especially at the
table but the problem is not that I'm allergic to screens or something thank
goodness right I'm not allergic to screens it's the
asocial aspect so I don't mind if
they're playing a game with each other and I can't even count the number of
times that we've whipped out the aptly named two players app to kill some time
while we wait for food to arrive and it is so much better if you're gonna have
two hands on the screen to have it be a bigger one so we can sit and play
without being buried in our separate devices finally number 11 is more of a
bonus round kind of thing but it's funny even several Generations into these
things they are pretty unusual and they are an instant conversation starter we
just hosted our LTX Expo and surprise surprise lots of the people had them
there but even then the effect was clear people constantly wanted to talk to me
about it and I even saw other attendees just explaining their folding phones to
people they're just plain cool I mean it's one of the first times in years
that we've seen anything remotely exciting in phone design a couple of
decades ago I mean companies were trying everything to stand out and do something
different while also offering desirable features but most of the time then it
just seemed to make the device hard to use and now we've gone full swing the
other way where it's just boring with a foldable you really are getting the best
of both the phone and tablet worlds and if you can look like a cool baller doing
it congrats I guess I mean I've never
really managed to pull that off though of course I'm not done yet I've got a
few more downsides that came up in some of the instant conversations that I
started with my foldable at LTX how many of you out there with a candy bar
replace your screen protector every 6 to 12 months
no not many of you well with one of
these bad boys that may be necessary like me Elijah from our Logistics
Department recently had to remove his because the center eventually bubbled up
and cracked like mine his still worked
fine but I mean who spends this kind of money on a phone to have it look gross
and crusty and we've seen a bunch of reports from others who have experienced
the same thing actually had some people at LTX walk up to me and show them as
well on top of that after removing the screen protector on my own foldable I
was too lazy to replace it so I'm just running it bare eventually the screen
itself started to crack and since I just
can't go back to a regular candy bar at this point I am now that guy daily
driving a cracked screen unless I want to replace the whole thing I can't speak
for the newer generation panels but that's the experience that I had with
mine which is a couple of generations old another issue is much more obvious we
talked about how you can fit more screen in your pocket since these tend to be
shorter especially the Google pixel fold this this thing is like it's
tiny it's also significantly thicker
than your average smartphone these days and it's pretty heavy to boot finally
we've touched on this before but it Bears repeating the software can have
the odd issue one of the two-player games that I would like to play on my
folding device doesn't work it's this free checkers app and they are expensive
I personally love using volts but they
are not for everyone so I hope this video helps you make an informed
decision just like how I'm going to inform you about our sponsor SolidWorks
if you're a maker hobbyist or tinkerer put your tinklers together for the new
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today at the link below if you guys enjoyed this video maybe you'll also
enjoy this cringe video I did nine years ago on the Galaxy Mega remember the mega
it walked so that this thing could run
this is not how you talk on this on the phone