TCL: slide out screens are better than folding for smartphones

[ByteMyAscii]

I do wish phone manufactures would stop with all this folding/sliding screen garbage.

It's like they were bored on a Friday afternoon and said "Hey, remember 15/20 years ago when flip phones were cool, let do that with a smartphone!" Then a few weeks later bought it up at board meeting and ran with it because they've run out of practical ideas & innovation.

Or perhaps you just aren't the audience for such a device.
Personally I would love to have the larger screen for games and media consumption, but do not find in many cases a tablet practical to take with me.
I'm not ready to commit yet due to immaturity of the technology though. I do not have the sort of budget to be an early adopter.

My main concern about that design is the unrolling, which appears to involve a much larger portion of the screen compared to hinged devices.
That in my opinion is taking the same bending of the screen, and applying it to about 10 times a larger area.

[Ttaskmaster]

In response to those with engineering concerns...

I just watched videos from JerryRigEverything, in which he utterly abuses both a Motorola Razr and a Samsung Z Fold.
In general, both hinges are actually rather awesome. The lifting Razr screen seems to need a handful of gravel and dirt purposely stuffed in, along with much slamming-shut of the device, before it causes a problem.
Both hinges need to be bent quite a way back and with serious force before they even start to break. You ain't doing that just by sitting on your open phone!

Overall, I was actually very impressed with how much intentional, wilful, outright sadistic abuse these things stood up to.
The only issue I have, after watching these, is how soft and easily scratched the screens are.

Take a look:
https://www.youtube.com/user/JerryRigEverything/videos

[ByteMyAscii]

In response to those with engineering concerns...

I just watched videos from JerryRigEverything, in which he utterly abuses both a Motorola Razr and a Samsung Z Fold.
In general, both hinges are actually rather awesome. The lifting Razr screen seems to need a handful of gravel and dirt purposely stuffed in, along with much slamming-shut of the device, before it causes a problem.
Both hinges need to be bent quite a way back and with serious force before they even start to break. You ain't doing that just by sitting on your open phone!

Overall, I was actually very impressed with how much intentional, wilful, outright sadistic abuse these things stood up to.
The only issue I have, after watching these, is how soft and easily scratched the screens are.

Take a look:
https://www.youtube.com/user/JerryRigEverything/videos

Exactly the problem. It isn't the hinges, but the screen durability.
That is what I think will fail first.
Though thinking further about my earlier comment, while there is movement of the roll over a much larger area, it isn't the same area having the same amount of flexing back and forth that a fixed hinge has. More screen vs a small amount bent way more.
Though the durability of the slide mechanism vs a hinge is yet to be determined. Seems like more points of failure.

[globalwarning]

As if a single simple hinge wasn't a big enough engineering disaster.

This. I think it's absurd that we even call it a "hinge." The "hinges" on these devices are complex articulations, not just a series of loops with a pin holding them together. It's one logical fallacy away from calling a car a "pair of axles."

[Ttaskmaster]

This. I think it's absurd that we even call it a "hinge." The "hinges" on these devices are complex articulations, not just a series of loops with a pin holding them together. It's one logical fallacy away from calling a car a "pair of axles."

I've seen some flippin' complicated and complex hinges in high-end woodworking... but they are still fundamentally just hinges, and so are thusly referred.