Thoughts On The Samsung Galaxy Fold 4

type: BlogPost
title: Thoughts On: The Samsung Galaxy Fold 4
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coverImage:: photo-1665057538472-6b6afd649826

I am, unfortunately, a goober that likes gadgets. A gadget goober, if you will. I had to physically stop myself from buying an Analogue Pocket. I owned three arcade sticks for a period of time before giving one away. I mostly got a Stream Deck because I like pressing the buttons, and I'm subscribed to this youtube channel.

All of this to say, I like weird tech, even if it doesn't always work flawlessly. This is pretty much exactly where the Fold 4 sits for me. It is not a phone anyone must have, but I'm enjoying myself enough with it that I feel compelled to write about it.

This is important because I have not felt compelled to write about, or even think about, my phone in a very long time. The year-by-year iterative-nature of phones make them incredibly boring as far as technology goes, which is why I'm always surprised by how often tech sites delve deep into them. What changes, really? I don't care how many gigafarts and terashits the camera on an iPhone has. I only really care that it can take pictures.

This staleness in the tech-space has made it so that I only really upgrade my phone whenever the one I have breaks. However, after getting a new job, I decided to splurge on the Fold 4 after being pretty disappointed with my Pixel and its battery life, particularly compared to the iPhone I had before then.

The Fold 4 is a phone that folds and unfolds. This is significantly more impressive than it sounds, at least to me. I once mentioned in my post on the Oculus Rift that it was the most exciting games had felt for me since the Nintendo Wii. The Fold 4 is the equivalent – just replace "Nintendo Wii" with "Touchscreen Phone." Unfolding the Fold 4 feels magical. It is truly a device that feels like a phone one minute, and a tablet the next. I still feel a little bit of excitement popping it open, even months later. I have come to realize that my ADHD makes me get very excited about tactile interfaces, and the Fold 4 provides in this respect, right down to the satisfying pwap that comes from closing the phone back up.

So let's talk about it!

Size and Dimensions

I am not going to get into specific dimensions because I don't care to look them up and you can get all the nitty gritty details from like, the Verge or something. But unfolded, the Fold 4 feels like an iPad Mini, or maybe a Kindle if you laid it horizontal. It covers about 2/3rds of my Hobonichi Cousin, which is A5-sized. This is, in my opinion, the perfect size for a tablet that I can carry in my pocket. It isn't too large, nor is it so big that it feels unwieldy in my hands. I can hold it for an hour or two and feel completely relaxed. It never feels cumbersome to navigate, and I can even use it one-handed if I really need to (which isn't often).

So, yes! No complaints there!

Shifted Use

I am not a person that hangs out on my phone often. I am usually on my computer – too much, probably. This is in contrast to my sister, who is a big "phone on the couch" kind of person. Apparently she's the norm and I'm the exception, statistically. Buuut if you are a "phone on the couch" kind of person, then boy do I have the phone for you!

The Fold 4 has quite drastically shifted my relationship with my phone. What was once a rectangle for me to get sad at and listen to music through has now become a useful, productive tool and entertainment consumption device. I hated reading on my phone, but popping my Fold open to go through my RSS feed or catch up on chapters of Kaiju No. 8 has been an incredibly pleasant experience. The same goes for watching videos on Youtube. And reading books too! The Fold has replaced my need to pull out an iPad and eReader when I want to do things that don't necessarily require my computer. What I'm saying is, I'm being a guy with his phone on his phone now, haha.

This flexibility particularly showed itself when traveling. On a recent trip to New York, I left everything behind but my laptop and phone. The fact that I could play Dice Dungeon and read a book without ever having to switch up devices was honestly super cool, and helped keep me comfortable.