Q >> A colleague of mine has a phone that unfolds and offers a double-wide screen. That would be great for my tired old eyes, but is it a smart move to buy one of these folding phones, or am I asking for trouble? I tend to keep my phones for many years and currently have an iPhone 11.

A >> Your iPhone was released back in September of 2019, so it’s 5 years old. That’s pretty old for modern technology, with quite a few significant tech improvements since then! Nonetheless, for those of us who don’t buy the latest and greatest on an annual basis, it’s good to know that the phone’s doing fine for you.

Those folding phones, though! Both Samsung and Google have been exploring folding screens, both phones that fold to half their size (generally called “flip” phones) and phones that open up to double their size (called, logically, “fold” phones).

Motorola has also had flip phones for a while, including the OG flip phone, but those didn’t have a folding screen, per se. They’ve jumped onto this bandwagon, too, with the RAZR flip phone, and it’s a beauty. This innovation isn’t just U.S.-based either, and it’s worth noting that the just-announced Huawei Mate XT is a tri-folding phone that opens up to a 10.2” display screen!

But, is a folding screen going to last?

The real question is about the screen technology, and while the first generations of these phones might have been a bit iffy in the long term, the latest represent multiple generations of tech evolution. Google’s latest is the Fold 3, for example, its third gen screen technology.

Samsung’s worked even longer on this technology, and its latest flip and fold phones, the Galaxy Z Flip 6 and Galaxy Z Fold 6, are six generations in. Samsung says that this generation of screens are designed to “withstand up to 200,000 folds, equivalent to 10 years of use.” (that’s about 55 folds per day, if you’re curious)

Ten years is twice the duration of your current Apple iPhone 11, so that sounds like a nice, long time. However, my friend who has an earlier generation Google Pixel Fold phone says that he leaves it open all the time rather than stress about the fold and whether the seam will get worse as the phone ages. To me, that defeats the purpose of the phone entirely; at that point, just get a phablet instead. But, he loves his bigger screen, and it’s constantly full of sports stats and other detailed information.

Other fold and flip phone users can undoubtedly share their experiences, and you could even ask Generative AI tools like Amazon’s Rufus (you can find it on the Amazon.com top nabber) or ChatGPT to summarize user experiences — good and bad.

I know that I am quite enamored of the “flip” design and am eagerly waiting for Apple to release a flip iPhone. Rumor sites suggest 2026 for the iPhone Flip, but we’ll have to see. Some fun trivia: I wrote my first tech column for this newspaper way back on April 10, 2008. Back then, the phone of choice was the original iPhone and folding screens weren’t even used as props in sci-fi thrillers!

— Dave Taylor has been involved with the online world since the beginning of the Internet. He runs the popular AskDaveTaylor.com tech Q&A site and invites you to subscribe to his weekly email newsletter at AskDaveTaylor.com/subscribe/. You can also find his entertaining gadget reviews on YouTube at YouTube.com/AskDaveTaylor.