A New Toy... and a Much Flatter Phone

Studio Dev: A New Toy... and a Much Flatter Phone

Well, I got a new toy.

This one should actually help with future development, make testing a little easier, and eliminate the slight sense of panic I get every time I look at my old phone from the side.

For roughly the last nine months, I've been using what I dearly refer to as the Samsung Galaxy S24 'Ultra Curved' Edition.

Samsung didn't technically release a Curved Edition.

My battery did.

Introducing the S24 Ultra Curved Edition

At some point, the battery in my S24 Ultra started bulging.

Slowly.

Just enough to begin pushing the backplate away from the phone and give the entire thing a nice little curve.

The weird part?

The phone still works great.

The battery works great.

It holds a charge wonderfully.

I've noticed no meaningful battery degradation at all.

It just has the minor inconvenience of attempting to physically escape from the phone.

Not exactly something you want to ignore forever.

Unfortunately, replacing a flagship phone isn't cheap, and I simply didn't have the money to replace it when the problem first appeared.

Recently that changed.

So it was finally time.

Ultra or Fold?

That left me with a decision.

Do I stick with what I know and go with an S26 Ultra?

Or finally make the jump to a folding phone?

I spent a lot of time going back and forth.

And the new Fold 8 form factor really caught my attention.

I love the new aspect ratio.

It's shorter.

It's squatter.

It just looks and feels much better to me than the tall, skinny folding phones we've had for years.

There was one thing I didn't love, though.

The cameras.

Coming from an Ultra phone, I really didn't want to take that step backward.

So naturally, I solved the problem in the least inexpensive way possible.

I bought the Fold 8 Ultra.

It's Also a Development Device

That's my justification, and I'm sticking to it and it's now a tax write off because it IS a development device.

Besides being my new everyday phone, having a Fold 8 Ultra gives me another physical form factor I can actually develop and test against.

That's particularly useful now that I'm getting back into Android development with projects like Threefold: The Last Stand.

I can test directly on the Fold 8 Ultra's displays, continue using the S24 Ultra and an older S21 for a traditional slab-phone layout, and use Unity's device simulation tools to check layouts against the regular Fold 8 and other screen sizes and aspect ratios.

That's a pretty nice little collection of test environments without needing a drawer full of phones.

And with foldables, responsive UI is something I'd much rather deal with while I'm building a game than discover is completely broken after I've finished it.

Now Comes the Horrible Part

Of course, buying the phone is the fun part.

Now I have to actually move into it.

Apps.

Accounts.

Settings.

Authenticators.

All of those incredibly important authentication accounts that suddenly decide they've never seen you before and would like you to scan a QR code you haven't had since 2022.

Then there's getting my Dexcom moved over and talking to the new phone without wasting the sensor that's currently attached and still has 12 days left.

Every phone upgrade eventually reaches the point where you start wondering whether the old phone was really that swollen.

It was.

Still, It Was Time

Despite the migration headache, I'm excited about this one.

I've needed to replace the S24 Ultra for quite a while, and the Fold 8 Ultra gives me something that's both useful personally and useful for development.

More importantly, I can finally stop wondering whether I'm going to pull my phone out of my pocket one morning and discover that the backplate has achieved low Earth orbit.

So...

New phone.

New development target.

Another excuse to test weird screen layouts.

And several hours of authenticator-induced suffering ahead of me.

Time to start moving everything over.