Samsung finally made a folding device I can get behind. No, not a phone. I’m still unconvinced by foldable phones – doubly so by the ones designed so you can run two apps simultaneously.
I think one app running at once is often too much for a phone, given how much mine steals my attention. And I’m also not talking about the Flexible Cabinbag, a massive folding tablet that can disguise itself as a briefcase, like the world’s most stupid Transformer. Instead, the folding gadget that’s caught my eye is Samsung Flex Gaming.
Let’s get one thing out of the way: the name is terrible. Samsung Flex Gaming sounds like a social media platform where annoying people endlessly bang on about high scores. But the device itself deserves all of the points/lives/shiny things, because it reimagines the Nintendo Switch. Mostly as if a Switch had suffered a terrible accident in the Star Wars trash compactor and ended up folded precisely in half. It even cunningly has holes in each side so protruding joypads can slot into them while the device is folded and stashed in a pocket. It’s a hot mess and I’m here for it.
Above the fold
This is not me yearning for the future, though. It’s a big dollop of nostalgia as I fondly remember old handheld consoles that folded in half. I spent countless hours with my Game Boy Advance SP, which would satisfyingly snap shut when I unfairly lost a life. Try doing that with a Switch or a Steam Deck! Actually, don’t. You’d injure yourself quite badly and set off a ‘THIS LUNATIC TRIED TO FOLD THEIR CONSOLE IN HALF – BAN THEM FROM ALL ELECTRONICS’ alert.
You might also argue handhelds have lost their way and forgotten their roots. Just as phones morphed from bite-sized marvels to black rectangles crossed with surfboards, handheld game systems are teetering on a tipping point beyond which someone will sternly say, “Actually, no, you’re a laptop on to which someone has sneakily glued a D-pad and buttons”. Many of today’s handheld gaming consoles aren’t so much portables as luggables. They’re PCs masquerading as PSPs.
But am I just getting carried away with the concept of Samsung’s gadget rather than the reality? Probably. Because the Flex’s weirdness isn’t always in its favour.
The joy of sticks
D-pads and buttons are conspicuously absent from the Samsung Flex Gaming, because its joysticks need to hide when the thing folds. Which doesn’t strike me as a recipe for ergonomic joy. I’ve no idea how well they’ll work in practice. And neither does anyone else, given that no-one was allowed to touch the thing at MWC 2025.
There are other quirks too. Samsung’s bendy wonder nails the portability of an old-school folding console. But I’m less convinced it succeeds when it comes to screen protection. With a GBA SP or a DS, you could bung the thing in a pocket, safe in the knowledge a screen wouldn’t be attacked by your keys. With the Flex, there’s a non-zero chance one half of the screen will rub up against the other.
And, despite the recent hype about this new Samsung concept, it turns out it’s not even that new. A prototype appeared in 2022. Back then, it was a case. Now? Who knows. Samsung remained silent on that and whether it would ever come to market. So I guess I’ll have to ‘fold’ myself and buy yet another Anbernic retro console to satisfy my wish for a modern folding handheld. But that’s fine. It folds. It’s real. And it won’t give me carpal tunnel from trying to wrestle with buttons buried in a hole.