Hybrid (Premium)

In January 2008, my wife Stephanie and I visited Paris and stayed with friends in the Fontenay-sous-Bois suburb. They had recently purchased a Toyota Prius, and I recall stepping outside their apartment to walk down the street to the RER train station so we could head into the city. Then I stopped and regarded their new vehicle.

“You know, you’re really sending a message here,” I said. Yes, this was years after the infamous South Park episode “Smug,” which is about the attitudes of those who purchased hybrid cars that early on. And perhaps not surprisingly, my friend was slightly taken aback by this declaration. But I didn’t mean it critically. Instead, I was thinking more along the lines of having strong principles and then acting and not just talking. Walking the walk, if you will. Living by example.

That the worldwide vehicle infrastructure we have now is based entirely around a fuel source that is dangerous, (ironically) hard to transport, not renewable, and scarce is, in some ways, a matter of coincidence. That is, you may be surprised to discover that the first cars were, in fact, electric and not gasoline based. But whatever. Here we are, trying to crawl back from this horrible mistake while one of the world’s most powerful industries lobbies to prevent that from happening. It is what it is.

Sometimes you know the answer to a problem. And sometimes you know you can’t get there in one step. And so the solution is to take steps in the right direction, with an eye on the future. And that’s what the auto industry did, or I should say, what Toyota did, when it kicked off the hybrid automobile sub-market with the first Prius in the late 1990s. At first, it was a curiosity. Then it was a sensation. And then it had lots of competition. Today, plug-in hybrids provide a thematic stepping stone between the gasoline world of the past and the electric world of the future.

Not that electric vehicles are the be-all, end-all; there are certainly sustainability and scarcity issues with batteries too. But don’t miss the point here. Hybrids can help us move forward. What was once a curiosity is today not just accepted and commonplace but hardly worth talking about. They simply exist and are successful.

But I’m not here today to chat about cars, though that topic remains a minor passion of mine. Instead, I’d like to use the example of hybrid cars to frame how similar hybrid personal computing devices can help us likewise transition from less capable pasts to more versatile futures. And how, as with the automotive industry, these things often start out as curiosities. And it’s interesting to see which succeed and move into a place of not just acceptance but success.

To frame this further, I am of course the original “right tool for the job” guy. That is, back in 2013, my experiences with hybrid computing devices—one device that tried to replace two or more devices—resulted in repeated failures. “One device that does everything is one device that does everything poorly,” I concluded. I told a story about using a Palm PDA with a folding hardware keyboard to write an article on a flight, and of how my enchantment with this mixed usage turned to horror when some turbulence jostled the device just enough off of its keyboard connector that it froze and I lost everything I had written. It’s just a single example, I know, and a specific one. But I still remember this clearly, and I followed it up with multiple similar mistakes.

In the end, common sense prevailed: I’m a big guy, and carrying a laptop, a tablet, and a smartphone on trips isn’t a big deal. Each serves its purpose, and each is optimized for specific use cases.

And yet, the hybrid dream lives on.

And let’s not forget that laptops are hybrid devices: they’re PCs with built-in screens and batteries. And while that doesn’t sound so special today, given that laptops are by far the most popular PC form factor, it’s important to remember that this is a fairly recent development. Microsoft was founded on the promise of “a computer on every desk and in every home.” And in 1975, that wasn’t just futuristic, it was radical, as there were no truly personal computers at the time.

But today, that vision is laughably quaint. The very notion that one needs to go to a special room in one’s house to access a PC, and that that power and functionality are simply unavailable to you when you are anywhere else, is as old-fashioned as the horses and buggies that predated automobiles. It’s literally from another time. It seems almost sepia-toned.

The PC’s march to portable ubiquity paralleled the growth of other personal technology products, most of which were likewise portable or made to be over time, including videogames, digital cameras and camcorders, music and video players, e-readers, smartphones, and tablets. That many of these were more ideal than the PC for specific tasks relegated the PC to a productivity work focus, which I personally appreciate. And it is perhaps not coincidental that Microsoft’s mission statement finally evolved during this time. Today, it’s oddly vague but delightfully productivity-focused: “Our mission is to empower every person and every organization on the planet to achieve more.”

