The Return of the foldables

Google entry into the foldable phone just happened, and with a bang. From Ars Technica, RIP to my Pixel Fold: Dead after four days:

A flame that burns twice as bright burns half as long. That was my brief experience with the Pixel Fold, which was a wonderful little device until the display died, along with my hopes and dreams. I barely used it, but it was beautiful. […]

The flexible OLED screen died after four days.

At USD$1800 it looks like the expectation should be higher than “lasting 4 days”.

The Verge reviews it, Google Pixel Fold review: closing the gap:

But it’s also fair to ask for more from this device, especially at $1,800, because right now, it doesn’t quite deliver.

In short, lukewarm reception, even though it manage to do better than Samsung on the hardware side:

Google managed to make a folding phone that closes flat like a book with no visible gap between the halves — an impressive accomplishment that Samsung hasn’t figured out just yet

And five days in:

I have other bad news. After just a few days of using the Fold as my daily driver, I discovered a tiny hairline scratch on the factory-installed inner screen protector.

As a late comer:

The Pixel Fold is far from disastrous, which you couldn’t say about Samsung or Motorola’s first foldable attempts. But those companies are several generations in now and have ironed out a lot of the kinks. Google seems to have learned from some of those early failures, too, but the Pixel Fold feels like it’s still at least one generation away from realizing its potential.

Nothing of this is convincing to spend USD$1800 on a phone. And people say the high end iPhones are expensive… even more when you know how long Google update the OS on these phones.