Tag Archives: foldable

Nobody Expected a $28 Folding Clipboard to Be This Well Thought Out

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The clipboard is one of those objects that hasn’t changed much because the problem it solves seems too simple to revisit. It holds paper flat while you write, and that’s essentially the brief it’s been fulfilling for decades. The rigidity that makes it useful is also what makes it awkward to carry. Most are sized for A4, and that footprint doesn’t get smaller just because you’re done with it.

Lihit Lab’s A-2068 Foldable Clipboard addresses that directly. It’s an A4-sized clipboard that folds in half at the midpoint, reducing its footprint to A5 for transport, then locks back open flat and rigid when you’re ready to write again. A slider on the side controls the fold, and the result is something that behaves like a proper clipboard when you need it and a compact document folder when you don’t.

Designer: Lihit Lab.

The slider is the mechanical decision that makes the whole thing work. Once the board is open, it locks both halves flush and stiff, so there’s no flex in the writing surface while you’re standing or moving around. That matters on a jobsite, at a site survey, or anywhere you’re filling out forms away from a desk. Clipboards flex when they shouldn’t, and this one addresses that specifically.

The clip is a lock-function type that can be loaded while the board is open, so clipping down a stack of pages doesn’t require holding the board shut with one hand while fumbling with the other. A paper stopper at the bottom keeps document edges flush when the board is folded closed, and a rubber band wraps around the outside during transit so nothing comes loose inside a bag.

The body is polypropylene, with the binder and slider made from ABS resin, and the elastic band from polyester and polyurethane. Open, it measures 234mm x 339mm and is just 14mm thick. Folded, the height drops to 165mm. The clip holds up to 15 sheets of copy paper, which covers most field documentation. It comes in three colorways: Terracotta Orange, Slate Blue, and Ivory.

Most people who regularly carry clipboards to fieldwork have had to choose between the convenience of a flat writing surface and the awkwardness of a full-sized board in a bag. Storage clipboards try to solve this by adding internal compartments, but they tend to get thicker rather than smaller. The A-2068 takes a different route by reducing the form factor through folding rather than adding more material around the sides.

The A-2068 retails for ¥1,300 in Japan and is available internationally through specialty stationery shops at around $28. It’s the kind of update to a familiar object that’s easy to overlook until you’ve actually had to carry a full-sized clipboard across a job site and back again. The writing surface, the clip, and the capacity are all exactly what you’d expect. It just happens to fold in half.

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The Titanium Chess Set That’s Also the Best EDC Object We’ve Seen

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Chess has had a genuine cultural resurgence lately, finding its way into cafés, offices, and living rooms that wouldn’t have bothered with it a decade ago. But for all the renewed enthusiasm, the portable chess set hasn’t really evolved. Most options are flimsy plastic affairs that feel like an afterthought, with the same old problem of pieces scattering the moment you set the bag down.

BESIDAR’s Victory approaches the problem differently, treating the portable chessboard as an engineering challenge rather than a sizing exercise. It’s built entirely from titanium, uses a mechanical folding structure that collapses the board into something genuinely pocketable, and relies on magnets to keep all 64 pieces organized and secure. It also happens to support several other games on the same set of pieces, which we’ll get to.

Designer: BESIDAR

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The defining feature is the board itself. Victory’s playing surface consists of multiple hinged titanium panels that interlock mechanically, letting you fold and unfold them endlessly without resistance or wear. It sounds like a gimmick until you have it in your hands, because the action is satisfying in the way a good infinity cube is. You’ll end up folding it between moves or absentmindedly during a thinking pause.

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All 64 pieces attach magnetically to the board’s surface, staying in place during play and holding firm when the board is folded for transport. The two board halves also connect to each other magnetically, so the whole set becomes one compact, integrated unit. There’s nothing loose rattling around, no separate case to hunt for, and no tedious piece-sorting ritual before you can sit down and actually start playing.

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The two-sided pieces also give the set a wider range of use than expected. One face carries a surface pattern while the other is a solid contrasting color, and that choice alone supports chess, Go, Gomoku, international checkers, and Othello. That’s five strategy games from one set of 64 pieces, with the folding board itself counting as a sixth mode when you just want something satisfying to fidget with.

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What makes Victory feel genuinely premium is the material. Both board and pieces are CNC-machined from titanium, giving the set a density and tactile precision that plastic travel versions can’t replicate. It’s cool to the touch, holds its finish, and doesn’t feel like something you’d toss carelessly into a bag. Left on a desk between games, it reads less like a board game and more like a well-made EDC object.

