// 9TO5GOOGLE — MOBILE & WEB
Phones are getting fun (and weird) again
Hey, how’s it going? I hope you had a lovely weekend. I was off last week, relaxing by the water, trying to finish a harrowing Booker Prize-winning novel about Australian POWs during WWII, rekindling my love for Love & Basketball, and playing far too much Lumines Remastered on my Fold 8. I also caught up on the latest drama between OpenAI and Anthropic and briefly considered switching to Deezer just so I could whip the llama’s ass one more time.
As a reminder, Inbox is the tech newsletter you should be able to read in around 95 seconds. We cover the most important 9to5Google stories from the last couple of days along with a few highlights from around the web. We publish every Tuesday and Thursday, and if you like what you read, please subscribe.
It’s clear from the many, many positive reviews of the Galaxy Z Fold 8 that Samsung has a certified hit on its hands. 98% Audience Score good. There’s of course a bit of novelty bias built into the consensus right now, but like our own Ben Schoon says in his excellent review, “the Galaxy Z Fold 8 is a peek into the future of foldables.”
I think the first few generations of book-style foldables were designed more so with the “how” of building these devices in mind more than the “why” of how they were going to be used. This is a design that anyone can pick up and immediately see the utility in, regardless of what they’re doing.
I’ve been using it for the past few days, and it definitely changes how I approach the quotidian tasks I use my phone for. The squatter, wider front display encourages production over consumption; writing on the Fold 8 is roomy and luxurious. Opening it up reveals a 4:3 aspect ratio that’s great for consumption or side-by-side multitasking — reading a book on the Kindle’s two-pane layout is perfect — but the secret weapon is the 3:4 vertical orientation, which adds a spaciousness to browser scrolling and doomscrolling alike. Gaming, too, feels right at home in either open format.
Android still has a ways to go before every app works perfectly in landscape, but you can take for granted that if an app has a tablet mode, it’ll look great on the Fold 8, and if it doesn’t, a 90-degree turn will ensure a good experience.
The display is also outstanding — the anti-reflective coating and titanium hinge really make this feel like a step change over last year’s phone, particularly in how little the crease shows after repeated use — and battery life has been great so far.
But the shortcomings are real: the cameras are not good enough for the $1,900 price, and I’m not even talking about the lack of optical telephoto. The main camera sensor goes all the way back to the Galaxy S22, and that’s not a compliment. And I know this is a me-on-vacation problem, but I really would have liked to take the Fold 8 with me to the beach last week. Unfortunately, its IP48 rating and a couple of clumsy kids would have inevitably combined for a costly repair bill.
Still, phones are getting fun again. Samsung is bringing it on the hardware front; if the Pixel 11 leaks are anything to go on, Google appears to be cooking on the mobile AI front; and products like the Clicks Communicator, Sidephone, Light Flip, and MindOne are finding success by leaning into weird niches.
If component costs weren’t causing prices to rise uncontrollably, it would be a pretty great time to revive the evening phone for a new generation.