For years, foldable phones were the gadget you bought if you wanted to impress people at coffee shops, not if you wanted a reliable daily driver. The screens cracked. The hinges wobbled. The prices were absurd. Six years after Samsung shipped the first mainstream foldable, that story has finally changed — and quietly, without the fanfare that accompanied the original launch, foldables have become a legitimate category.
The Hardware Finally Caught Up
Samsung’s Galaxy Z Fold 6 and Google’s Pixel 9 Pro Fold, both released in late 2025, are the first foldables I’d confidently recommend to someone who isn’t a tech enthusiast. The crease is still there — you can feel it and sometimes see it — but it’s no longer a compromise you actively notice. Screen brightness, hinge durability, and weight have all improved to the point where the foldable form factor no longer demands trade-offs.
The hinge mechanism remains the critical engineering challenge, and manufacturers are solving it differently. Samsung uses a teardrop hinge that folds completely flat. Google went with a slightly thicker body in exchange for a more robust multi-bar hinge. Both approaches work well. The days of worrying whether a foldable will survive a drop or survive a year of opening and closing are mostly behind us.
The Chinese Brands Are Winning the Price War
The bigger story isn’t Samsung and Google — it’s what Chinese manufacturers have done to pricing. The OnePlus Open 2 and the Xiaomi Mix Fold 4 both launched in early 2026 at $999 and $1,099 respectively, shattering the notion that you need to spend $1,800 to get a premium foldable. Both phones match or exceed the hardware specs of their Samsung and Google competitors at significantly lower prices.
The trade-offs are real but smaller than before. Software support remains a question mark — Xiaomi and OnePlus have improved their update track record, but neither matches Samsung’s seven-year commitment. Camera quality, while improved, still lags behind the absolute best slab phones by a measurable margin. But the core foldable experience — big screen, pocketable body — is now available at prices that don’t require justification.
Why This Moment Feels Different
The foldable category has failed to launch before. The original Samsung Galaxy Fold was a PR disaster. The Moto Razr reboot was nostalgic but hollow. Each time, the category felt like it was on the verge of disappearing. This time feels different for a structural reason: the apps and software have caught up.
Two years ago, most apps either didn’t support the folded state properly or looked awkward on the larger inner screen. Today, Android’s foldable API support is solid enough that major apps handle both states gracefully. The inner screen went from being a gimmick to being genuinely useful — reading documents, watching video, running two apps side by side — without constant compromises.
What Comes Next
The natural next step is the laptop-foldable hybrid, and Samsung is already there with the Galaxy Book 4 Fold, a 17-inch tablet that folds into a 13-inch laptop form factor. At $2,499, it’s not for everyone. But it signals where the category is heading: not just phones that unfold, but devices that genuinely replace your laptop for most tasks when you need them to.
For most people, the choice between a foldable and a traditional phone is no longer an ideological one. It’s a practical one. If you want a bigger screen and don’t mind a thicker, more expensive device, foldables have genuinely arrived.