Is smaller better?

I’m starting to crawl out of my shell more, and looking at more travel for family and for work. I’ve always been annoyed by aspects of travel, like getting through TSA security theatre checkpoints, and I’ve always enjoyed the challenge of moving more work to smaller and smaller mobile devices.

Foldables contribute to that conversation in an interesting way, but they also face incredible competition from other tech accessories.

Hopping another flight to New York, what was it like working out of a OnePlus Open?

Better than I thought it would be…

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I let all my “premium” airline travel accounts and club memberships lapse during the pandemic.

Today it feels like the tenets of “enpoopification” we see in online services have also entrenched themselves in other industries like travel. From just five years ago, to today, I don’t believe that air travel has improved. I don’t believe more perks come with spending more money. Instead, the “core” airline service has been getting worse and worse, so airlines can add new “levels” people can pay to replace the dignity they USED to enjoy.

You can’t tell me travelers can throw money at the problem of security, get faster “relaxed” checkpoints (and the dignity of keeping their shoes on) and somehow that makes us safer. Someone who wants to hurt us or terrorize us will eventually spend the money to do bad things.

We put up with this system of stripping and partially unpacking our bags, but what if you didn’t need to?

Foldable mini-tablets aren’t quite the size of an iPad Mini, but in their collapsed state, they look like regular phones. I didn’t pack my Steam Deck for this trip. I left my laptop and tablet at home. I packed a small folding keyboard and a Bluetooth mouse. I had wireless mics, headphones, chargers, a laptop hub, an LCD light panel, and a powerbank.

ALL OF MY GEAR WAS SMALL.

I had a full bag, and I was curious how my little protest of compliance would play out.

I laid my bag on the conveyor completely zipped close. I didn’t pull ANYTHING out. It passed right through LAX security, no additional checks requested. Maybe it was a La-La Land issue of Southern Californians not doing their due diligence? However, on my return flight leaving from Newark, a FULL tech bag also passed directly through TSA security with no additional action requested.

I travel with a TON of gear, and I’ve just internalized unpacking a chunk of my bag, and taking all that time to put the backpack back together. It was refreshing to simply lay it down, then pick it back up. No fuss.

This wasn’t any grand reduction in the amount of time it takes me to pass through a checkpoint. It was just a little easier. I didn’t need to buy an airline or security upgrade to reclaim a tiny little sliver of dignity. I just had to own one of the most expensive phones of the year…

Making it to my plane seat, would the Open also deliver for productivity?

It did well-ish…

I really enjoy writing on airplanes. Since the LG V20, the act of firing up a Word doc in a phone app, with a little Bluetooth keyboard, I find this scenario helps me focus. My phone is in airplane mode, minimizing my usual notifications and distractions. I can quickly hit writing flow-state.

Plus, I’m a lot less anxious about power.

I wrote this article on my return flight. My old laptop couldn’t last this whole flight with the screen on, for me to work out my thoughts. Around four hours of screen on time, with medium brightness, doing a low power task was no issue for the Open. I wasn’t fully charged walking on the plane, and I didn’t have to recharge during the flight.

Newer MacBook owners will completely appreciate this power conversation. It’s a massive pain in the ass when you have to charge your laptop on a flight, and someone in your row needs to use the restroom. Closing the laptop, helping them dodge the cable, waiting for them to come back, setting everything back up. The little dance we USED to do with older laptops was maddening.

A major reason I moved to writing on phones, I could pick up my phone and keyboard immediately, get back to writing while the person in my row used the facilities, pick it up again when they returned, and get back to work just as quickly. The downtime is far less distracting.

The Open resembles that work flow well. The action of closing the hinge is almost as immediate. It takes literally a second longer to re-open the phone, and the whole setup fits well on the ludicrously small airline tray tables we get now. My Hobbit hand for scale:

I completely understand the popularity of MacBook Air or Ultrabook style notebook PCs for travelers. These tray tables are comically small now. The Open might not always be a good fit when used with a portable keyboard.

The depth of this tray was EXACTLY the surface area required to have the Open flexed and keep the keyboard from hanging over the edge of the tray. A traditional slate phone with a kickstand case might have fit a little better.

For the Open specifically, the hard plastic bumper case included with the phone was extremely slippery against the hard plastic of the tray table. That made me a little anxious during some turbulence, as the Open did slide slightly across the tray. A grippier plastic would help keep the Open in place. I need to find something like that which borders the front screen. When the Open is in flexed position with the cameras down, it’s clunky lopsided. Screen side down is “flatter” and more stable. A MacBook just isn’t going to slide around as much.

I was worried I wouldn’t like the bent inner display for writing, that the screen bend would make text too difficult to read at a flat angle. That proved better than I was expecting. Looking down on top of the Open, the angle change was certainly distracting, but it wasn’t unusable. A laptop would definitely keep your head up at a higher angle though.

The frustrating aspect of the Open, OnePlus still hasn’t made orientation as easy to adjust. If I try to splitscreen two apps, what I want is a landscape view for Word, to occupy the upright panel, and there’s no easy way to do that. Trying to write in a flexed portrait orientation is functionally useless.

