It was around 2018 when I first heard that a foldable phone was coming to the mobile marketplace. The concept itself felt absurd, but it captured my interest due to the context of my professional career. You see, at the time I was working on an educational mobile app and I was fully immersed in the world of mobile application testing. Upon learning about the foldable terror about to be unleashed to the public, I shared with my team my initial concern that foldables would present unique challenges to mobile application development, and more importantly for us, testing.
Their response? Laughter, derision, that this gimmick would ever become a viable product in the mobile landscape. I was told that foldables would never be a success, that it was a gimmick akin to 3D cinema. Some expressed doubt that the technology could even work, despite a commercially ready device being on the way. The physical stress on constantly folding and unfolding a phone would take too much of a toll on the screen, I was told. Finally, the group shared the belief that there was just no commercial demand for such a product, with comparisons drawn to tablets. The shared belief was that people like the small form factor of mobiles, which is why they sell substantially better than tablets. People want bigger screens, but only to a point.
Yet now, eight years later, we have seen multiple foldable devices enter the market, to varying success. And, in 2026, Apple's long awaited entry into the foldable space represents the last big player accepting that there's a market for foldables. Their first foldable - the iPhone Duo - represents the largest physical change to their iPhone series since it first launched almost 20 years ago. As of writing, the Duo has not yet been released. Still, I feel confident in predicting that this device will do for foldables what the original iPhone did for smartphones, cementing them as a fundamental part of the mobile ecosystem.
What relevance does any of this have for quality?
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(Smart1) mobile devices (smartphones, tablets, wearables, etc.) are, by their nature, compromised. They have a small user interface, which is usually made smaller when the user needs to interact with it. They have limited support for external peripherals such as keyboards and those that exist often require a wireless connection. They are usually battery powered, with notoriously short lifespans, and require access to the internet, the quality of which is variable depending on your personal location. To put it bluntly, a situation when you might most need a mobile device may also be when it is least capable.
Despite this, the overwhelming success of mobile devices cannot be ignored. There's little that these devices can do that can't be done better by a desktop or laptop computer. Still, mobile devices have flourished, precisely because they're, well, mobile. For some people, this is down to specific use-cases; the smartwatch is a convenient way to track fitness goals and are often integrated with specialised sensors. For most, however, the convenience of a mobile device is key to their success. Smartphone adoption is now over 80% in the Europe, with 6.6bn users worldwide2, with the bulk of activity done with a smartphone also possible to achieve on a home computer3.
Clearly then, the market is thriving and the limitations of these devices does not negatively impact desirability. Yet, the initial response of my colleagues in 2018 was sceptical. Their assertions about the technology were correct, more or less. Foldable phones do have inherent physical weaknesses. Screens wear down over time, complex folding mechanisms are more likely to break, the form factor is unusual and undesirable for many. Batteries need to be re-thought. And, if you're a mobile application tester, these devices present new variables for testing that makes your day ever so slightly harder. It's no wonder that they wrote foldables off as a gimmick that would never work.
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My first post on here discusses what quality is4, so I will not repeat myself in this one. To summarise, quality is a combination of desirability of participants, the function and non-function of the [thing]5, and balance of accessibility of the [thing].
As mentioned above, mobile devices are clearly desirable generally. Yet the responses of my colleagues in 2018 cast doubt on the specific desirability of foldables. The functional difference wasn't considered meaningful enough to increase desirability; in fact for many it was seen as a detriment because it added uncertainty. Foldables weren't accessible either, nor are they now. They tend to be more expensive than regular smartphones for limited additional benefit. They are more cumbersome and there's the risk that applications designed for regular smartphones will have reduced usability as a result of the screen change. Cases, frequently purchased to protect mobile devices, also face a design challenge. Clearly then, the instinct of my quality team was based on reasonable observations. People will pay more for better things, and people will accept slightly worse things if it saves them money. It's rare that people will pay more for a worse thing that's also a bit of a pain in the arse.
And yet, here we are. Almost a decade on, and while the adoption has been slow, the trend continues and may come to dominate. What we've learned is that desirability is an incredibly difficult metric to gauge. What has led tech companies to dominate the global economy, arguably led by Apple, is their ability to dictate desire. Technology as a fashion statement dropped half a billion dollars after tax in Dr Dre's lap after he managed to sell functionally average headphones to the world. The takeaway from this is that Quality is far from an assured thing, and that my quality team needed to trust my instinct more.
That's all for now!