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At 5.24 inches (133.20 mm) across and just 7 mm thick when folded, Victory fits in a pocket without creative gymnastics. The two-board structure means each player’s pieces are already arranged on their own half, so you unfold, connect the two sections, and you’re ready in seconds. Whether it’s a café table, a park bench, or a few spare minutes between meetings, there’s no setup ritual to slow things down.

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What you end up with is a chess set that’s genuinely interesting to own, even if you’re not a serious player. The mechanical folding keeps your hands busy, the titanium build makes it worth displaying, and the magnets mean you can bag it and go without a second thought. It won’t replace the full-sized board on your shelf, but for everything else, it’s the set that actually comes with you.

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Samsung’s Best Foldable Has 4,400mAh, Vivo’s Has 7,000

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Foldable phones have gone from novelties to genuine daily drivers, but the category still wrestles with two persistent complaints: battery anxiety and cameras that don’t quite match their non-folding counterparts. The big names have made progress on both fronts, though rarely at the same time, and rarely without some trade-off in thickness, weight, or price. That tension has defined the foldable experience for years.

The Vivo X Fold 6 takes aim at both problems at once, arriving with a 7,000mAh silicon-carbon battery and a 200MP ZEISS-tuned main camera on a form factor that still manages to fold flat into your pocket. It’s a foldable that doesn’t ask you to pick between photography and endurance, and the spec sheet makes a strong case that Vivo isn’t bluffing on either front.

Designer: Vivo

That 7,000mAh figure deserves some context. Samsung’s Galaxy Z Fold 7 packs a 4,400mAh battery, a 2,600mAh gap that isn’t a rounding error. The X Fold 6’s cell is a silicon-carbon design, which keeps the phone from becoming unreasonably thick despite the capacity. It charges at 80W over wire and 40W wirelessly, so topping up on a desk or a hotel nightstand doesn’t take long.

The camera system is where things get genuinely interesting. The 200MP main sensor, which measures 1/1.4 inches and opens at f/1.68, is ZEISS-tuned and sits alongside a 50MP ultrawide and a 50MP 3x periscope telephoto. That telephoto sensor, a Sony LYT-602, is larger than the one found in competing foldables from Samsung, OPPO, and Honor. Vivo’s Blueprint V3+ imaging chip handles processing duties across the setup.

There’s also a first for the X Fold series: support for an external camera lens. The second-generation 200mm telephoto extender, which clips onto the 3x camera, enables native 8.3x shots and lossless 17x captures. For video, the phone records at up to 8K and supports 4K/60fps Dolby Vision, along with film styles borrowed from Vivo’s higher-end lineup. Two 20MP front cameras, one per display, handle video calls.

Unfold the device, and you’re greeted by an 8.02-inch AMOLED inner display, powered by a Samsung M14 panel, with a peak brightness of 5,000 nits and a variable refresh rate between 1Hz and 120Hz. The cover screen is 6.51 inches. Both carry IP58 and IP59 ratings for dust and water resistance, which actually puts the X Fold 6 ahead of Samsung’s current flagship on that particular front.

OriginOS 6 Fold is built specifically for the foldable experience rather than simply scaled up from a phone UI. The upgraded Atomic Workbench makes keeping multiple apps side by side less of a chore, with AI tools for transcription, file suggestions, and document summaries. The Dimensity 9500 Super Edition, the first MediaTek chip in an X Fold flagship, does the heavy lifting across all of it.

The X Fold 6 launched in China starting at CNY 7,999 (around $1,180) for the 12GB/256GB variant, with the top-tier 16GB/1TB Black Gold Edition at CNY 11,299 (roughly $1,660). A global release date hasn’t been announced yet. It comes in Blue Hole, Salt Lake, Polar Night, and Black Gold, and its hinge is rated for 600,000 folds, which should cover years of daily use.

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The Desk That Leans on Your Wall and Weighs Less Than Your Bag

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Most of us have made peace with the idea that a proper workspace takes up space. It claims a corner, demands a room, or at least stakes out a permanent spot in your home where it will sit indefinitely, collecting cables and coffee cups. The Leandesk, designed by Cornwall-based Henry Swanzy, politely disagrees.

The concept is elegantly counterintuitive: a sit-stand desk that doesn’t sit on the floor. Instead, it leans against a wall or window using nothing more than physics, weight distribution, and a pair of non-marking rubber pads to hold itself in place. No drilling. No brackets. No landlord negotiations. The harder you lean into it, the tighter its grip. It’s the kind of mechanic that makes you wonder why we’ve been bolting things to walls for centuries.