There’s a MASSIVE app design issue we need to solve for tablets, and it’s the Achilles heel of the Open.

For documents and for media streaming, the main navigation of a phone app assumes portrait orientation when you’re selecting media, and landscape when watching media. The Open seems to lock in that portrait orientation while selecting, and that’s what we’re stuck with when splitscreening a second app. In Word, that’s exacerbated by Microsoft’s app not keeping documents up as separate apps.

Moto ReadyFor or Samsung Dex can open multiple documents, and they show as separate tabs or windows. If I leave the view of a document on the Open, returning to the Microsoft 365 shortcut has backed me out of the doc and returned me to the selection list of recent documents.

Only certain video apps can FORCE a “landscape” orientation on the Open that will also force other apps into landscape. This was a MASSIVE usability perk of the Surface Duo. If I opened a Word Doc, it only opened on one Duo panel, and rotating the Duo, the app would properly rotate to landscape. You didn’t have to “trick” the Duo into a split-screen mode to have one app occupy “ half” the available surface area.

All I did was rotate 90 degrees, and the Duo knew what to do. It should be THIS easy to prop up half the screen, and have one app fill the upright space.

The overall layout though, the ability to move the Open independent of the keyboard, might help a little when it’s time to get a beverage. I can slide pieces around, keep the keyboard where it’s most comfortable for my hands, and make room for a cup and a can. A smaller ultrabook should also leave space for a snack or a beverage, but you can’t go much larger before a laptop will occupy the whole tray.

Hilariously, while I’m writing this, the man sitting across the aisle from me just gave up on the tray for his laptop…

Writing on a flight is solid. I don’t know that it was MUCH better than writing on a traditional slate phone, but the other entertainment perks help sell the option. I didn’t travel with my Steam Deck, so I added a few more games to the Open, read a few comics, and that helped fill the gap.

At the Hotel…

During my trip, I also had to join a podcast with my buddy TK Bay, and the Open performed well. I completely forgot to pack a little tripod, so I had to make a little makeshift stream setup with my lights. The Open helped here again, just literally being more flexible to prop it up. Maneuvering the Open to line up a selfie camera and still see the live chat for comments and questions.

Streamyard still struggles with Android and using other microphones on mobile devices, so combined with the mediocre hotel WiFi, my stream quality was lower than I could have presented from a laptop. It worked for a one-off stream, but it wouldn’t be the setup you’d want to use for multiple streams. Recording video or audio works phenomenally well, but we’re still working out the pains on live streaming from a phone. You can see that stream here to see what I’m talking about: https://www.youtube.com/live/WSEzn6FMoCU?si=3YornE6lhTBSknlZ

A mix of work and family on this trip, and the Open got a lot of positive reactions. Taking a fun family photo, and immediately showing the photo off on a larger display, people seemed to appreciate that.

Any use case that benefits from a little more space is just a joy on this phone. Video and audio editing is really nice. I Just wish there were better user controls for changing orientation.

A Competing BIG Screen?

So, I’ve been glowing quite a bit in this article, but for several use cases, I couldn’t help but wonder if another solution might have worked better, especially on the flights.

I’ve regularly flown with XR glasses, and the work+play experience is just better than phone OR laptop. Using a Bluetooth keyboard and mouse, you can keep you head in a more comfortable position, while you view a MUCH larger display projected out in space in front of you.

Many techies have  criticized these glasses in my videos, often complaining about price, but the combo of a nice phone with video output, and a pair of XR glasses, is cheaper than our current folding tablets.

The Open is a more immediate experience for getting a “double phone” sized display. XR Glasses require a little more setup with each use. In situations where you KNOW you’ll be using them for a while though, that setup time is worth the huge screen you receive.

I wouldn’t have been able to share photos as easily with family, but putting glasses on my family’s faces has been a more exciting experience for folks to try. People genuinely have never seen anything like XR Glasses before, and putting them on feels futuristic.

Wrap It Up…

Foldable mini-tablets are interesting.

Mini-Tabs beautifully demonstrate the desires many people have for something new. They fit the folks who want to get more stuff done before turning to a laptop or desktop. Early into the experimentation and “public beta” phase of foldables though, we’re also experimenting with XR glasses and headsets. Those glasses are another expression of folks’ desires to expand on their mobile work and entertainment.

It’s wild to me that the price of a portable “face display” has already fallen to a degree where it can directly compete as an accessory against more expensive computing devices. If you really have the room in your tech bag (and your wallet) you could consider the foldable IN ADDITION to some face displays, but I digress.

The Open really rose to this occasion. I felt precious few situations where I would have wanted a more traditional computer. A few moments where it certainly would have been easier to complete a task, but I genuinely didn’t encounter any issues that completely stopped me from finishing a task. In a world of short form video, phones still reign as the most immediate way to shoot, edit, and share a short project.

The race is just getting started, but I feel we’re slowly starting to address the post-smartphone world.

What comes next? It certainly won’t resemble the bleeding edge tech we currently have access to today, but these “tip of the spear” experiences will inform the future tech that becomes more broadly mainstream.

It’s a fun ride to be on.