Passport foldables

The passport fold started as Huawei’s answer to a simple observation: most of what people do on a big screen is landscape. So instead of a tall phone that opens into a square, it is a short, wide phone that opens into a landscape screen, roughly the proportions of a paperback laid flat.

Closed, it feels different from anything else. It is wider than a phone and shorter, easy to hold in one hand and easy to type on with two thumbs. The outer screen is correspondingly wide, which is excellent for messaging and awkward for apps that assume a tall screen. Open, the inner display has a shape that video, games and side-by-side documents were designed for, with none of the black bars that a square book fold gives you.

Because the panels are shorter, the whole device tends to be thinner and lighter than a book fold with a similar inner screen. The category is young, though. Most models are Chinese-market devices, and software outside those ecosystems is still learning what to do with the wide outer screen.

Pick a passport fold when the inner screen is for watching and working in landscape and you want something easier to hold closed. If you rely on the outer screen as a regular phone, the book fold is still the safer shape.