Despite there being lots of foldable phones on the way from various brands, Samsung and Huawei are the biggest names in foldables right now. And it seems the two companies are squaring up for a fold-off.
Huawei has already made some provocative comments about how it’s totally fine with people copying its awesome Mate X design, and the fact that it did try an inward-folding phone and decided outward-folding was better (take that, Galaxy Fold).
Now, Samsung has had its say, and unsurprisingly its verdict is that its design is the best.
Eui-Suk Chung, Executive VP for R&D at Samsung, tells the Australian Financial Review that the company’s testing conclusively showed that innies are better than outies:
“We really wanted to create the best user experience, which is the infold.
You open it like a book. You close it like a book. It’s much more natural than doing it the other way around, so we went for that even though it presents the harder technical challenge.
Our intention is to create a perfect close, but today’s technology doesn’t allow you to fold a screen like paper, 100 per cent.
If you go with an outfold, you can close the device fully, but then the display is on the outside, which means it’s susceptible to all kinds of user errors. You might touch it by mistake or call someone by mistake.
And if you drop it, the display is more susceptible to damage.”
Oof.
While Samsung’s explanation makes sense, Huawei has already said it tried an inward-folding device and abandoned it because it wasn’t good enough. And we’ve heard that the Galaxy Fold’s display develops a crease after about 10,000 folds, which isn’t great news for people spending £1800 on it.
Despite all its confident words, Samsung is reportedly working on an outward-folding phone, so it clearly doesn’t think those challenges are insurmountable.
Ultimately, it sounds like both methods have pros and cons, and maybe neither needs to prevail. Only about ten people in the UK can actually afford the current crop of foldables and they won’t all want to have the same phone, after all. [Slashgear]
This post originally appeared on Gizmodo UK, which is gobbling up the news in a different timezone.