Stop making slab phones rugged: if you want to impress me, armor-plate foldables instead

To those who'd say that a group's progress starts with the individual's triumphs and progress: yes, you're completely right. The Motorola Edge 50 could be seen as a remarkable device on its own. However, when it's put in the context of the phone industry as a whole – and especially put next to the fragile foldables – it's a totally different picture.

See, the Motorola Edge 50 didn't decide on its own to become rugged to the point it could be cast in the 1987 state-of-the-art Predator hit flick alongside Schwarzenegger. No. It was created that way.



The people who made it tough have decided to do so. They deliberately said: "Hey, let's release another foldable with no dust protection! Instead, we could focus on how to make slab mid-rangers and flagships way sturdier!"

And so it went.

Weak foldables are sending you an SOS

While the price is obviously one of the reasons we're not going through a major Fold/Flip pandemic right now, there's more to it.

People – at least, those who care to inform themselves before throwing several hundred $$$ (or more) for a foldable – are reluctant to get a bending handset because of their fragility.

Sure, handling gadgets carefully helps a lot, but there's not much that you can do about your brand-new Motorola Razr Plus (2024) that lacks dust protection of any kind. Its IPX8 rating means that there's some water protection certification, but nothing (hence the "X") to counter those pesky dust particles.

Big screens, big silicon brains, big problems

As much as I love what modern day phones and their silicon brains can do, I can't deny that there's a part of me that will always long for the dumb phone Nokia era.

Nokia's iconic 6310i model (from the year 2002) could not provide you with dubious TikTok videos, but then again, this could result in you not being a part of the current youth mental health crisis.

Instead, dumb phones gave us peace of mind. Of course, I'm glorifying things a bit – we were also worried about damaging our phones. It's just that you didn't get apoplectic and foaming at the mouth when you dropped your phone to the ground.

There's no point in looking back to that particular era, though: we've learned to live with these fragile rectangular screens, and there's no going back now. We're almost through with rectangular slab phones, as well, and we're on the verge of riding the foldables wave (the next big thing).

However, a little bit of dust protection will be greatly appreciated.