> 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.

> Google is investing money

Unlike other prudent decisions from Google in the last decade?

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.

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.

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

I, on the other hand, can't see a single reason why somebody would want a tablet. We've had some, and they all ended up forgotten in a drawer. Either I'm in a place where I have whatever limited portability I can (so I use the phone) or I have a laptop with proper keyboard, applications and OS.

On the other hand, I always have my phone with me and I'd definitely benefit for a larger screen when reading emails, websites, documents, planning trips or whatever.

That said, I would never pay that kind of price, neither for a foldable, nor for an iPhone so I guess I'm out of that market niche anyway.

I have an iPad for note-taking at school and literally don't use it for anything else. In fact it's out of battery most of the time I pick it up. My Samsung fold is just so much more versatile and I hse it for media consumption most people without a foldable hse a tablet for.

I travel a lot for both business and personal (nomadding 7 months a year). I never turn on the TV while I’m at the hotel on business by myself. I watch from my iPad. It’s my only “personal” computer. When I occasional need to be “productive”, I use my wireless mouse and keyboard from my computer and pair them to my iPad.

Finally, it’s also part of my three monitor setup for my laptop. The other is a portable USB C powered monitor.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B095GG31KX

Sigh, Really? You're obviously not an artist then, many of my friends and I have already replaced our Wacom dedicated tablets with an iPad with the pro pencil.

Tablets are great in bed.

Who am I to judge.

Jokes aside, I never found the bed to be comfortable for any kind of content consumption, even reading books is annoying. And when I already sit upright I might as well have a keyboard too.

I am a lazy slob

I've gotten a lot of value out of my fold 4, especially in spontaneous situations where I don't have a tablet or my notebook at hand. Pull out my phone, snap a picture, then annotate. Or just pull it out and draw to try and get a concept across. Reading or watching videos, sharing an image, or whatever. And I Always have it with me, because I always have my phone with me. I don't carry around my laptop everywhere, and I've never purchased a tablet.

It's just remarkably convenient

These things always cost more at first, so I agree that it's "overpriced" for the value it brings. That said, I think the practicality is that it provides all of the value of a phone and a tablet in a single device that fits in your pocket. It's a fairly large leap in the ever-growing list of other devices that smartphones are replacing.

I also like to think that long-term maybe they will have the ability to fold out along more than one dimension and potentially be dramatically larger than this, but that's just dreaming at this point.

> And when it's out, it's more productive to have a separate tablet and phone, than just one device that's trying to do it all.

Not convinced. Having to move back and forth between two devices is a pain. Just like how a powerful laptop with a docking station is much nicer than a cheap laptop and a desktop, even if the former costs more.

> Having to move back and forth between two devices is a pain.

I do that a couple times a day. Almost everything that I do with these devices stays in sync through various accounts/cloud in the background. Admittedly I'm just doing this at home, but when I travel, I pretty much always bring my iPad (in addition to the iPhone and my Apple Watch which are on me as long as I'm dressed and awake). I don't have it set this way at the moment, but you can even have any app that you install automatically get added to the other device.

It's very different than a typical laptop/desktop situation since those are harder to sync (depending on what OS/apps/files/etc are involved). However if a lot of what you do is in the cloud, then maybe switching between laptop and desktop is more fluid.

> An iPhone 14 and iPad Pro are gonna' run you $1,600, and be more useful in most cases.

It’s 1600 for iPad Pro alone in Europe.

> I mean, sure, you're not going to fit an iPad in your pocket, but do you really need to?

Yes.

> And when it's out, it's more productive to have a separate tablet and phone, than just one device that's trying to do it all.

Majority of people care about convenience, not productivity.