Comment by guyzero
17 hours ago
this isn't great design, it's tautology. of course the phone open is twice the size of it closed. it would be hard to make it otherwise.
17 hours ago
this isn't great design, it's tautology. of course the phone open is twice the size of it closed. it would be hard to make it otherwise.
You have to understand 1:√2. It’s not merely folding in half. The test is the folded half has to be the same ratio as the parent. It’s same ratio all the way down.
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You are not answering the parent comment. If the original aspect ratio was a square, making the "full screen" aspect ratio 1:1, then folded out it would have aspect ratio 2:1, fitting two squares side by side.
The sqrt(2) aspect ratio allows a portrait full app to be scaled up to the exactly to the folded out screen. But does anyone want that? You probably want to fit more content on the bigger screen, so some layout necessarily changes.
It's still folding in half, so you can have have one app taking up the whole screen, or two half-screen apps, all with the same aspect ratio.
But its two states. What do you mean “all the way down?”
You can keep folding it and it keeps the same aspect ratio. Scaling becomesa simple matter of multiplying everything by 2^+/-n.
2 replies →
It isn't just twice the size.
Both sides have the same aspect ratio as the whole screen.
> this isn't great design, it's tautology. of course the phone open is twice the size of it closed.
Well, it sounds obvious now, but before Archimedes, ancient engineers split their screens 60-40, so the full screen wasn't twice the size of either side.
Yes, I do understand the issue with the aspect ratio, which is indeed good design, but parent comment's example is that "you can run two apps side by side" is the tautology. Well, at least since the invention of double-entry bookkeeping and getting rid of Archimedian phone design.
No, you can't, unless the apps are designed for different aspect ratios.
7 replies →
The missing piece that makes it not a tautology is that two apps side by side have the same aspect ratio as one app full screen (but 90 degrees rotated)
first - it's not hard to make. Outside screen size doesn't have to be half of the open screen.
second - main idea is about proportions, if you want to design apps that seamlessly transfer from one screen to another they have to have the same proportions of the sides. This is not a given and depends on the height and width.
If you take iPhone 18 Pro resolution : 2,622 x 1,206 doubling it would make the screen with 2,622 x 2,412 - almost a square screen.
They chose to have the folded phone to have 1.4:1 aspect ratio which is consistent when folded and when unfolded.
What app is going to design to flow nicely with a iPhone Duo but not a iPhone 18? Unless Apple has a 1.4:1 ratio across their entire product line, app designers have to deal with variation.
Also, when you rotate the device, the ratio changes. This is especially common when unfolding a foldable.
Folded and unfolded will both be designed for 2 aspect ratios. 1 for Portrait and 1 for Landscape. Opening the fold and rotating 90 deg will give you the larger version while keeping the aspect ratio
4 replies →
People keep saying it’s so an app can resize to the full interior screen but none of the marketing photos actually have this. So its hard to say “what a genius masterstroke by Apple.”
Most have the closed screen plus another view. Or the lock screen which is a full photo open and a small section closed.
Im not saying its not possible but it doesn’t seem like that is their intention.
1 reply →
The difference is that it has the same aspect ratio folded and unfolded. If you look at other folding phones the inside screen is twice the area, but the shape of the phone is different. 1 : sqrt(2) is the only ratio where you can fold one side in half and the ratio stays 1:sqrt(2). Any other ratio of sides and the inside and outside have different ratios. Therefore, things have to move around, or scale.
Yes, but 1:√2 keeps the ratio even when you rotate the screen vertically. A folded 1:1 screen becomes 2:1 when "unfolded" and the area doubles, so you can go from showing one 1:1 window to two 1:1 windows side by side. But when rotated to a vertical orientation, you can't just scale that 1:1 window to double its size. With 1:√2 you can.