10 Reasons You Shouldn't Buy A Foldable Android Phone Right Now

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Up until only a few years ago, folding displays were the domain of vaporware. Touted out for tech demos at CES, they were always promised to the public as just a few years away from being a reality. Today, by contrast, it seems like everyone wants to be in the foldable game. While Samsung led the charge with its Galaxy Z line of smartphones, companies from Xiaomi to Motorola soon hopped on the trend, while companies like Lenovo worked to bring the new display technology to other product categories like laptops.

However, even in a market now filled with flips, folds, and Razrs, is foldable technology where it needs to be for mass adoption by the public? For the average smartphone buyer, is it really worth it to plunk down a stack of cash for the latest foldable phone?

Foldable devices are probably the future, but it remains difficult to recommend a foldable phone to all but the most adventurous consumers. Even then, they really only appeal to those with plenty of money to blow. Eventually, the technology will mature, but as it currently stands, issues of durability, the prevalence of midrange hardware specs, lackluster software, and a lack of real competition driving the market forward all stack up against foldable devices. Here are the reasons why you probably shouldn't buy a foldable Android phone just yet.

To make a display bend nearly in half, manufacturers must craft it out of extremely bendy materials such as plastic or ultra-thin glass. In either case, that means the displays are far more prone to damage than a traditional smartphone. Samsung ships its high-end foldables with a pre-installed screen protector that it strongly warns against removing. Still, plenty of users report that their inner displays have suffered damage, particularly around the crease in the middle, which forms the axis along which the device folds shut.

For this reason, major foldable manufacturers like Samsung and Google install a plastic protective layer over the ultra-thin glass of their interior displays. At least on Samsung's phones, these can now be removed (no word yet if that's the case for the Pixel Fold), avoiding any further disasters such as the broken screen epidemic that occurred during the release of the original Z Fold, but the fact that the phones still ship with plastic protection in the first place indicates just how delicate flexible displays still are.

While progress has been made since the first generation of foldables to make them slightly more durable, there's still no comparison between the durability of ultra-thin glass and that of the much thicker glass on a traditional smartphone.

With the massive price tag foldables command — the Galaxy Z Fold 4 and Pixel Fold both start at $1,799 — most people would expect them to come with the absolute best-in-class components. Yet, almost every foldable you can buy right now has mediocre cameras compared to cheaper phones with more traditional form factors.

The Galaxy S23 Ultra, for example, comes with a 200MP main camera. The more expensive Galaxy Z Fold 4, by comparison, makes do with a 50MP wide lens, and the new Pixel Fold sports a 48MP main lens compared to the 50MP shooter on the Pixel 7 Pro.

We described the cameras on the Z Fold 4 as "good enough," and yeah, that's about all the praise they deserve. The Pixel Fold may fare better, given Google's stellar track record with pulling magical photos from hardware that seems lackluster on paper, but it's still baffling to see such expensive devices getting worse cameras than their cheaper, non-folding siblings.

Yet again, foldables fall short on specs when it comes to processors. Since major manufacturers like Samsung and Google release their flagship foldables in the middle of the year, they end up saddled with processors that are already dated. Samsung tends to release its Galaxy Z lineup late each summer, which means last year's Z Fold 4 launched with a Snapdragon 8+ Gen 1 from Qualcomm. However, the S23 Ultra was released only six months later with the much more efficient Snapdragon 8 Gen 2.

With Google, the story is the same. The company launched its Tensor G2 chip with the Pixel 7, and that's the same chip we now have in the Pixel Fold. When the Pixel 8 launches, most likely this fall, it will almost certainly have a Tensor G3 on board.

It's not as though either foldable's processor is a slacker, but they're not the latest and greatest you'd expect from such premium devices. If you're planning to spend around $2,000 on a smartphone, you should rightfully expect it to be future-proof. Instead, you're paying for a novelty device that will show signs of aging much sooner than a regular flagship phone.

Despite the increasing number of foldables coming to market, they're still essentially beta products. If your screen breaks or the hinge fails, that's a massive headache for you, but it's data the manufacturer will use to improve things in the next generation. Until the foldable market has matured some more, all but the most dedicated tech enthusiasts should probably avoid them.

Many Android fans won't be happy to hear this, but the one thing that could actually force Android foldable manufacturers to step their game up and make a product worth putting in your pocket for two or more years would be a folding iPhone. Apple is an industry leader in making a new product category feel approachable to the average person. It was not the first company to make an MP3 player, nor did it invent the smartphone or tablet, but in all three instances, it was able to encourage the wide adoption of those products. Meanwhile, the reason Android phones are as good as they are today is because manufacturers had to compete against the iPhone.

However, Apple does not traditionally enter new markets until it feels like the technology exists to make the most consumer-friendly version of that product. The fact that it has held off on a foldable iPhone probably means that Tim Cook and Apple don't yet see a way to make such a product viable for the average person.

Meanwhile, Android manufacturers seem comfortable to continue iterating on the same two basic foldable form factors — flip and fold. Until one of those companies makes a massive leap forward, there's no reason to become an unpaid beta tester.

While other regions of the world enjoy a wide range of foldable phones from Chinese manufacturers, the United States, in an ever-escalating battle with China over economic dominance, has heavily restricted which products can be sold in the country. Walk into an electronics or carrier store in the U.S. and you won't find foldables from once-prominent companies like Huawei, Xiaomi, and Oppo.

These devices can be imported, of course, but that's a lot of work, a long wait. Further, once you get the phone in hand, you'll find its usefulness has been cut in half by a lack of Google Play Services.

That means, for all but the most hardcore tech enthusiasts in the United States, your options come down to two companies: Samsung and Google, the latter of which only introduced its first foldable this year. There's also Motorola, which has used the foldable craze to revive its hallowed Razr line of phones, but even it opted to release the Razr 2022 variant as a Chinese market exclusive, although its next model, the Razr 40, appears set for a U.S. release.

Ultimately, the foldable phone market is still in its infancy. Readers with deep memories may recall that the original iPhone was equally hamstrung, lacking many features that would later become standard on smartphones — including an app store. Buying a foldable right now is akin to getting that original iPhone in 2007. It's a decent party trick, but its revolutionary potential has yet to be realized.