Foldable phones are the new hotness. What about a foldable eink reader?

[j.p.s]

I bet most thieves would prefer a bar of chocolate to an e-reader.

[frahse]

Originally Posted by j.p.s

I bet most thieves would prefer a bar of chocolate to an e-reader.

Yes. Without a doubt.

[fjtorres]

Intel has an interesting patent for a folding phone/tablet/laptop:

https://www.slashgear.com/intel-fold...able-28563870/

[patrickt]

Originally Posted by binaryhermit

I'm of the opinion that folding devices are a gimmick unless I see a legitimate use case for the folding-ness

I agree. I don't equate media hype with "hotness".
Two Paperwhites hinged would be okay but I don't want a folding screen.

Actually, if the had software that would take two Paperwhite and show alternated pages and then have an Amazon Kindle case that held one Paperwhite on one side and another on the other side would be fine.

If I had two Kindle's in one case I would insist on USB C so we could have rapid charging.

[binaryhermit]

I mean, I'm not opposed to folding devices, but they don't exactly scream affordable or durable, and I'm not exactly someone with large amounts of resources or someone who isn't hard on their stuff, and I fail to see the huge benefit to me.

But I think non-folding devices are here for the forseeable future, like the basic kindle has been for the first 6 plus years of frontlit kindles.

EDITED to add, there are some rumblings about the kindle basic like the ones that happened with the Voyage, there was a report from a not-terribly-reputable ereader blog/retailer a few months ago when the basic was out of stock a few months ago, and now there's a thread on the kindle forums here saying that it's somewhat disappeared from amazon.ca, which appears to be accurate as far as my 'Murican web browsing capabilities can tell. And that wouldn't surprise me too much, to be honest. But until I hear something from a more-reputable site or there are more signs than just being out of stock in one country, I'm not going to put too much credence into those rumblings.

[fjtorres]

Folding displays will never replace rigid plates...
...but that is because they're not intended to.

If you're happy with your current rigid plate there is no reason to move to a more complex and more expensive device that isn't meant for you anyway. Folding displays aren't meant for every single user and every single use case but rather to address very specific and very real needs.

The primary market for folding displays is people who need a tablet but can only carry a phone. Or need a laptop but can barely carry a tablet. They will be neither cheap nor terribly large for a long time. As with most premium devices some will buy them as a novelty or a status symbol but the bulk of early buyers will almost certainly be the Road Warrior business types. Once the technology matures it is more likely to migrate upwards to ruggedized industrial niches than to low end consumer gadgetry.

If prices do come down the tech may show up in a foldable gaming unit ala Nintendo Switch and in laptop-class computers that are scaled-up versions of the renders in the Intel patent above.

But dedicated ereaders?
Nope.
That market isn't going to jump at 4-digit gadget prices any time soon.
(Notice that none of the folding phone hype even speculates about pricing. It won't be pretty. Main questions is whether they'll be closer to US$2000 than $1000.)

Foldable displays may be used for ereading here and there but they will be bought for other purposes, like most phones and tablets. It's interesting technology but for now it's a sideshow as far as the ebook world is concerned.

[binaryhermit]

History lesson: The first kindle sold for $400 IIRC

These days, you can get a fully tricked out Oasis (32 GB, Cellular connectivity), which is the most expensive current-gen kindle for $349.99 directly from Amazon.

Also, the 2nd, 3rd, 4th gens, and so on tend to get better and more reliable as technology matures and the bugs get found and fixed. If folding gadgets stick around long enough to happen, they might become an actual thing.

But, what I meant to say in this thread, the price is high, the benefits to me are low, and the technology screams "fragile" to me. And I'm hard on my belongings. So I'm out for now(EDIT: I mean on the tech, not necessarily the thread).

EDITED TO ADD: There's also this video of a folding ereader from a trade show https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D-kYQ61A-s4

But I suspect that's more of a tech demo than a product, I think, and it's over a year and a half old.

[fjtorres]

Originally Posted by binaryhermit

History lesson: The first kindle sold for $400 IIRC

These days, you can get a fully tricked out Oasis (32 GB, Cellular connectivity), which is the most expensive current-gen kindle for $349.99 directly from Amazon.

Also, the 2nd, 3rd, 4th gens, and so on tend to get better and more reliable as technology matures and the bugs get found and fixed. If folding gadgets stick around long enough to happen, they might become an actual thing.

But, what I meant to say in this thread, the price is high, the benefits to me are low, and the technology screams "fragile" to me. And I'm hard on my belongings. So I'm out for now(EDIT: I mean on the tech, not necessarily the thread).

EDITED TO ADD: There's also this video of a folding ereader from a trade show https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D-kYQ61A-s4

But I suspect that's more of a tech demo than a product, I think, and it's over a year and a half old.

Oh, I don't doubt somebody will try it.
But just as with large format and color eink readers they will be more tech demo than mainstream product. Price is only part of it but, sure, a $400 folding screen reader would sell. Not in massive numbers but it might be a viable premium product. But what about at $800? $1200? Today's premium "candy bar" phones run in that range-- the foldables won't be any cheaper.

Look at the Sony and Pocketbook large format eink readers. Seen many in the wild? Who buys them? What for? Not ebook reading. Typically they're productivity tools for corporations for viewing large format documents like blueprints. And they're priced accordingly. The cheapest large format Sony runs in the $600 range. If it's still around at all. It hardly set the world afire.

Some technologies are solutions in search of problems: few find one. eInk managed to find a decent-sized niche in cheap, paperback-class dedicated reading devices. But it has since struggled to find viable markets for its many variants. They keep trying but they keep running into the same problem as most non-LCD display technologies: volume pricing. It's a chicken-n-egg problem. They need volume sales to get prices down but they can't get prices down until they're selling in high volume.

The original Sony and Kindle readers sold for $400 but look at the volumes. Amazon only ordered 25,000 of those Kindles because that's the rate at which early ereaders sold: by the thousand, not by the million. As late as 2011, when prices were under $200, Cool-er could feel proud to have sold 25,000 in a year. At the time, Sony was moving maybe 200,000 units a year and Pocketbook 100,000 and they were the big boys outside the US.

It wasn't until after the 4 hour price war and the exit of most of the hardware-only players, when prices dropped to $100 and under that ereaders started selling by the million. And getting there kicked Sony and most of hardware-only vendors out of the US market. It also sent Nook into it's ongoing death-spiral.

Dedicated ebook readers are a niche product and a relatively small one at that. It's not big enough to support the development cost of new technologies or even new variant products, just incremental tweaks in packaging and lighting.

I wouldn't hold my breath for even a modest volume of folding devices based on eink. Based on LCD? Maybe. But they won't be $400 cheap. Not soon. If ever. By the time folding displays are cheap enough to go into ereaders they'll be going into multifunction tablets are higher volumes and lower prices.

It's not a matter of consumer preference as much as it's the economics.