Good, bad, or indifferent, this mission statement acknowledges the heterogeneous reality of the world in which we now live. The PC isn’t the only personal computing device, and it’s not even the central personal computing device. It’s just one of many personal computing devices that we all use every day for various purposes. Computing used to require a single specialized device in a single room, but today it’s almost literally everywhere, a pervasive presence that we often don’t even explicitly notice.

Not surprisingly, there’s been some overlap. Some successful, some less so.

Smartphones have replaced PCs as the central personal computing device in our lives and, for many people, it’s the only important personal computing device. Like the PC from two decades ago, the smartphone is a Swiss Army Knife of functionality, a single thing that does so much. It is a better fulfillment of Bill Gates’ claim for the PC, that, thanks to the “magic of software,” it was the most versatile device ever invented. The PC is great, for sure, but the smartphone is so versatile that it makes the PC look like a wooden wheel. It has its uses.

But the companies that make smartphones and the platforms that run on them have long imagined a future in which the smartphone, a device that already eliminated the need for so many special-use devices, could do even more. Microsoft and Samsung, for example, have both championed solutions in which a smartphone could be connected to a dock with attached keyboards, mice, and displays, turning the phone into a PC of sorts. So instead of carrying around your computer in the form of a comparatively bulky laptop, you could just carry it around in your pocket. (A pocket that one day might not need to carry separate keys and wallets, too.)

It’s … an interesting idea. But this hybrid use case has essentially failed. Microsoft gave up on Windows Phone and its Continuum solution, and then it killed the software platform that enabled the hybrid apps that would have bridged phone and PC (and tablet) form factors. And Samsung continues to plod along with its own DeX solution, which now works wirelessly too, but you don’t really hear much about this technology, and it’s absolutely fair to claim that very few people use it. And whatever its success, this is a capability that should come from the platform maker—Google—and not a hardware OEM.

On the tablet front, people have been trying to turn these simple, content consumption-focused devices into hybrid PCs since Steve Jobs announced the first iPad in 2010. (Perhaps not coincidentally, I tell the story of a wannabe iPad warrior, bogged down by all the accessories he had to cart around, in that The Right Tool for the Job editorial. “I can get work done on the iPad,” he claimed. “Then you’re not working hard enough,” I retorted. Remember, this was 2013.)

There have been two major pushes to hybridize tablets.

The first came from Microsoft, which had been unsuccessfully pushing another hybrid form factor, the Tablet PC, since 2002. Faced with the push to mobile computing and the resulting deemphasis of the PC, Microsoft betrayed its PC maker partners and set out to hobble Apple by creating the Surface lineup of PCs in 2012. And its first two models were tablets, one a device called Surface RT and the other a PC called Surface Pro. To say that both could be outfitted with keyboard covers and smartpens is an understatement: the two devices were almost inarguably useless without them.

Surface struggled at first, but it found its footing with Surface Pro 3, the version that formalized the successful form factor that Microsoft and its many copiers still use today. With Surface Pro 3, Microsoft acknowledged that it was the PC (with its hardware keyboard) and not the device (with its ridiculous flat touch cover keyboard) that might succeed, and it offered a larger and 3:2 aspect ratio display, a dramatically better kickstand, a thinner and lighter form factor, and other improvements. It was marketed as “the tablet that can replace your laptop.”

Surface Pro obviously builds off the work that Microsoft previously did with Tablet PC, though few noticed. But it also improves on that earlier idea by acknowledging innovations that came from elsewhere. Most notably, the multitouch displays that Apple popularized—but did not invent—with the iPhone and iPad. Indeed, the move to multitouch was seen as so important that Microsoft and its PC maker partners, by then mollified by Surface’s relative lack of success in the market, started adding this capability to portable PCs of all kinds, including traditional laptop form factors. Whether they needed it or not.

