Starting now, every smartphone should be a flip phone

The most instantly enticing thing about a flip phone, at least if you ask any gadget lover over the age of 30, is just the way it feels when flipped. The smartphone industry hasn’t quite reciprocated the way you feel the intimidation of closing your phone at the end of a phone call or opening it as soon as you bring it up to your face.

Ironically, the only real downside to the current crop of flip phones is that they can’t replicate that feeling. Because they’re bigger, thicker, and heavier than 2000s Waif Razrs and Nokias, the only way to open them with one hand is to slide your finger between the two halves and then pry-slash-wiggle the device. It opens. After a few minutes, you figure it out. But it never feels good.

That’s okay though. There are many other good reasons to get a flip phone because flip phones are better suited for what people really want from their smartphones in 2023. Slowly but surely thanks to devices like the Samsung Galaxy Z Flip 4 and Motorola Razr Plus. With the Oppo Find N2 Flip, we finally get to see just how cool the flippy future could be. But we need more.

Over time, I suspect we’ll see candy bar phones not as the final form of a phone but as a way in which to travel, determined more by the limits of glass manufacturing than actual user experience. Foldable phones — which transform from a normal-sized smartphone slab into something more like a tablet — will have their place. But flip phones should be the norm, and they should be the norm from now on.

For starters, a flip phone can be dramatically smaller than a slab phone. For example, the Samsung Galaxy Z Flip 4 has a 6.7-inch main screen — larger than the S23 Plus, the Google Pixel 7 and roughly the same as the iPhone 14 Pro Max — but only 3.3 inches tall by 2.83 inches when closed. Is wide It’s about half as tall as your average top-end smartphone, and feels like holding a deck of playing cards. Sure, it’s still as heavy as those other devices and thicker when closed than other phones, but that smaller surface area means it can fit in a tight pocket, a workout armband, even your hand. Would fit better too. A phone that isn’t constantly trying to slip out of your hand; suppose!

Flip phones are also two devices in one. It’s a tablet and not a phone, like a foldable; Like of the verge It’s like a phone and a smartwatch, says Allison Johnson, a combo I love even more. Off, its external screen shows you some useful information at a glance, and maybe even a quick text reply or chat with your virtual assistant. Open, this is… a smartphone.

I’ve always loved the idea of ​​intentionally silent phones like the Lite Phone or Punkt, but they come with too many sacrifices. Smartphones are there precisely because they do everything, and it’s hard to give up. But I don’t want to see all my notifications or that super tempting TikTok icon every time I just want to see the time. A flip phone provides enough friction to keep the thing open that I’m more likely to keep it closed. It’s like the world’s most crackable lock, which is actually kind of perfect.

Having that bigger, brighter, higher-resolution, inevitably more fragile screen away has a few other benefits, as well. The first is durability – you’re not going to scratch the screen easily when it’s tucked away in your purse or pocket. Second, and perhaps more important, is battery life. Because you’re using the smaller screen some of the time instead of lighting up all six-plus inches of display, constantly checking your phone won’t drain the battery quite as quickly.

To be honest, that’s enough for me. Literally everything I want from a smartphone, flip phones do better than slab phones. Because lest you forget, when you crack it open, it’s still a slab phone! It just… also turns off.

But there’s another less obvious feature that makes flip phones great: They make for much better picture takers. You can flip your phone in half open, put it on a table, and take videos hands-free. It also opens up a lot of new angles. Here’s how Alison describes it in his Z Flip 4 review: “I can even open the phone in flex mode, move the image preview to the bottom half of the screen, and shoot from the hip.” am – that way, I can get more natural candid shots because I’m not doing the obvious ‘I’m taking a picture’ step of holding the phone in front of my face. I mean, heck, if you’re really spirited If you’re feeling down, you can drape the half-folded phone over a tree branch and take a whole new kind of nature shot.

Ok, so I’ve got you convinced, haven’t I? Flip phone forever! Here’s the problem: none of the flip phones currently on the market live up to this promise. There aren’t even that many to choose from. The Z Flip 4 gets a lot of things right, but it’s held back by a very small front screen and an okay camera setup. The new Razr Plus looks really promising, especially because of its bigger front screen, although its processor and durability ratings aren’t particularly impressive. I think this software gets it wrong too; Not letting me run full apps on the front screen is silly – it goes against the whole appeal of a flip phone.

What we need is competition. It’s going to take over the rest of the smartphone world, everyone from Apple and Google to Huawei and Oppo to Nothing and OnePlus is going to decide that flip phones are the future. They can and should work on slab phones and foldables because they have their place and they have their users. But we had it right in 2003: The best phone is a flip phone. Phones got smarter, and their size worsened. It’s time for us to finally get the best of both worlds.

And if someone can figure out how to make that open-and-close motion feel as satisfying as it used to be, that would be super. I’ll pay extra for thack.