This tech story has three protagonists:
- A Candybar smartphone
- A Tablet
- A Foldable smartphone
Each of these three protagonists has a story arc of their own:
- The candybar smartphone has been around for the longest of the three. Manufacturers have improved specs, features, size but the contours of it have remained the same. It is the biggest, most popular, powerful character of this story.
- The tablet’s story is basically straight out of one of Ekta Kapoor’ daily soaps, where the character first comes, makes its space in the show, and dies for good. But just when you make your peace with its demise, it rises like a phoenix from ashes and comes to life.
- The foldable smartphone is the new kid in town from vilayat (foreign lands), aiming to simply walk in and change the age-old ways of how people have been going about their tech lives.
Now that we have been acquainted with the cast, let’s get on with the story – a story of an intense rivalry involving three devices fighting for the same space in our lives. On paper, it seems an uneven, two-against-one battle, with two on one side and a newbie on the other, but take it from us, it is a real tech tussle.
The veteran, the middle player, and the newcomer looking to replace them both!
Candybar smartphones have been around for years, and have a standing in tech which is close to that of desktops and notebooks, perhaps more when you consider just how integral a part of our lives they are (so many of us carry one with us almost all the time, and many even keep them close to us while sleeping). When you think of a phone, the image that comes to most people’s minds is the classic candybar! They have been tweaked and improved to the extent where they have managed to replace many gadgets and devices from our lives (anyone remember pagers and digital cameras?!), making life much more convenient. Many even blame the early demise of tablets on these smartphones, citing the simple reason: smartphones keep getting bigger and bigger.
Which gets us to tablets. They began as the middle screen between phones and laptops, but to make space for themselves in this ‘big and bigger’ smartphone world, tablets had to truly expand their horizon and become a valued, ‘needed’ screen in their own right. Today, they are becoming portable computers in their own right, with manufacturers bringing out tablets with displays as big as those of laptops, and processors that can rival desktop ones, along with a multitude of multimedia features.
While this duo was evolving, a new generation of smartphones was taking shape, the foldables. This is perhaps the most radical advancement that has happened to mobile phones since phones actually became smart. The ability to fold a phone in half was something earlier seen on flip phones but even that was not about bending a display in half, which the foldables managed to do. Apart from just bringing a sci-fi element to the world of tech, foldables also did something else, something others might consider a bit villainous – they tried to take the place of both candybar smartphones and tablets. You see, the fold form factor allows foldables to go from candybar form factor and turn into small tablet-like devices with a single unfold, allowing one to experience both. You kept a foldable shut, and you had your regular smartphone, open/unfold it and you had a tablet,
Foldables: futuristic, fabulous, fantastic and… yet flawed
Their initial editions were fragile and buggy, but foldables have come a long way since they debuted in the tech world. The OnePlus Open and the recently-released Vivo X Fold 3 Pro are way better designed, stronger and more powerful than the initial foldables that we had seen. Given this and their sheer versatility, foldables should have logically been looking to take over the phone and tablet worlds. But are they any closer to achieving this goal since they emerged on the horizon about five years ago? In other words, would it make more sense to invest in a foldable today rather than go for a phone and a tablet? On paper, the idea seems logical – after all, one device is easier to manage and carry than two, isn’t it?
If only it were that simple.
For while we now have more foldables from more brands than before and the foldables themselves are much better than their predecessors, some issues with these phone-cum-tablets remain universal. The internal display (which generally has elements of plastic) has had durability issues, and the crease from where the device folds can be quite difficult to ignore (and often develops cracks). It is difficult to find cases and screen protectors for these devices, and the bulk and heft that comes along in carrying a phone that folds can be a bit unmanageable to hold and use at times. They also remain insanely expensive – the Vivo X Fold3 Pro starts at Rs 1,59,999 while the OnePlus Open comes for Rs 1,34,999. You can get a Xiaomi 14 Civi and a Xiaomi Pad 6, a OnePlus 12 and a OnePlus Pad, or even an iPhone 15 and an iPad Air, for less than that price.