Designer: Henry Swanzy

Swanzy’s background is in cabinet-making, which might explain why the Leandesk feels so considered in its construction. The desk is built from FSC-certified bamboo and uses Dyneema cord, a material borrowed from performance marine sports, to achieve its exceptional strength-to-weight ratio. The whole thing weighs under 8kg, yet it’s independently load-tested to hold 65kg. You can raise or lower the working surface, or tilt it to any angle, by simply pulling a cord through hidden alloy cleats, a mechanism drawn from maritime rigging. No motors, no buttons, no app required.

That last point matters more than it might seem. The design world has a complicated relationship with simplicity right now. We keep layering technology onto things that didn’t need it, calling it innovation when it’s often just addition. Swanzy went the other direction entirely. His philosophy is to pare down to essential elements and be as efficient with materials as possible, and the Leandesk is the full expression of that thinking.

The sustainability piece is genuinely impressive, and not in a vague, aspirational way. Over 97% of Leandesk’s components are reusable or recyclable, and its carbon footprint has been independently assessed at as low as 10.7 kg CO₂e over five years. Manufacturing runs on solar power, and there’s a take-back programme at end of life. It’s the rare product where the environmental claims have actual numbers attached to them.

When the workday is done, the desk folds flat to just 50mm deep. It can slide behind a door, tuck under a sofa, or hang on its own dedicated wall hook. That last detail, the fact that storage was designed into the product rather than treated as an afterthought, says a lot about how Swanzy approached the whole project. This is a desk that was designed to disappear when you need it to, which makes it remarkably well-suited to how many of us actually live.

It’s worth pausing on that, because it runs against a trend. The dominant image of the home office is still something maximalist: a dedicated room, a substantial L-shaped desk, a monitor stand, a ring light. The pandemic made that aspiration common, and the furniture industry followed accordingly. But a lot of people are working out of apartments, spare bedrooms that double as guest rooms, and living spaces that were never meant to absorb an office. The Leandesk was conceived exactly for those realities.

The desk is available in two widths, Original at 860mm and Compact at 660mm, both under 8.5kg. It has picked up recognition from serious design critics, including a longlist from Dezeen Awards, which is not the kind of accolade handed out for novelty alone.

I’ll be honest: I don’t think every person needs a Leandesk. If you have a dedicated office and love your setup, this isn’t for you. But if you’ve ever stared at a bulky desk that eats your room and wondered whether furniture has to work this hard against you, the Leandesk is a genuinely interesting answer. It’s proof that the best design solution isn’t always more. Sometimes it’s just less, leaned against a wall, and ready to fold away before dinner.

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A Folding Chair Designed to Stay Out, Not Hide Away

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I have a complicated relationship with folding chairs. Not a hostile one, just complicated. They are one of those objects that exist in a permanent state of apology: useful when you need them, embarrassing when you don’t, and almost always the first thing you hide before company arrives. The folding chair has never quite managed to transcend its reputation as a placeholder for “real” furniture, and for decades, most designers haven’t really bothered trying. That’s what made the Kael Walnut Folding Chair by Esspur stop me mid-scroll.

It doesn’t announce itself as a folding chair. If you saw it sitting in someone’s dining room, you’d probably assume it was a permanent fixture, a considered purchase, a statement piece. The seat and curved backrest are solid walnut, warm in tone and shaped to suggest permanence rather than portability. The frame is polished stainless steel, slim and structured without feeling cold or industrial. Taken together, the chair reads more like something you’d find in a well-edited boutique hotel lobby than something you’d unfold for a dinner party and tuck back behind a door before your guests could notice. The proportions are right. The materials are at least photographically convincing. And the overall silhouette holds a kind of quiet confidence that most folding chairs never come close to.

Designer: Esspur

The design carries echoes of mid-century classics, and those references don’t feel like a stretch. There’s a rotational elegance to how the chair collapses that feels deliberate, almost theatrical, as if the whole point of the folding mechanism is to be watched. That’s not a common quality in budget-adjacent furniture. Most folding chairs fold in the most graceless way possible, a series of clicks and reversals that feel like you’re solving a problem rather than using a product. The Kael seems to understand that the fold is part of the design, not an afterthought.

Esspur is a brand with virtually no history and no disclosed location, and their online presence raises more questions than it answers. The product description calls the seat and backrest solid wood in one place, then references veneer craftsmanship in the fine print. I think that’s worth sitting with for a moment. We live in an era of very convincing product photography, and the gap between how something looks on a screen and how it feels in your hands has never been wider. The walnut might be veneer rather than solid. The steel might feel lighter than it looks. These are legitimate concerns, and if you’re the kind of person who expects heirloom-grade furniture, this probably isn’t it. Shopping from an unknown brand with no verifiable track record is always a calculated risk.

