INSUBCONTINENT EXCLUSIVE:
As Samsung (re)unveiled its clamshell folding phone last week, I kept seeing the same question pop up amongst my social circles: why?
I was
wondering the same thing myself, to be honest
I&m not sure even Samsung knows; they&d win me over by the end, but only somewhat
The halfway-folded, laptop-style &Flex Mode& allows you to place the phone on a table for hands-free video calling
That pretty neat, I guess
But… is that it?
The best answer to &why?& I&ve come up with so far isn''t a very satisfying one: Because they can (maybe)
And because they sort of need to do something.
Let time-travel back to the early 2000s
Phones were weird, varied and no manufacturers really knew what was going to work
We had basic flip phones and Nokia indestructible bricks, but we also had phones that swiveled, slid and included chunky physical keyboards
that seemed absolutely crucial
The Sidekick! LG Chocolate! BlackBerry Pearl! Most were pretty bad by today standards, but it was at least easy to tell one model from the
next.
(Photo by Kim Kulish/Corbis via Getty Images)
Then came the iPhone in 2007; a rectangular glass slab defined less by physical buttons
and switches and more by the software that powered it
The device itself, a silhouette
There was hesitation to this formula, initially; the first Android phones shipped with swiveling keyboards, trackballs and various sliding
As iPhone sales grew, everyone else buttons, sliders and keyboards were boiled away as designers emulated the iPhone form factor
The best answer, it seemed, was a simple one.
Twelve years later, everything has become the same
Phones have become… boring
When everyone is trying to build a better rectangle, the battle becomes one of hardware specs
Which one has the fastest CPU? The best camera?
