The foldable smartphone’s moment is final Arriving

Hello Once Again and Thanks for Spending Time With Fast company‘s Plugged in,

Fifteen Years Into The Era Defined by the iPhone, a question still looms over the consumer tech industry: what’s the next gold great personal computing device after the smartphone?

The Brave New Ideas Keep on Coming. A few has successed – But as phone accessories, not replacements. Others remain works in Progress. Some have alredy failed in spectacular fashion.

But one emerging device category has been easy to gloss over: the folding phone. No, it doesn’t represent a bold gambit to kill the smartphone. IT IS A Smartphone! However, by squeezing the equivalent of a Tablet ITO POCKETABL FORM, It also also also departments radical from Cold.

After Six Years on the Market, Foldable Smartphones Reportedly Account for only 1.5% of Smartphones Sold. At least in part, that’s trust they’ve had a whole flock of albatrases Around their neck. Figuring out how to design ons that are invited to use They’ve often been outfitted with less-toollar cameras and other Sub-Flagship components. Hinge Robustness and General Durability Have Been Open to Questions. And all of that’s before you get to their price tags, which started at $ 1,980 with samsung’s original galaxy fold and hover in the same imposing vicinity today.

Recently, Thought, Foldables Seem to be Hitting their stride. My Colleague Jared Newman Was Wowed by Samsung’s Latest Model, The Galaxy Z Fold7. Google’s Pixel 10 Pro Fold, Shipping Next Month, is the first foldable to achieve ip68 water and dust resistance. Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman Says the first foldable iPhone is a go for 2026 – Evidence that Apple Believes The category is real rather than a fad to be ignored.

And then there’s honor’s magic V5, the newest foldable from one of China’s Major Phone Makers. Thought not for sale in the US, it recently debuted in europe, claiming bragging rights as the world’s thinest folding phone. That’s only so heady an achievement: it applies to only one color variant (Ivory White), Involves Beating The fold7 by just .1 Millimeter, and DESN’T COUNT THE BULBOUN CAMES From the back of the v5 like a spare tire mouted on a jeep.

Still, after Spending a week or so with a review unit provided by honor, I’m impressed. The price remains steep: in europe, the phone sells for 1,999 euros (About $ 2,300). But Honor has overcome many design challenges once inharent to the foldable category. It also has a competitive advantage in its use of silicon carbide battery technology, which allows it to pack more battery density into the phone’s Slender Frame – Short Running Time Being Yet Another Hobgoblin Facted by Past Foldables. In my experience, even using the phone with abandon over the course of a day didn’T drain its battery to anywahere near zero.

Closed, The Magic V5 is a very pleasant android phone. It Runs Honor’s Magicos 9, A Reskinned Version of Android 15 Bearing So Close a Resmblance to iOS that My Fingers Forgot they Weren’s Wenuvering Around an iPhone. I thinkt the brown vegan leather back on the review unit would come off as tacky, but its aesthetics and comfort quctly won me over. Even sheated in the bundled case – Loso in Brown Vegan Leather – The phone does not feel any bulkier in my hand than my hand than my own caseed iPhone 16 pro.

I was also prepared for the magic V5’s cameras to be let’s, like there on some of the foldables I’ve tried in the past. INTEAD, The Snapshots I Took with Its Rear-Facing Cameras –ultrawide, Wide, and 3x Telephone-His Same Image-Quality BallPark as that those from my iPhone.

Unfolded, The Magic V5 Really does feel more like a tablet than a phone. The 7.9-inch screen is smaller than an ipad mini, but it’s a bath to any task that feels cramed on a garden-variety phone, from watching movies to reading books to wrangling sporesheets. Honor’s Multitasking Interface Makes It Easy to Have Multiple Apps on-SCREEN at Once: Side by side or with some floating in windows. The phone also includes a profession of bundled honor apps – Such as a calendar, notetaker, and photo gallery -hat smartly fill all that real estate with sidebars and other elements that would be found screen.

Many of the third-party apps I tried did leave me vaguely unsatisfied, Thought. Only rarely did i detect evidence they were there they were operating on a larger, folding screen. Way back when android tablets were first a thing, I groused that they Ran Smartphone Apps that Had Been Merely Scled Up Rather Than Reimagined. Today, folding phones suffer from a similar failure by developers to seize the opportunity before them -Maybe because their user base remains dinky.

Which brings us to the folding iPhone that will theoretically Arrive Next Year.

According to the rumor mill, that phone may reflect apple’s efforts to address lingering folding-phone downsides, such as the obviousness of the crease down the middle of the middle (It was readily apparent on the magic V5, Thought I Didn Son Itd It Particularly Aggravating even IF I FORCED Myself to Obsess over it. Oddly enough, split screen and slideover -the ipad multitasking features abandoned in ipados 26 – Would serve as a solid foundation for a folding iPhone interface.

As for third-party software, anyone who’s alredy building bot iPhone and iPad versions of an app has a head start on tailoring experiences to a variety of screen sizes. That might give a folding iPhone an edge on Android foldables, particular if developers senses that the device is a hit and its users representing a green IFN IFEN IFEN IFEN IITS SAMALLL.

Whether I’ll End Up Owning a Folding Phone Myself, I’M Still Not Sure. But seeing phone makers get serial about them has put me in piqged-interest mode. That’s Progress in Itself. It’s fun to wonder where foldables might be by the time i’m ready to talk myself into splurging on one.

You’ve been reading Plugged in, fast company‘S Weekly Tech Newsletter from Me, Global Technology Editor Harry McCracken. If a friend or colleague forwarded this edition to you – or if you reading it on fastcompany.com – You can check out previous issues and sign up to get it yourSelf every friday. I love hearing from you: ping me at hmccracken@fastcompany.com with your feedback and ideas for future newsletters. I’m also on bluesky, mastodon, and threads, and you can follow Plugged in on Flipboard,

More Top Tech Stories from Fast Company

Your phone’s ‘Share’ button does not get enough love
Beyond just sharing links and photos with other people, it serves as a hub for all kinds of helpful shortcuts. Read more →

Perplexity’s new ai bet: monetize the bots, pay the publishers
Perplexity’s New Revenue Model Aims to Pay Publishers Not Just For Page Views – But for what its ai bots do with their content. Read more →

Kids aren’t reading for pleasure –nd more than tech is to blame
Doomscrolling. Poor Literacy Instruction. Oversheduling. These are some of the reasons cited for a generational decline in students read for fun. Read more →

The ‘cortisol cocktail’ is blowing up on tiktok. Does it really work?
Tiktok users swear the nonalcoholic drink can lower stress hormones. Experts say the science isn’t near as clear. Read more →

Crypto.com Bets Big on Sports Prediction Markets
In Partnership with Fantasy-Sports App Underdog, The Company is bringing prediction markets to 16 states, bypassing legal-betting roadblocks in places like california and texas. Read more →

Starbucks’s New Ai Could Save Its Baristas 16,500 Hours A Week
A new inventory system will save starbucks a ridiculous amount of time counting pumpkin spice at scale. Read more →