But here’s the thing I keep turning over: the idea itself is nearly flawless. Whatever the material quality ends up being, someone thought carefully about the problem of the folding chair and came up with a solution that doesn’t feel like a compromise. The design respects the object. It doesn’t try to disguise the fact that it folds; the mechanism is visible, structural, part of the aesthetic. But it also doesn’t apologize for it. That’s a harder line to walk than it looks.

For anyone living in a city apartment, a studio, or a home where space is a constant negotiation, the Kael makes a quiet argument: good design shouldn’t require a permanent footprint. The best extra chair is one you’d want to leave out even when you don’t need it. Most folding chairs fail that test spectacularly. This one, at least in concept, passes with something to spare.

Whether Esspur refines the build quality over time or quietly disappears from the internet, the design itself has already done something useful. It’s asked the right question: what if the folding chair wasn’t the awkward option, but the intentional one? It’s a question the furniture industry hasn’t had much urgency to answer. Maybe now it does.

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Honor Magic V6 Review: Big battery, slim body, refined experience

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PROS:


  • Slim and comfortable design

  • Bright and crisp internal and external displays

  • Outstanding battery capacity, backed by fast wired and wireless charging

  • Great main and telephoto camera for a foldable

CONS:


  • Feels more like a small upgrade over the Magic V5 than a major generational leap

  • Ultrawide camera is decent, but not as impressive as the main and telephoto cameras</li?

RATINGS:

AESTHETICS
ERGONOMICS
PERFORMANCE
SUSTAINABILITY / REPAIRABILITY
VALUE FOR MONEY

EDITOR'S QUOTE:

Honor may not have radically changed the formula, but the Magic V6 shows just how far thoughtful refinement can go.

Honor unveiled its latest foldable, the Honor Magic V6, at MWC 2026 back in March. Now, three months later, the phone is starting its global rollout in Malaysia and Singapore. That shift from launch event to retail availability is where the real test begins, because foldables have reached a point where being thin or flashy is no longer enough on its own.

The Magic V6 does not completely rethink what Honor has already been doing with its book-style foldables. Instead, it builds on a formula that already worked well, pushing it further with a bigger battery, a slim and comfortable design, and a hardware package that feels unusually complete for a foldable. After spending time with it, the Honor Magic V6 feels less like a dramatic reinvention and more like a careful refinement of what Honor already got right.

Designer: HONOR

Aesthetics

Foldables still have a habit of looking oddly cautious. For devices built around one of the most dramatic ideas in modern consumer tech, they often arrive in the safest shades possible. Black, grey, silver, maybe a muted blue if a brand is feeling adventurous. The color choice itself is usually limited, which can make many foldables feel more sterile than stylish. Honor is one of the few brands that has tried to bring a little more personality into the category, and the Magic V6 sticks with that idea.

At first glance, the Magic V6 looks very similar to the Magic V5. The overall silhouette is familiar, the octagonal camera module is still there, and even the color direction feels like a continuation rather than a reset. This is clearly not a redesign for the sake of it. Honor seems comfortable with the look it has established for the Magic V line, so the V6 feels more like a polished follow-up than a fresh visual statement.

The finishes do a lot of the work in giving the phone its character. Honor offers the Magic V6 in four colors, and they feel more thought-through than the usual selection in this category. The red version I received is the most striking, with a soft-touch finish, a subtle hairline pattern, a gold frame, and a matching gold camera ring that make it feel a little warmer and more expressive than most foldables. The gold version goes in a different direction with a crisscross pattern that gives the back more texture and a slightly dressier look. If you want something more restrained, the white and black versions are there too.

Honor has also paid attention to the accessories. Each color comes with a matching case with a built-in kickstand, while the optional Special Edition case adds a bit more flair. Designed with Yoni Alter, it uses red aramid fiber and a colorful mosaic-style horse motif, while also adding built-in magnetic support. It is a small detail overall, but it suits the phone. The Magic V6 may not change Honor’s foldable design language, but it does show that the company is still putting real thought into how this series looks and feels.

Ergonomics

The ergonomics feel more like a refinement of the previous model, and I think that is a good thing. To me, the Magic V5 was already the most ergonomic book-style foldable around, so Honor did not really need to rethink the formula. What it has done instead is rework the internal architecture to fit what is currently the biggest battery in a foldable phone while still keeping the Magic V6 among the thinnest in the category.

There are slight differences depending on the color. The white version is the thinnest and lightest, measuring 156.7 x 74.5 x 8.75 mm when folded and just 4.0 mm when unfolded, with a weight of 219g. The other color variants are slightly thicker at 9.0 mm folded and 4.1 mm unfolded, and they weigh 224g.

In use, the Magic V6 still feels like one of the most comfortable foldables around. The hinge feels secure and firm, and opening and closing it feels fluid and well-judged. The frame is now flat, but the edges are ever so slightly curved, so it does not dig into your hand. The volume rocker and the power button, which also doubles as the fingerprint scanner, are placed where they are easy to reach. You can also customize the double press on the power button, which is a nice little touch in daily use.

