Five Things I Wish I Knew Before Buying a Foldable Phone.
The iPhone Duo may be the most well-known foldable phone to date, but it’s far from the first. Personally, I’ve been eyeing Google’s Pixel 11 Pro Fold and recently finally decided to buy it. I thought I’d done enough research to understand how life would change with a foldable phone, but I still had a few things to learn. Here are some things I wish I’d learned after switching to foldable devices.
The aspect ratio is of great importance.
One of the most notable features of the iPhone Duo is the width of its screen, even when closed. And there’s a good reason for this: the larger screen when open has the exact same 1.41:1 aspect ratio as the smaller screen when closed. This affects the look and feel of every app you use—and whether you like Apple’s approach largely depends on personal preference.
Compare this to my Pixel 11 Pro Fold, which has a very tall 2.17:1 aspect ratio when closed, and a nearly square 1:04:1 when open. The outer screen has slightly narrower apps than my old phone, but the inner screen has plenty of room for reading books or articles.
Personally, I prefer a tall, thin display because the buttons are easier to reach with my thumb, and the wider display is better for reading. However, this approach can sometimes lead to odd app layouts. Not every app is designed for tablets, especially on Android, and changing the aspect ratio between the internal and external displays sometimes means redrawing or even completely restarting the app to load correctly.
The iPhone Duo has a more consistent aspect ratio and overall feel between the internal and external displays, but this comes at the expense of the phone’s very wide width. Neither approach is inherently better or worse, but it might be worth visiting your local store to handle the phone you’re interested in before buying.
The inner screen is more easily scratched.
For years, most smartphone screens have been made of increasingly durable and scratch-resistant glass. So durable that a screen protector might not even be necessary . While this may be true for the outer display of foldable phones, it’s completely unrelated to the inner, foldable display.
Screens may fold, but the durable, long-lasting glass that makes your phone so scratch-resistant cannot. Regardless of which foldable phone you use, the coating on the inner display will be more flexible and therefore softer. Apple uses a replaceable nano-texture polymer film, but the film on most foldable phones is not replaceable. This means that if it gets damaged or scratched, those marks will remain on your phone for the life of its product.
If you (like me) haven’t considered a screen protector in a while, it might be time to give it a try again, at least for the inside of the display. It’s also worth considering how rough you plan to handle your phone. Construction sites or factories might not be the best place for a foldable phone you plan to open frequently, but an office environment should be a little safer.
The situation may be strange.
As with screen protectors, cases can be more of a hassle. Most hard cases are made of two parts, and the part that covers the outer screen can be surprisingly minimal—barely larger than the frame, as in some of the cases I reviewed. A low-quality case can be fragile or more prone to peeling off, so it’s more important to invest in a quality one.
If you like to use your phone case as a wallet, it’s also important to be wary of cases that aren’t specifically designed for your phone model (or even some that are). Many wallet cases are designed to open to reveal the phone screen on one side and cards and ID on the other. But depending on how your foldable phone opens, reaching the inside of the screen can be awkward.
The hinge also creates additional gaps through which dust and debris can enter the phone. Despite the additional moving parts and gaps, most foldable phones still meet the IP68 dust and water resistance standard. This mainly covers anything that could get inside and damage the phone’s components. However, hair and dirt can still get trapped in any accessible areas, so avoid cases that create even more places for dust to accumulate.
Please check the settings of all your applications carefully.
By now, I’ve customized most of my apps to my liking, but when I first got my foldable phone, I had to rethink some settings I thought I’d never bother with again. One of the most striking examples is my e-reader apps: I used to use a single-column layout with medium-sized font, but it looked awkward on the internal screen. After switching to a two-column layout, it not only felt more natural but also very much like reading a book.
Likewise, some features of my calendar have become much more useful. Previously, I could never use anything other than the daily or scheduled view to understand anything, but on the internal screen, I can finally quickly see my week. But this required some tweaking—for example, displaying reminders, which fit seamlessly into my schedule but turned into a mess when I saw 14 different medication reminders at once in weekly view.
Most apps do a decent job of automatically adapting to different screen sizes, but I found a few exceptions that I had to figure out myself. For example, in Google Docs, the first time I used it, the text was displayed in a very small font by default. It took me a while to figure out that this was due to the “Print Layout” toggle in the document settings. For some reason, it’s enabled by default when opening a document on a large internal screen. Learning the intricacies of all apps can take some time, but it’s worth experimenting with when you have the opportunity.
Don’t forget about the external screen.
I know, it sounds obvious, right? The outer screen is the one you’ll use most often, so how could you forget about it? But when you unfold the inner screen, the outer screen still proves useful in some unexpected ways that I didn’t even think about until I dug into some of my apps.
One of the most charming examples is the “Made You Look” feature in the Pixel smartphone’s Camera app. When unfolded, you can take a photo with the rear camera and see a preview as usual, while the outer screen displays fun animations designed to attract the attention of a baby or toddler you’re trying to catch. Sure, it’s an old feature , but it’s very clever. Adults can also use the outer display to preview selfies while taking photos with the rear camera.
The outer screen is also simply better suited for some tasks. YouTube is one of the few apps that has a unique layout designed for a partially folded screen: videos play on the raised portion of the screen, with video controls at the bottom.
However, in my experience, watching YouTube videos was much more convenient simply propping up the outer screen, slightly rotating the phone like a stand. My Pixel even detected when YouTube was in full-screen mode on the outer display and was more forgiving when I rotated the phone without switching to the inner screen. The phone anticipated that I might want to prop up only the smaller screen, which I thought was a nice feature.