Microsoft never sold enough Surface computers to disrupt the market, but the Surface Pro form factor is undeniably successful: every PC maker issued some copycat product at some point, and while this tablet 2-in-1 form factor doesn’t dominate, it’s established and well-understood. Like a hybrid car today, a Surface Pro won’t turn heads because it just seems normal. And while I don’t want to exaggerate, I think we should acknowledge this success, just as we should credit Apple with formalizing what we now call the Ultrabook form factor with its second-generation MacBook Air in 2010.

Speaking of which, the second major push to hybridize tablets came from Apple, a company whose CEO, Tim Cook, once railed against Surface Pro and its hybrid software platform by claiming that “you can converge a toaster and a refrigerator, but those aren’t going to be pleasing to the user.” Leaving aside the obvious criticism—converging a toaster and an oven has in fact been quite successful—the more important point is that Cook’s Apple released its own hybrid tablet with the iPad Pro, devices that can be outfitted with Surface-like keyboard covers and smartpens and used like laptops. And then expanded that capability to all iPads while it improved its software to better work in this usage scenario.

Yes, that’s ironic and hypocritical, but the key difference between Microsoft’s hybrid tablet approach and Apple’s is important, and it may play a major role in deciding which design wins in the end. Microsoft started with its complex and feature-rich Windows OS and tried to simplify it for new form factors, a mess that gave us such time-wasting miscues as Windows 8 and the Universal Windows Platform (UWP). But Apple started with the simpler and mobile-focused iOS and added more and more productivity and multitasking features over time, resulting in a (sort of) separate software platform in iPadOS.

We can debate which approach makes more sense, but there’s no need: both companies simply worked off their most successful client platform and adapted each to a new use case, which makes sense. That said, my gut tells me that Apple’s approach is superior because it is devoid of legacy technology deadwood, better optimized for mobile hardware platforms, and is entirely the result of new thinking. (Microsoft’s response was a renewed effort to make Windows run well on the more efficient Arm platform. Still a work in progress.)

The hybrid tablet form factor is an ongoing effort, and the jury is still out. PCs still outsell iPads by a wide margin, but most of those PCs are laptops, not tablet 2-in-1s like Surface Pro. But iPad dominates the market for tablets, and there is little doubt that Apple sells more iPads than the PC industry sells tablet 2-in-1s. But most of those iPads are probably used exclusively for consumption tasks, not productivity. Some are likely used for both. That’s true of PCs, too. On and on we go.

Over the past 10 years, none of these developments have made me question my original Right Tool for the Job assertion, though to be clear, I have literally never stopped trying to prove myself wrong. The closest I’ve gotten is the understanding that everyone’s needs are different and that certain form factors appeal to certain people because of whatever needs or wants. For example, a hybrid tablet of whatever stripe will appeal to an artist or someone who inexplicably still takes handwritten notes in the 21st century. I get that. But I have also been somewhat satisfied by the realization that these use cases are niche, not mainstream. Virtually everyone needs a smartphone. Most people need a PC for work. Some people like tablets for consumption tasks—reading, watching videos, etc.—because of the larger display (compared to a phone) and the improved portability (compared to a PC), and some very few use tablets like PCs, for productivity work. This all makes sense to me. This is, I guess, my world.

And yet, the edifice is starting to crumble thanks to the new market for folding smartphones, popularized by Samsung and its Galaxy Z Fold product line. These products have been copied by a growing list of challengers, mostly from China so far, but notably most recently by Google with the Pixel Fold. So in this way, the folding smartphone resembles Surface Pro, in the sense that this form factor has been formalized as a design and is now being honed over several generations of products. The question is whether it remains niche or can achieve the mass scale and success of the MacBook Air-inspired Ultrabook.