What I like most is that the Magic V6 does not really feel like a typical large book-style foldable when it is closed. Folded shut, it feels surprisingly close to a regular slab phone, which makes it much easier to use casually throughout the day. It is this kind of refinement that makes the Magic V6 so easy to live with day to day.

Performance

The Magic V6 is powered by the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5, which puts it right where a flagship should be in 2026. It is paired with 16GB of RAM and 512GB of storage, although other configurations are available depending on the market. There is no real issue here with multitasking or with playing demanding AAA titles. Apps open quickly, moving between tasks feels smooth, and the phone has the kind of power that lets the larger display feel properly useful rather than overambitious.

Software is often where foldables either come together or start to feel more awkward than they should. The Magic V6 runs MagicOS 10 based on Android 16, and as with Honor’s recent devices, the focus seems to be on giving users plenty of AI features and cross-platform connectivity. Honor is leaning quite hard into interconnectivity with Apple devices. Using Honor Connect, the Magic V6 supports two-way notification sync with iPhones and iPads, while an Apple Watch can display messages and notifications from both devices. Through Honor WorkStation, the phone can also connect to a Mac and act as an extension of the desktop environment, with support for wireless screen casting, content transfer, and one-tap file sharing, including original-format Moving Photo.

On a foldable, though, the more important question is whether the software makes good use of the larger screen, and here the Magic V6 feels well equipped. Multitasking on the V6 is solid. The inner display gives you enough room to run apps side by side without things feeling cramped, and the phone has more than enough power to keep everything moving smoothly. On a device like this, that matters just as much as raw specs, because a foldable only really makes sense if the larger screen feels genuinely useful in everyday use.

Honor has equipped the Magic V6 with a 6.52-inch 2420 x 1080 AMOLED outer screen and a 7.95-inch 2352 x 2172 AMOLED inner display, and both are vivid, sharp, and fluid. Both panels support a 1 to 120Hz LTPO refresh rate, with up to 5,000 nits on the inner display and 6,000 nits on the outer, alongside eye comfort features such as 4320Hz PWM dimming. In use, the displays are excellent. The crease is barely noticeable, though not quite as invisible as on Oppo’s Find N6. The stereo speakers are also plenty loud and punchy, which suits the phone well for video and games.

The Magic V6 comes with a 50MP main camera with an f/1.6 aperture and OIS, a 64MP telephoto camera with an f/2.5 aperture, a 1/2-inch sensor, and OIS, and a 50MP ultrawide. On paper, that is a solid setup for a foldable, especially in a category where cameras have often felt like one of the first compromises.

In practice, the main and telephoto cameras are both strong for a foldable. Images come out sharp, colors are pleasing, and the overall look tends to lean a little on the brighter side. The ultrawide is satisfactory, though it does not stand out in quite the same way as the other two cameras.

Battery life is one of the Magic V6’s biggest selling points. Honor has managed to fit a 6,660mAh silicon-carbon battery into a foldable that is still among the thinnest in its class, while the 1TB version in China goes even further with a 7,150mAh battery. That is a huge battery even by slab flagship standards, never mind in a foldable.

Charging is strong too, with support for 80W wired and 66W wireless charging on the global model. A foldable this slim with this much battery capacity and this level of charging support is still unusual, and it is a big part of what makes the Magic V6 feel so easy to trust as an everyday device.

Sustainability

When it comes to foldables, durability can still be a concern for some people. Honor is clearly aware of that. The outer screen uses silicon nitride-based Nano Crystal Shield glass with up to 5,600 ultra-precise coating layers, while the inner display uses UTG flexible glass and is said to be 33 percent more impact resistant than the Magic V5. It is also rated for 500,000 folds.

The Magic V6 also comes with IP68 and IP69 ratings, which is the kind of protection you would more often expect from a slab flagship than a foldable. Honor is also promising seven major OS updates, which helps strengthen the long-term ownership story. What would make that sustainability angle more complete is greater use of sustainable materials, which is still an area where Honor could do more.

Value

Value is always a tricky part of the conversation with foldables because these devices are expensive by nature. No one is buying something like the Magic V6 because it is a bargain. Honor is beginning its wider rollout in Malaysia and Singapore. In Malaysia, the Magic V6 is priced at RM 7,699 for the 16GB RAM and 512GB storage version, which works out to roughly US$1,920 at a simple direct conversion. At that price, it is still very much a premium purchase, but the hardware does a lot to justify it. You are getting a slim and comfortable design, strong performance, large and bright displays, a huge battery, fast charging, and a durability story that feels more complete than what many foldables have offered in the past.

