| Brief impressions of the Galaxy Fold (gen 1) Posted: 25 Sep 2020 05:07 PM PDT I know the big thing right now is the Galaxy Z Fold 2 and no one cares about the Fold 1 now, but I still thought this was worth sharing. This is more of an impressions post than a review, and I won't be going into depth about benchmarks or camera performance, since there's already a ton of content about that from the past year. My main focus is what it was like to use my first folding phone. Expect this to be full of personal opinions that you probably disagree with. And expect this to be very ranty/stream-of-consciousness. Phone history - iPhone 3G (purchased 2010)
- Moto G 2013 (purchased 2013)
- Zenfone 2 (purchased 2015)
- Xperia X Compact (purchased 2016)
- Pixel 3 (purchased 2018)
- Galaxy Fold 1 (purchased 2020)
Why the hell did I buy an old first gen product? I wanted to try out the whole folding phone thing. I found this on Swappa for $825, which I thought was a fair price, especially since it still has 3 years of security patches left. But isn't the front screen shitty? Yeah, kinda. But I actually prefer the smaller front display because it's actually usable one-handed. I do wish it were just a tiny bit bigger though--maybe enough to shrink the side bezels. I really dislike how Samsung made the Fold 2 bigger physically instead of just filling out the front display. This is a picture I made a couple of years ago about my frustration with the evolution of phone design, and I thought it was relevant with the changes from the Fold 1 to the Fold 2. I have a few more thoughts on the front display: - I would say 80% of the time, I want a phone the size of the smaller iPhones (e.g., iPhone 5), and 20% of the time, I want a tablet, so the Fold 1 is actually working pretty nicely for my personal use cases. Most of my phone usage consists of feeling the phone vibrate (or getting an alert on my watch), taking it out to type up a quick response, and putting it back in my pocket, and I can actually type one-handed!
- I was frustrated when I couldn't use split screen with the front display. But then I found out FNG lets you set up a gesture for split screen, and it works with the front display, so that's what I've been using.
How's the software? I mean, as far as the front vs inner display thing is concerned, it works as you'd expect. The main jank is that some apps operate differently depending on the screen size. So if I open Chrome on the front display, it'll use the phone UI, and if I open it on the inner display, it'll use the tablet UI, which is expected, but if I open it on the front display and then open up the phone, it'll continue using the phone UI, and vice versa. But for my uses, this stuff is nbd (insert BoJack Horseman reference here). Additional thoughts on software: - This is my first Samsung phone, and honestly, my first impression was that One UI is extremely ugly. I'm Korean, so I should be able to "get" their approach to design, but it still leaves a really bad taste in my mouth. After installing Nova Launcher and changing some of the icons, I can stomach it a lot better, but it's still not great. That said, I'm not someone who cares too much about UI aesthetics, so it's something I can tolerate.
- Samsung bloat is real. I used adb to delete Facebook and LinkedIn, but that doesn't account for Samsung's system apps. Personally, I use Google to sync my files, photos, and contacts, so I ended up installing Google apps for Drive, Photos, Contacts, etc., leaving me with Samsung duplicates that I can't uninstall (if anyone can tell me how to safely uninstall them, please let me know). Thankfully Nova Launcher lets you hide apps from the app drawer, and this phone comes with a whopping 512 GB storage, so it should be fine. That said, I do understand that if someone wants to use their Samsung account to sync their stuff between phones, and they upgrade from an older Galaxy to a Pixel, they might find the "Google bloat" to be frustrating for them as well. I just wish they'd let you use whatever account/services you want instead of preloading their stuff on your phone.
- I still can't get weather info to appear on the AoD. I tried turning it on under FaceWidgets but it still won't show up.
- It seems like I can't remove the persistent notification for AdGuard, which is kinda annoying.
- When I found out Nova Launcher just duplicates your home screens on the smaller front display, I thought it would be really ugly, but it turns out for my setup, it looks fine. And I'm one of those weirdos who has six apps on their dock.
Durability, build quality, physical design, etc. - The phone is a rather bad combination of heavy and slippery. I ended up picking up a case for it. It comes in two parts, to clip onto the front and the back. Unfortunately it seems like every case I could find for this obstructs a big portion of the front, keeping you from swiping in from the bezels (e.g., swiping up to go to the home screen). So I just use the back cover and leave the front unprotected. Which is really all I need for grip anyway.
- I've heard a lot of people complaining about how the plastic inner screen feels mushy, but it's not something I've noticed.
- The speakers are really easy to cover up and muffle in landscape mode unless you use it "upside-down" (I'm calling it upside-down because that's how the phone expects you to use it in landscape mode by default).
- The notch is definitely annoying. I really wish there were a way to watch fullscreen video with the image just a bit zoomed out so it doesn't go into the notch.
- There are two gaps along the hinge on the back of the phone where I'm constantly afraid that dirt or dust will get in. It's definitely big enough for that. But no issues so far ...
Battery life, camera, performance, etc. - Most reviews cover this, so I'm not going to go into depth here.
- It's hard to gauge battery life because of the pandemic and working from home and all, but it's at least twice as good as my Pixel 3.
- Daytime photos are great, as expected, but night time photos are unusable, regardless of whether I turn on night mode. But there's a GCam port, so I use that for taking pictures in the dark.
- My Pixel 3 would constantly kick apps out of memory, but I don't think that's actually ever happened to me yet with the Fold.
Final thoughts - I wish instead of a notch, they went with something like they did with the S10 where there's a hole punch on the corner. Since most video is 16:9 or 21:9, it would mean that the front camera is not at all an issue when watching stuff full-screen. I also don't understand why they didn't do this with the Fold 2.
- Size-wise, this phone is perfect. Just small enough for me to wrap my fingers around the entire phone while being able to reach keys on the far edge of the display when typing.
- Speaking of size (or well, more like physical dimensions), I think it would make far more sense if it folded out to landscape orientation. The inner display can be 4:3, so when folded, it would be 2:3, which isn't all that strange of an aspect ratio--it's what iPhones used before the iPhone 5. In fact, since the hinge takes up a bit of extra space, it would probably be more like 8:5 or 16:9, which is what we're all used to. But then I'm not a professional hardware engineer or designer, so what do I know.
- Well, I guess this wasn't so brief.
- AMA?
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