All of which does not make the foldable the out-and-out phone and tablet killer that many felt that it would be. Nevertheless, there is no denying that it does bring, if not the best of both phone and tablet worlds, then a lot of the two of them in one simple form factor. Yes, it is expensive and relatively fragile, but it can do the job of both tablet and phone.
So, which one of these characters truly is the hero of this story? It is not a black-and-white short story with a hero, a side character and a villain, but more like a complex book that comes in volumes. A story that changes on the basis of the reader’s perspective. So whether you go with the futuristic foldables or the good old candybar smartphone and tablet combo to meet your big screen-small screen requirements depends on your needs and preferences.
Phone and tablet vs foldable: A truly epic battle
So should you go for a futuristic foldable or a tried and trusted smartphone and tablet combination? You can easily get a very powerful flagship level phone and tablet for a price of a foldable from a well-known brand, after all.
Foldables turn heads, and are easy to carry, but can be fragile
Well, if you want a device that turns heads, the choice is a simple one – foldables come with the novelty factor that tablets and phones completely miss out on. Even after five years in the market, a foldable phone still remains a head turner, even if it is surrounded by a sea of smartphones and tablets.
With that innovative form factor comes some bulk – even relatively big smartphones are seldom as big and bulky to carry and use as foldables. On the flip side, however, there is no way in which you can carry a tablet in your pocket – you are going to need a bag of some sort. There is the little matter of weight as well – a phone and a tablet combination could end up weighing over 700 grams, while a foldable will be less than half as much. To carry a foldable, you do not need a bag at all, just deeper pockets (in both senses of the term). What’s more, while most high-end foldables come with some sort of water protection, most tablets still do not, although most phones do. This is a little ironic when you consider that both phones and tablets are generally more sturdy than foldables, which have a tendency to break near the crease!
Phones have better cameras, but foldables give you quicker edit options
Phones also generally score over foldables in terms of camera performance (still a bit of an issue with foldables, who have more cameras but of inferior quality as a rule), and if you have a phone and tablet combo handy, you can take a snap or video and transfer it to the tablet for some detailed editing in a few minutes. However, if you do have a foldable handy, all you have to do is take a picture or video and simply open the device to edit it on the larger, tablet-like screen.
A foldable has a tablet-like screen, but a tablet has a way bigger display
That internal big screen makes the foldable a real weapon for those who handle a lot of attachments. Whereas even the largest smartphone’s display is not really convenient for viewing complex presentations, spreadsheets and graphs, a foldable means you have the option to view and even edit large files without having to go to another device. While the outer display is great for quick tasks like calls, notification checks and scrolling social media, the bigger display on the inside is a great one for consuming content whether it is reading or watching videos.
That said, in our experience, most tablets generally have much bigger displays than the internal displays of foldables. For instance, the internal display of the Vivo X3 Pro is 8.03 inches, while that of the base iPad (10th gen) is 10.9 inches. Tablets also by design are much wider than ‘open foldables.’ The Galaxy Z Fold 5 is 129.9mm wide, while the significantly bigger Vivo X Fold3 Pro is 142.4mm wide, but both are nowhere near the iPad (10th gen) which is 179.5mm wide or even the relatively narrower Xiaomi Pad 6, which is 165.2mm wide. The large screen on a foldable is way more convenient to carry and access but the screen on tablet is, well, generally much bigger, which makes it easier to use, and has no crease in the middle to disturb your experience.
Want to use accessories? A phone and tab is the way
The larger size of the tablet also makes it easier to use with accessories like keyboards and styluses. With a few attachments and accessories, a phone and a tablet can actually prove to be an “all you need” tech combo. You can add a stylus, a keyboard, even a mouse to the tablet to give you the full functionality of a laptop, tablet and phone in two proven, familiar devices!
