Foldable phones lose novelty, benefiting Apple

The Stepback, a weekly tech newsletter, delivers a single, in‑depth story each Sunday at 8 AM ET. Readers can subscribe to receive the analysis directly in their inboxes. The most recent issue examines the rise of folding smartphones, tracing the lineage from early prototypes to mainstream releases.

The feature opens with the often‑overlooked debut of Royole’s FlexPai, the first commercial folding phone to hit the market, despite the company’s eventual bankruptcy. It then contrasts this with Samsung’s Galaxy Fold, launched a year later and plagued by a range of hardware faults that caused review units to fail within days. The article contextualizes these setbacks within the broader industry push toward flexible displays and the challenges manufacturers face in scaling the technology.

The piece concludes by noting how the initial failures of high‑profile launches have shaped current expectations for foldable devices, underscoring the importance of reliability as the market matures.