Before the iPhone came along, it was not uncommon for me to upgrade my mobile phone every few months. It was an addiction, I’ll fully admit it, but it was also a fun time when mobile phones didn’t all look like a feature-less slab of glass. Companies tried every hardware gimmick imaginable to make their devices stand out, and as the folks at Squirrel Monkey imagined, a ‘90s version of the Samsung Fold would have been a must-have upgrade.
Squirrel Monkey is best known for reimagining what websites and popular online services would have been like in the days of dialup internet and sluggish desktop computers. It should really start doing more retro hardware mockups, though, because the real Galaxy Fold almost feels out of place in the year 2019. A folding screen would have been far more useful in a time when mobile phone displays were the size of postage stamps, and burgeoning smart devices struggled to make their user interfaces work.
The ‘90s Samsung Galaxy Fold almost reminds me of the Nokia 6820, which unfolded to reveal a full QWERTY keyboard, or the Sony Ericsson P900, which had a numeric keypad that could flip down to reveal a full keyboard on the underside, as well as additional screen real estate. Say what you will about the incredibly expensive Samsung Galaxy Fold and Huawei Mate X, but at least mobile phone design is getting weird, wacky, and interesting again.
[YouTube]