Value still depends on what you want from a foldable. If battery life, ergonomics, and high-end hardware matter most to you, the Magic V6 makes a very strong case for itself. If software polish is your top priority, some rivals may still feel a little more mature. Even so, the Magic V6 feels like a foldable that gives you a lot of substance for the money, not just novelty.

Verdict

The Magic V6 feels like Honor refining a formula that was already working well. It does not try to reinvent the book-style foldable, but it improves on the parts that matter most. The design still has personality, the ergonomics are excellent, the displays are strong, and the battery is genuinely standout for this category. The main and telephoto cameras are also better than what many people might expect from a foldable, which helps round out the overall package.

It is not without a few caveats, though. The software still does not feel quite as polished as the very best in the category, and the price places it firmly in ultra-premium territory. Even so, the bigger picture is very easy to like. If you want a foldable that feels slim, practical, powerful, and unusually easy to live with, the Magic V6 makes a very convincing case for itself.

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Vertu AlphaFold starting at $6,880 makes the Galaxy Z Fold seem ultra-affordable

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When mainstream smartphone designs became too generic, the next evolution took the form of foldable phones. These devices, targeted towards power users who want the dual utility of a phone and a tablet in one, are quite popular and becoming mainstream, so much so that their look and feel have again come full circle and become boring. We do live in a pace-paced tech world where every next trend is longing for the next exciting evolution.

Making all the other foldables on the market feel boring and obsolete as far as design is concerned, the Vertu’s AI-powered folding smartphone is here for fat-pocketed tech whizzes who are willing to shell out anywhere between $6,880 to $46,880. For a price tag as exorbitant as that, the $3,000 Galaxy Z Trifold or the expected-to-be-pricey iPhone Fold also seems reasonable!

Designer: Vertu

The Hong Kong-based luxury premium smartphone maker has just dropped the Alphafold foldable, which is based on the reskinned Nubia Fold. If bling is your thing, the device goes perfectly well with your lavish lifestyle, even though it doesn’t boast the latest and greatest specifications, considering the eye-watering price tag. In the latter half of 2025, the brand released the AI-powered Agent Q phone, which was equally exorbitant, but this one hits different. The Android foldable comes with a business-oriented AI dubbed Hermes Agent that is tailored for completing productivity tasks thrown at it.

Things like managing workflows, schedules, and business tools, or simply identifying a sudden drop in sales attributed to hidden issues. Hermes can seamlessly interact with a suite of apps like Google’s tools, Amazon Shopping, Expedia, Booking.com, X, Facebook, WhatsApp, and many more. The agent works with the Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) software, organizing all your business-related activities into a single dashboard.

Vertu’s custom UI on top of the Android 15 layer manages all this for a custom solution. Since you’ll be sharing a lot of personal and professional data with the in-built AI, Vertu promises the device-level security systems via the A5 security chip only process the data locally, and sensitive information like financial transfers or assigning roles still requires the user’s permissions in real time. The maker extends the concierge service beyond the AI agent, offering human managers to handle needs such as booking private jets or gaining access to exclusive events.

Coming on to the hardware, AlphaFold comes with a primary creaseless folding display measuring 8.05 inches (2480 x 2200 pixel resolution), and an external screen that measures 6.53 inches (2748 x 1172 pixel resolution). Both the screens are LTPO OLED’s with a refresh rate of 120Hz, and shielded on the sides with the carbon fiber and titanium hinge that can withstand 650,000 folds. Powering the innards is the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 4 processor; however, we wished it had the latest Elite Gen 5 SoC. The CPU is mated to 16GB RAM and has a fixed storage capacity of 1TB. The phone gets a rear triple camera array including a 50-MP primary sensor, a 50-MP ultrawide camera, and a 5-MP telephoto lens. In the mix is a modest 20 MP selfie camera. The device gets a 6,500mAh silicon-carbon battery, which can be fast charged with a 68W wired charger, and wireless charging support.

Talking point of the smartphone is the use of premium materials in the back panel that is handcrafted from Calfskin (priced $6,880), or Italian alligator belly leather (price tag of $8,880 – $13,800), depending on the color and variant chosen. You can also all-in with Himalaya Gold IV or diamond inserts that’ll set you back $46,880. Have that amount of money to spare on a phone without breaking a sweat? Then you can pre-order it right away, globally.

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Galaxy Z Fold 7 Hit 4.2mm by Killing the S Pen: Worth the Trade?

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Foldables have spent the last two years chasing a simpler goal: to feel less like category experiments and more like normal premium phones that happen to open wider. Samsung pushed that idea hardest with the Galaxy Z Fold 7, officially measuring 4.2mm when unfolded and 215 grams in weight, making it the company’s slimmest and lightest book-style foldable yet, with thinness as the product’s defining promise.