Before getting to that, I want to differentiate folding smartphones, as I think of them, from a related but very different device form factor that I’ll call the “flip smartphone,” as popularized (of course) by the Samsung Galaxy Z Flip. These devices are not hybrid devices, and they cannot replace two other devices. More pointedly, these devices are not the future. They are just a modern take on the flip phones we used in the pre-smartphone era, and while they are interesting and have their advantages and uses, they do not matter to this discussion.

Folding smartphones are fascinating on many levels. For years, we were treated to stories of the science fiction future in which paper newspapers would be replaced by a single sheet of foldable and rollable material that would display a newspaper page like a much more flexible e-reader. And in case it’s not clear, those stories neatly betray how long we’ve seen this coming future: paper newspapers are all but extinct today, replaced by websites, blogs, and social media, all of which are consumed in real-time on mobile devices.

But work on the display technology needed to make this future a reality continued unabated. And, today, the world’s top display manufacturers—like, yes, Samsung—have created production quality solutions that are being sold and used in the real world. (We’re even starting to see some bigger screen applications of this technology, as in the Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Fold, yet another unique take on a hybrid PC form factor.) Naturally, forward-leaning technology like this is unreliable and fragile at the beginning. This reality, combined with the experiential-based mistakes by reviewers and users who tried to remove what they thought was a screen protector from those early devices, led to early horror stories from the field.

Since then, the technology has improved, and for every doubter out there—most of whom have never seen, let alone touched, a folding smartphone—there is a happy user of folding smartphones, some of whom have upgraded over time to their second or even third device, having never experienced any issues. I assume those users understand that they, too, are sending a message, just like that Prius owner of 20 years ago: the future is happening. But this technology is still in its early days, too, as evidenced by the Ars Technica Pixel Fold review unit, which experienced a disaster unique to folding smartphones after just four days. To be fair, one wonders if this issue is related to Google’s v1 device and that company’s ongoing hardware reliability issues. It’s too early to say.

But the promise of the folding smartphone appears to be met. In my own short time with the Pixel Fold, I marveled at how quickly this hybrid form factor won me over, and, to be clear, I went into this as a skeptic with over two decades of experience reviewing PCs, tablets, smartphones, and devices of all kinds. I knew my wife would love it, as she’s wanted a folding smartphone for years, but I did not expect to fall in love. Indeed, I was pretty sure my ongoing mixed feeling about Pixel, triggered by my many experiences, would translate into similarly mixed feelings about the Pixel Fold, a device that also happens to be incredibly expensive, a hard fact that should end the debate for most.

But that did not happen. And this has triggered some self-reflection about why.

And as simplistic as this sounds, I think it boils down to a basic truth: the Pixel Fold is perhaps the first device I’ve ever used that shatters my Right Tool for the Job theory. It is literally one device that can do the job of two other devices—a smartphone and a tablet—and can do so without any egregious compromise. That is, it is “one device that does everything and one device that does everything well,” to riff on my previous conclusions. The only possible complaints—or observations—I can possibly level here are about price and battery life: it’s cheaper to buy a Pixel 7 Pro and Pixel Tablet than a single Pixel Fold, and while the Fold’s battery life has been curiously excellent (again, breaking with my Pixel experience-based expectations), it’s still one device with one battery.

That is not profound, and it does not change the fact that, as a single device, the Pixel Fold really does provide the benefit of two devices in a single form factor. This isn’t a theory anymore.

I hope you agree this is a big deal. It’s a big deal to me, certainly, because of all the experiences noted above. 20 years of theory upheld suddenly comes unwound. And you know what? I couldn’t be happier. In many ways, I’ve been waiting for this moment, wondering why it was taking so long.

In Ask Paul this past Friday, someone asked me whether folding smartphones would remain niche or whether they would go mainstream, with prices coming down over time. It is very clear to me that folding smartphones will replace today’s traditional flagship smartphones and establish themselves as the new premium form factor. And that over time, the cost of these foldable displays will come down, and that Samsung and others will bring this technology to less expensive smartphones too. In time, single-display smartphones will become as rare and unusual as flip phones. They will serve the poorest markets only. This feels inevitable.

