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Comment by ZeroCool2u | Hacker News Reader

I genuinely think book reading is the killer app for foldable devices. A bigger screen for a movie or TV is nice to have, but not a game changer. When you have that much screen real estate you can get a really enjoyable experience reading a novel or just easily read a textbook or research paper in a way that's simply not possible on even the largest of what you might consider a typical size phone.

Plus, you no longer need to deal with buying and maintaining a separate device like an iPad! This is why I suspect Apple is dragging its feet on the foldable category, besides letting the screen technology mature. It will probably cannibalize some sales from that market segment.

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What about book reading requires a large screen?

I find my phone much more comfortable to hold than a book. It fits my hand.

You only read one sentence at a time anyway. I rather scroll, keeping the current sentence in the middle of the screen than jump around with my eyes in an open book, and having to turn pages, or keeping them flat.

Am I missing something? (Real question. I read a lot!)

Reading PDFs is the biggest case. PDFs do not (typically) dynamically reflow in a way that's usable and generally suck to read on a small screen as a result. Source: read a lot of PDFs on mobile.

But most books are probably not PDFs?

Most? Idk maybe. Most papers are. Most TTRPG books I've encountered are. Textbooks are often PDFs, not EPUBs.

Nah, I'd say most digital books are probably PDFs.

> You only read one sentence at a time anyway.

Not how I read when I read on paper & this bothers me on a phone a lot.

I'm not functionally dyslexic, but all the words pop out at the same time, you could say I read verbs, then tense, nouns after and then I read adjectives in a sentence.

But English is also my second language, so my first language's grammar probably fits closer.

Oddly enough when I first encountered lisp, the nested pile of map, fold and filter was easier because of the well trained habit of restructuring after reading verbs.

I think there are two reasons.

1) Some books have images, charts, tables, etc. The screen size makes a big difference for these.

2) The format of the "book". Reading a PDF for example is much better on a bigger screen.

Your eyes can skip around and read a lot faster. Most things I read have me skipping around quite a bit. The only time I'm straight-linear with reading is in fiction, and for that I've moved to audiobooks.

Fair question and I read a lot on my phone too! I think the use cases that come to mind for me are comics/graphic novels and research papers. Both of these are kind of annoying to read on phones right now.

I agree. PDFs/papers are no fun on a phone. I heard “book” and thought of fiction / nonfiction.

I get a lot less eye fatigue when I use a bigger screen at a larger distance.

Too bad that when it comes to reading for pleasure, "all signs show a slump"...

https://www.arts.gov/stories/blog/2024/federal-data-reading-...

Though I agree with you that a larger reading screen would be very nice, I doubt such an experience on a device that offers endless digital distractions will reverse this downward trend - not that you said it would.

Kindles and their competitors have pretty much perfected the devices for this market. They are cheap, high quality, and last long. The few people who like to read do not mind carrying a dedicated reader. However a foldable eink reader would be interesting.

It could go both ways though. Phones get more heavy use, and foldables will probably always be more fragile than iPads, so they might wind up with more customers replacing a more expensive device more often. iPads last a really long time, which was talked about as a problem for Apple's revenue. Some day we might even get a foldable iPad.

Also I doubt that Apple's foldable phone will cost the same or less than Samsung's, as is suggested in the article...

> Plus, you no longer need to deal with buying and maintaining a separate device like an iPad!

I've found a much easier solution to this problem.

I actually use a single screen to read epubs using my folding phone, mostly use two screens for PDFs, mangas, and videos.

Exactly. Apple is adding so much to iPadOS 26 (e.g. new windowing features) that it resembles the Mac. The next foldable iPhone will be like the iPadOS prior to version 26, so that Apple can make sure iPadOS remains more powerful than iOS.

I agree with your first paragraph.

For your second, I think you don’t understand why people buy/use iPads. First off, I don’t really know anyone who uses an iPad mini for anything productive (other than as a test device). A 7-9” screen is just not useful compared to a 13” iPad for things like Sidecar or reading sheet music in live performances. The 7-9” screen being an unfolded phone doesn’t change this.

A folding iPhone could eat the iPad mini, but that’s never been a cash cow for Apple or something power users cared about - it’s more of an “iPod touch” for kids. (And frankly, the Switch 2 kind of obsoletes it.) The thing that would eat 13” iPads’ lunch is something more like Apple Vision.

Weirdly enough, the iPad Mini is probably the iPad most used for work. The size & weight are perfect for many scenarios. Pilots, warehouses, and field work of all sorts.

For me personally, it's my travel machine. I've done all sorts of things with it on the road. From SSH to using Photoshop to make some last minute edits. It (barely) fits in my pockets so I don't even need a bag for it. Probably my favorite machine ever at least in terms of form factor.

Screen size does seem to be a personal choice. For me, I've always liked small screens for portability. I'm the weirdo who actually got work done on the first gen Asus EEE PC and didn't mind it. But I can understand that wouldn't be for everyone.

The iPad Mini form factor with cell connectivity is pretty great when you're travelling light.

My normal international travel load-out is a backup smart phone + an 8" LTE tablet with eSIM + bluetooth keyboard. It's about as minimal as I can get while still having a real keyboard and functional screen size to handle travel logistics.

My folding phone has completely replaced my ipad pro (which was my favorite device until now)

> I don’t really know anyone who uses an iPad mini for anything productive

I guess you don't know many pilots? :)

What do pilots use them for?

Pilots use iPads for all of the charts and checklists. Even having two iPads (one as a backup) is much lighter and thinner (and easier to update) than the paper copies it replaces.

Electronic flight bag, contains all the information a pilot needs.

This is the app they use https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/ForeFlight

747_getting_started.pdf

so_you_want_to_be_a_pilot.epub

Phones replaced computers for most people, so I think folding phones can replace tablets.

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