That promise came with a quieter subtraction. Samsung removed S Pen support from the Galaxy Z Fold 7, cutting off a feature that had helped earlier Fold models feel connected to the company’s productivity-first identity. Nearly a year later, that choice carries more weight because the Fold 7 can now be judged as a finished design decision rather than a fresh flagship still riding its novelty.

Designer: Samsung

In practice, the Fold 7’s thinness changes behavior more than bragging rights. Reviews consistently described it as startlingly slim and easier to carry, suggesting Samsung had something more deliberate in mind than a good keynote number. The lighter frame, narrower pocket profile, and more usable 21:9 cover display all push toward the same goal: making the Fold feel less like a second device and more like your actual main one.

The missing stylus, though, changed the Fold 7’s identity as much as its feature list. On earlier Fold devices, pen support helped justify the large inner display as a workspace, somewhere to annotate documents, sketch ideas, and do precise work beyond just tapping through apps. The Galaxy Z Fold 7 doesn’t support S Pen in any form, which means the phone has let go of that precision-first promise entirely.

Outside reporting helps explain why Samsung made that call. T-Mobile’s comparison notes the company removed a layer from the inner display to help achieve the slimmer, lighter body, while others report Samsung cited low stylus adoption among Fold users to justify the cut. Even if that logic makes business sense, it still leaves the Fold 7 feeling like a foldable optimized for comfort over creative ambition.

Samsung also tried to reassure buyers that the thinner body wasn’t a weaker one. The Fold 7 uses a thicker Ultra-Thin Glass layer, a Grade 4 titanium lattice, new adhesive materials, and IP48 resistance, all meant to reinforce a slimmer chassis without making it feel fragile. Those details speak more clearly to Samsung’s engineering intent than to any definitive verdict on how the phone holds up over months of folding.

The rest of the hardware tells a similar story of selective advancement. Samsung paired the Fold 7 with Snapdragon 8 Elite for Galaxy and launched it on One UI 8 with Android 16, giving the device a solid performance base. The battery stayed at 4,400mAh, and the ultra-wide camera remained a 12MP unit alongside the more attention-grabbing 200MP main sensor. The phone moved forward, just not evenly.

That unevenness becomes more interesting when you consider where Samsung might be heading next. We’ve already covered early renders suggesting the Galaxy Z Fold 8 could bring back S Pen support and a bigger battery, at the cost of a thicker chassis. If those rumors hold, the Fold 7 starts to look less like the start of a permanent direction and more like a controlled experiment in subtraction.

Galaxy Z Fold8 Render

For buyers who want the most elegant Samsung foldable for everyday carry, the Fold 7 still makes a strong case. It’s the first Fold that genuinely reduced the physical friction of ownership without a compromise you’d notice daily. For former Note loyalists and pen-reliant users, though, the trade reads differently, because Samsung made the Fold 7 easier to live with by moving it away from the Fold line’s original ambition.

The post Galaxy Z Fold 7 Hit 4.2mm by Killing the S Pen: Worth the Trade? first appeared on Yanko Design.

Most Portable Monitors Are Rigid Slabs, This $1,299 One Folds

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Portable monitors have become a legitimate part of the modern mobile workspace, with countless options available across every price range. But almost all of them share one fundamental constraint: they’re flat, rigid panels in protective cases, indistinguishable from each other in form even when they vary in quality. The screen that travels in your bag looks exactly the same as it did before you packed it.

Foldable display technology has been reshaping the smartphone market for years, but making it work meaningfully for laptop accessories has proven far more complicated. Aura Displays’ Single Flex Pro Gen 1 is a portable monitor that does exactly that, introducing FlexMatrix™ technology that lets the screen bend, fold, and adapt to angles and surfaces that no rigid display can match.

Designer: Aura Displays

Consider what it actually means to carry a second screen around all day. With conventional portable monitors, you’re always working with the same fixed rectangle, propped up at the same angle, regardless of the surface. A display that folds to just 6.1 by 9.3 inches and opens flat in seconds turns that into a fundamentally different proposition: the form factor adapts to the space, not the other way around.

The actual display is a 13.3-inch AMOLED panel with a 1536×2048 resolution at a 3:4 aspect ratio, meaning it’s portrait-oriented rather than the standard widescreen format. That’s a deliberate choice for someone editing a document, annotating a PDF, or reviewing design layouts in a vertical workflow. The screen covers 117% of the NTSC color gamut, with a 2ms response time and touch input support built in.