Foldables on the other hand, tend to struggle a little in this department. We have used the S-Pen with the Galaxy Z Fold 5 and while it was far more convenient in terms of carrying and usage, it did not match the stylus and tablet experience that we got on the Xiaomi Pad 6 with its larger smart pen (the iPad and Apple Pencil experience is in another league together, of course). Similarly, you can get a keyboard cover and convert a tablet into something like a notebook, but this is very difficult in the case of a foldable. Most foldables do come with the option to partly open them and use one half of them as a keyboard and the other as a display – a sort of makeshift notebook mode – but take it from us, it is not very convenient to use.
Gaming? Go foldable
One area where the less-big display of the foldable scores over those of tablets is in gaming. While a tablet does give you way more display real estate, gaming on an open foldable is far more convenient thanks to the fact that a foldable is far lighter and easier to hold with two hands in landscape mode. Its sheer convenience also makes it a better option for viewing films, series and other video content. A tablet gives you more viewing space, but it is something that has to be taken out of a bag, whereas a foldable generally gives you a bigger-than-phone display within a phone itself!
Phone and tab combo gets you way more battery
The phone and tablet combo however, totally boss the foldables when it comes to battery life, generally boasting much larger batteries and faster charging. You are also likely to get far longer battery life out of a phone and a tablet, each of which has a battery of its own, than a foldable that has just the single battery to handle two displays! Most foldables fold up (pun intended) in terms of battery life within a day if used heavily, while tablets and phones tend to get through a day comfortably.
Routine phone stuff…best done on a phone
Routine phone tasks like messaging, social media browsing and checking mail are also slightly easier on a regular smartphone as compared to a foldable, although that larger internal display makes a foldable a much better option for Web browsing. This is because most smartphones tend to come with larger and higher resolution displays than the external displays of foldables, which also tend to be a little more bulky. For instance, the Vivo X Fold 3 Pro has the largest external display of the current foldables in the market at 6.53 inches. This is smaller than not just the 6.82-inch display on the OnePlus 12 but even smaller than the 6.55-inch one on the Xiaomi 14 Civi, which is seen as compact! That said, as both the OnePlus Open and the Vivo X Fold 3 Pro have shown, external displays of foldables are becoming better and foldables themselves are getting slimmer and lighter, so we do not consider this to be a deal breaker or maker. Mind you, it is easier to manage a phone call while working on a tablet when you have two devices, rather than on a foldable. While one can take calls on a foldable while using it in ‘tablet’ mode, one needs TWS for a decent experience.
That software touch: Want to go foldable? No Apple option!
Final verdicts: Go fold, or get a tab and phone?
All of which leaves us with a very mixed bag. Foldables might not have become the tablet and phone replacements that many had predicted they would be, but they are still very formidable options.
If you want us to make it simple, we will say that what really matters is how you use the larger display or the tablet. If you use it extensively and need to do a lot of sketching, editing and typing on it, then in their current avatars, the foldables cannot quite match tablets. However, if you use that larger display mainly for viewing and gaming, the foldable is a much better option. Mind you, that situation could change. A couple of years ago, we found that the external displays of most foldables were not convenient to use and that foldables were way too bulky in general. That has changed. There is no reason why we will not see much better internal displays on foldables in the coming days.
But if you are someone who loves all things cutting edge, are not afraid to spend the bucks and want to enjoy both the tablet and smartphone world without the hassle of carrying a tablet separately, a foldable smartphone is a great option. On the other hand, if you like to be careful with money, and are apprehensive of how stable the foldable future is, but still want the convenience of a big and small screen, then the smartphone and tablet combo remains the one to go for. It also gives you the jump into the iOS/ iPadOS pool, something which is not a possibility with foldables at the moment.
Keep an eye on the foldable segment though. Whereas smartphones and tablets might have reached a level of saturation as far as design and features go, foldables are still developing and are likely to get better, stronger and most important of all, more affordable in the coming days. We will be returning to this tech story in the future, with the same three protagonists. And the results could be different. Watch this space.
