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Comment by danwee | Hacker News Reader

> Folding phones are a neat idea, and as a technical achievement, this is impressive. But in terms of price and practicality? I don't really see the appeal or value.

I thought that was the consensus... It surprises me that Google is investing money on such a device. Weird.

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Folding phones have some good use cases like video/photo/music editing, desktop publishing, word processing, and probably some other things I can't think of. However, those are all great things to do on a tablet or laptop. The foldable phones seem to be the next evolution of the phablet design but those didn't exactly sell well. Although the reason those didn't sell well was because of how big they are, a foldable gives you the package of a phone but the screen size larger than a phablet. Do you need to do all of these editing/publishing tasks on the go and don't want to carry any more than a portable keyboard? A foldable might be for you. Google just doesn't want to miss out on the potential market. Will they continue to sell? Honestly who knows. Carrying around such an expensive device like you would your phone seems risky but I'm probably not the market for these devices. Google is just looking to make sure that Samsung doesn't corner the market even if its just a fad.

With Apple bringing Final Cut and Logic to the iPad, they can cut further into the "creative on-the-go" market without having to bother creating a foldable and just leverage their existing tech.

The price is not going to be that high in 5 years, and when the price becomes comparable with the latest iPhone that's going to have the potential to flip a totally different market segment to Android than would've previously considered it.

There are also multiple ways to use the folding screen tech, they can make phone with normal size unfolded screen and small folded form factor instead. Women's pocket sizes alone can sell a lot of those, and there's definitely a nostalgia market for e.g. the razr form factor too.

> Google is investing money

Unlike other prudent decisions from Google in the last decade?

Consensus on what? That having a phone that can switch into a tablet whenever you want it to, no more having multiple devices for the same thing and convenience is what people want?

That’s a consensus, true.

I use one (fold 4) its actually a game changer, and i could see me not going back.

I think google has correctly called the direction of travel here

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