Easy… I’ll give you the answer in one word…

NOSTALGIA

Us millennials thrive in the world of nostalgia and the market knows that.

Size and weight are the most important things for me.

I had one of these; and I think this was the pinnacle of smartphones.

It could do pretty much everything my current phone does and I had either a gameboy or super nintendo emulator on it as well. The cool part was it was a workhorse that was small unlike today's ~~tablets~~ phones. Oh yeah and this was in the early 2000s.

I don't understand. Do you not see that the screen doubles in size? It's like a 2 in 1 phone/tablet. That's the benefit.

Fits in my pocket

Flips are awesome, folds (opens on a vertical joint) are ass

My motorola razr 2025 is a flip smart phone, and as a lady, it actually fits in the pockets of all my pants. My old non-flip phone did not fit in my pockets. It is common for ladies pockets (if pants even have them) to be less than 1/2 the size of pockets found in mens pants.

Novelty.

This is middle tech. It is like walking is to speed walking then running. One fold is proof of concept when we get to 3 or 4 folds that's where the magic happens. People watching a video without headphones out in public on a tiny screen, pretty annoying. We are three folds away from someone unfolding a 32" screen to watch their content anywhere also without headphones.

I wish they'd bring back slider phones with physical keyboards. Pre-smartphone days I used to have a phone (I don't remember what it was) that was a full touch screen with a physical home and back button on the front and then you flipped it sideways and the back slid down and there was an entire physical keyboard for easy typing/texting. I'm not interested in a folding smartphone, but if they released a slider with an actual keyboard I'd buy it in a heartbeat. I loved that phone and I loved being able to type on the screen with a digital keyboard for quick stuff or flip the keyboard out and use actual keys when I wanted to type a novel of a text message.

I often switch to my tablet for reading something on a bigger screen

If I wouldn't have a tablet, a folding phone would be able to provide the bigger screen.

Well I have one for the removable battery

you’re not going to care about the type of core, or the screen resolution when you make a phone call...

It's not really a phone anymore. It's a portable pocket computer. Being able to unfold a larger screen makes sense for a portable pocket computer.

Well, if you're my friend's kid, the point is to make it super easy to accidentally shatter the screen when you close it.

It's a full color tablet that fits in your pocket. That comes with huge quality of life improvements displaying PDFs, e-books, comics, spreadsheets, charts, diagrams, videos, etc. Have you ever tried reading a PDF on a phone screen? It sucks.

I've had a fold for a couple years now, and I use the inner screen constantly. If you don't read as much as I do it's probably just a gimmick, but it's great for me.

Fidget toy

No point.

We basically hit the ceiling with phones ten years ago.

There's no way to improve them without a massive shift in technology [think the shift from prop planes to jets]

Now they have to come up with new gimmicks to convince people to upgrade.

It's like 1950's Detroit putting bigger and bigger fins on cars that were basically the same as the 1930's technology.

It’s so assholes on public transport or other public places with absolutely no sense of decency and narcissism that would rival the orange idiot can play videos, or music without headphones. Also, if you’re one of those people, fuck you

Bigger screen, smaller pocket size.

They also break easier so you have to buy more phones.

As someone who's used one before. I can see the benefit. But in order to be useful, it would need to replace something. Right now, the main thing it replaces is tablets. Me personally, I dont care for tablets and its also why i dont like folding phones. Either I do whatever I need to do on my phone or my laptop.

But the more interesting idea is it replacing the laptop. The idea of a singular device being able to run both desktop and mobile apps, makes it a little more intriguing. The closest you can get to this right now is Samsung dex (and I think android 17?). Hopefully in the future though, Linux phones will become more stable and useable. That'd genuinely be amazing.