They’re not that great in practice. I have an LG Folder, it’s not very enjoyable to use and is probably best as a treatment for smartphone addiction. Old people are better off using actual dumbphones or smartphones with simplified settings, people who want flip/small phones are better off with flip smartphones.

I’d considered the Razr but was uncertain on the durability of it. Reviews were about 50/50 last I read.

I have owned a razr 40 for well over a year with no issues. I take pretty good care of my phones and have never dropped it, though. The smaller flip folding phones seem to be a lot more durable than their larger siblings, I guess because the hinge and fold is a lot smaller.

I do need to make sure I can find one that’s bootloader unlockable. Kind of a hard requirement for me and necessary to de-google it to my satisfaction.

I wouldn’t bother with flip smartphones if running degoogled Android is something you’re unwilling to compromise on. They don’t have the user base to attract custom ROM developers and are unlikely to receive that kind of attention unless Google releases a Pixel Flip or something. You need to decide whether the software or hardware is more important - I chose the hardware which meant giving up on degoogled Android for now.

Not really sure why Samsung has started returning to that style of camera module on their newest phones. It isn’t old enough to have any kind of nostalgia value and still looks dated to me. Maybe that’s the point and they have decided their high end phones need to be more visibly distinct from the rest of the lineup? Or maybe they are trying to copy Apple again? Sony are the only manufacturer I can think of that retained this design consistently and they are a bit of an outlier since they often ignore industry trends.

LineageOS support would definitely make me more interested in the Jelly Max. I have considered it a few times but there’s just no way I could justify the purchase with the doubts I have over its long-term viability.

But many people don’t want to have everything completely public

This isn’t true at all. Most people do not care about privacy; those that do are an extreme minority. You (presumably) and I are part of that minority yet even we still comment here, in a public space. The issue with forums has never been about privacy because most are content with pseudonymity. It is a big mistake to think we need to cater to the extreme minority in the privacy space when tackling big issues that involve a majority who do not care.

Discord is far worse in this context, though. Much of reddit is still publicly visible and is still indexed by some search engines, even if it could be better. Discussions from years ago are still visible and provide useful information to many (this is part of the reason “search term + reddit” became such a popular query template). When communities move to Discord, many of their conversations become completely private to anyone who isn’t a member. The conversations move quickly and there is no easy way for people to reference past information. I get that people on Lemmy hate reddit and it’s popular to circlejerk about it, but forums being replaced by things like Discord and Telegram that aren’t equivalents at all has been much more damaging.

It depends how important the tab bar feature is to you. Firefox has pretty much every other feature you’ve listed there and would be my recommendation. Otherwise, Vivaldi has all of the functionality but isn’t FOSS and is potentially less private. It would still be a lot better than Samsung Internet in those areas, though.

How are people affording having 20 subscriptions to stuff they probably barely use?

Who said they can? This will be an unpopular opinion because no one likes to admit they are at fault, but the cost of living crisis we are experiencing in Western countries is actually just a cost of spending crisis for some people. Some of those who claim to be “struggling” shouldn’t be, but they have never been taught how to effectively manage their finances and until now they’ve been able to get away with it.

This is actually how people live now. It feels crazy to say this but I actually know people like this in real life who use their phone while “watching” a film. There has even been debate about whether production studios are dumbing down scripts to cater to people who are literally not paying attention. We live in insane times.

I sort of agree in terms of the type that unfolds into a larger display, although price is definitely a big factor with those. I feel like durability is becoming less of a concern as more people are exposed to them in the real world. However, I disagree if you’re referring to the type that folds down into a smaller form factor. They have been selling quite well as I understand, and are a clear solution to one of the problems with phones being so large now (that they are no longer pocketable in many cases). I would have a hard time going back to a regular phone after using one of these for over a year now.

I would love this. Motorola’s Android is one of the most vanilla.

It’s not as good as it used to be, unfortunately. Most of the bloat can still be uninstalled pretty easily (in my region, at least) but they have been moving away from the “stock Android” experience since the introduction of Hello UI.