AMOLED as a panel technology brings practical advantages worth noting. Contrast is technically infinite since each pixel generates its own light and can switch off entirely, so blacks are genuinely black rather than a deep gray approximation. For anyone reviewing color-critical artwork or working on dark-themed interfaces for long stretches, those aren’t trivial differences; they affect how accurately you read what’s on screen throughout the day.

The physical construction is built around pro-grade hinges and a premium aluminum chassis, keeping the whole unit to 1.54lb despite the structural complexity of a panel that needs to flex repeatedly without degrading. Folded, the monitor is just about 0.63 inches thick; unfolded, it drops to 0.31 inches. Connectivity runs entirely through USB-C, plug-and-play, with no drivers or software installations needed before you can start using it.

There’s also a 17-inch version in the works, currently in pre-production and expected to arrive in June 2026. That suggests Aura isn’t treating this as a one-off experiment but as the beginning of a product line built around this flexible form factor. The Gen 1 name further implies future revisions, which is a reasonable expectation for a product type that genuinely hasn’t existed before now.

The Single Flex Pro Gen 1 is on sale at $1,299, down from its regular $1,499 price, available in Midnight Black. It ships with a USB-C to USB-C cable and a USB-C to USB-A adapter, backed by a one-year warranty. For something claiming a genuine category first, that price reflects both the novelty of the technology inside and the engineering required to keep a flexible AMOLED panel reliable through daily use.

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PLANK Made a Folding Chair You’d Never Want to Put Away

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Folding chairs have a reputation problem. For most of us, they conjure up images of bare banquet halls, plastic legs scraping across gymnasium floors, or that wobbly stack in the back of a relative’s garage. They are furniture by necessity, not by choice. So when a design studio manages to make one that you’d genuinely want to keep out in your living room, it’s worth paying attention.

That’s exactly what PLANK and designers Matteo Thun and Benedetto Fasciana have done with the Theo folding chair, quietly one of the most interesting pieces to come out of Salone del Mobile Milano 2026 this past April. Not because it does something shocking or avant-garde, but because it does something much harder: it makes the utilitarian feel considered.

Designers: Matteo Thun and Benedetto Fasciana for PLANK

PLANK has been at this since 1953, and that legacy shows in how Theo is built. The frame is solid oak, which already puts it in a different category from the folding chairs most of us know. The seat and backrest are made from molded plywood, shaped with a gentle curve that reads as both ergonomic and graceful. The folding mechanism uses natural or black oxidized stainless steel, and it integrates into the structure so cleanly that you almost forget it’s a functional joint and not just a detail. The chair opens and closes without any of the awkward fuss you’d expect. It simply works, and it looks good doing it.

I’ve always believed that the real test of a design isn’t how it performs in ideal conditions but how well it disappears into a life that isn’t perfectly curated. Most furniture is designed with a room in mind. Theo was designed with reality in mind. It’s built for contract spaces, meaning restaurants, event venues, conference rooms, places where chairs get used hard and stored constantly. But the visual language doesn’t give that away. If you didn’t know, you’d assume it was a permanent resident of whatever room it happened to be in.

The finish options only add to that versatility. You can get Theo in natural or stained oak veneer, or in a matte open-pore lacquer in Walnut, Brown Red, Olive Green, or Black. Each feels deliberate rather than decorative. The seat cushion options go even further: a 100% wool Moessmer Dolo Loden fabric in four colors, or Dani Florida leather in 96 colors. That last number sounds excessive until you realize it’s actually kind of brilliant. It’s the difference between a chair that fits into a space and one that was made for it.

There’s also a companion Transport Trolley that was developed alongside Theo, designed to stack and move up to eight chairs at once. It’s a practical addition that rounds out the system nicely, especially for the hospitality and event sectors where Theo will likely see the most use. But even outside those contexts, the Trolley signals something important about how PLANK approaches design: everything has to work together, not just look good in isolation.

Matteo Thun is no stranger to pieces that carry a quiet authority. He’s had a long career built on the idea that good design should be sustainable, functional, and beautiful in equal measure, and Theo reflects all three. The fact that PLANK uses solid wood and always-recyclable materials isn’t incidental. It’s the whole point. Longevity is designed in from the start, not marketed as an afterthought.

What makes Theo genuinely compelling is how little it asks of you. It doesn’t demand a particular aesthetic or a specially styled room. It doesn’t need to be the centerpiece. It can be stacked in a closet and brought out for dinner parties, or it can live at the head of a table year-round, and it holds up either way. That’s a rare quality in furniture, and it’s even rarer in a folding chair.

The best designs tend to solve problems you didn’t realize had elegant solutions. Theo is a folding chair that looks like it was never trying to be anything else, and that, more than any other detail, is the thing that makes it worth talking about.

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