In my response, I also touched on Surface Duo, and I know this is a sensitive topic for the Microsoft fans I certainly relate with. But I have always been clear about the issues with dual-screen devices like Surface Duo and how Microsoft’s marketing about two screens somehow leading to improved productivity was nonsense. Indeed, you don’t have to be a scientist to know that humans are easily distracted and that having two things happening side-by-side will lower productivity, not improve it. And I write that knowing that many readers have dual-screen PC setups. Bear with me on that one for a moment.

More important, it was clear from the get-go that the Duo was just a placeholder, a thing that Microsoft released because it could, and that the real future of this type of device is folding displays, not two displays. We knew this because Microsoft released Surface Duo after the Galaxy Z Flip, which cast a poor light on Microsoft’s manufacturing prowess: two discrete displays may not be as usable as a single folding display, but such a setup is at least easier to make and more reliable. And we knew this because, duh, obviously.

Here’s the thing. There are instances in which having two apps side-by-side does make sense, and that’s as true on PCs as it is elsewhere. For example, I will often have an Apple keynote on one side of my PC screen and Twitter on the other side so that I can riff on the silliness in real time; this could be achieved with two displays, of course, and a less acerbic example might be a person taking notes during a presentation. Whatever. The point is that dual screens can make sense when one of them is source material for work you’re doing in the other rather than being something that distracts you from that work.

But this kind of use case doesn’t justify a dual-screen smartphone. Instead, this kind of device is an example of optimizing for the occasional, which is impractical. Instead, you should optimize for the everyday. And every day, everyone, and I mean literally everyone, spends all of their time (in rare cases, the vast majority of their time) just doing one thing on a phone. Indeed, one of the unique characteristics of smartphones is that, billions of apps later, most apps just do one thing, they’re single-use tasks. Apps that do multiple things—like the Microsoft 365 (formerly Office) and Microsoft Outlook apps—are notable exceptions. (Maybe it’s not coincidental that both the examples I thought of are from Microsoft, but that’s beside the point.)

Here’s why this is important: with a Pixel Fold or other folding smartphone, you can use the exterior display for many or most tasks. It will just work like any other smartphone. Or, you can open up the device and enjoy its larger, folding internal display. This display gives apps more room, which is useful, and not just for people with middle-aged eyes like mine. It’s a better experience for all kinds of apps, from consumption-style reading and video apps to games to productivity solutions and whatever else. But this display can also replicate the side-by-side app experience you get with a dual-display device in those rare instances in which you need such a thing. It’s optimized for the everyday, but it’s also a superset. It’s more versatile. It’s better.

You know, it’s more than better. It’s so much better that it makes that other thing almost pointless. In this scenario, you might argue that it is the dual display device that is the hybrid, the thing that bridges the past (a single slab of glass) with the future (a folding display device that can replace a smartphone and a tablet). But the folding smartphone is also a hybrid, the more important hybrid, because it combines the capabilities of two devices and removes the need for one of them. In this sense, the folding smartphone is the future, and it’s here now. You may want to hold out for all the right reasons—too expensive, ongoing concerns about reliability—but we should collectively admit that this is happening and is inevitable.

And maybe you’re still resisting. You don’t use or want a tablet, and so the notion of a new form factor that is defined in part by a use case you don’t currently enjoy seems fanciful. You carry a smartphone and a PC, and that’s it, in other words. I see you. But a folding display smartphone is still a material improvement over the traditional smartphone form factor. This is still an upgrade from what you’re doing today. You are still included in this future.

Again, it’s still early days and there are good reasons to wait. But it’s happening. The folding smartphone is the right tool for multiple jobs, a natural but exciting extension of the versatility of the traditional smartphone, and one that will extend the dominance of this device type over the personal computing market for some time to come.

You gotta love a good hybrid.