Samsung has told us it has zero interest in exploring a $500 Z Flip phone right now. Instead, the rumor mill suggests that Samsung may be building a Galaxy Z Flip FE. This is… how do I put this delicately… so dumb.

I’m going to dive into my own opinion here for a minute and say that the flip phone is the only way foldables will ever become mainstream. Half of the issue is price; almost nobody wants to spend $1700 on a folding phone with a plastic screen and a mediocre camera. You might want to, but you’re not everyone else.

The other big issue is Apple. Once you start charging a lot of money for a phone, you are in direct competition with Apple’s iPhone and the army of loyalists who will never be swayed. These are people who think a foldable is silly and will continue to think this way until Apple makes one, and there are plenty of them.

While it’s impossible to change one of these issues, the other isn’t. Just make a cheaper flippy phone.

I’m a grumpy old man who hates buying anything, but I really want a flip phone. I could lie and list some technical reasons why, but I won’t; I want a flip phone because I think they are cool.

There are a few things holding me back but the biggest reason is the cost. I simply can’t justify spending so much money for one when I can get a Pixel 8a so cheap. I still look at them on Amazon once in a while though and you never know if a compromised state of mind will make me start clicking buttons.

If I ever do, I’ll bet I end up buying a Motorola Razr because it’s 100% as cool and costs less money than Samsung’s flip phone, especially with ongoing deals in place.

Don’t come at us with some FE nonsense either, Samsung. Your first FE phone was pretty great, but ever since, it’s been product after product missing something it shouldn’t be missing while still costing way too much money. You should either return the FE product line to what it started as or stop making them.

What Samsung needs to do is build a $500-ish Galaxy A Flip and win the whole damn ball game. If it doesn’t, one of its competitors will.

Two come to mind right away: Motorola and Honor. There are plenty of companies that could build a “cheap” flip phone, but we all already know that Motorola and Honor know how to build great cheap phones because they’ve done it before. Remember the Moto G? Could we end up seeing a Moto Razr G? The Razr 2024 is already a shockingly affordable phone, and I bet Motorola could make an even cheaper one if it wanted to.

Heck, we’ve seen ZTE do it with the Nubia Flip 5G.

At this point, Samsung deserves it if we see an even cheaper Razr G eat up its foldable market share. I know there wouldn’t be a lot of profit built into a $500 flip phone, but I’m pretty sure it could be done without losing money. Breaking even to get millions and millions of eyes on your features and software services is not a bad deal.

Motorola, Honor, and plenty of other companies have the benefit of a cheap but talented labor force inside Chinese factories that can build inexpensive products of high quality. They will win this game if Samsung doesn’t fight for it.