My everyday workplace is smaller than a monitor, smaller than a laptop, and smaller even than the netbooks of yore. But there are only a handful of times when this actually gets in my way.
My everyday computer is a Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 6. It’s a book-style foldable that has surprised me by the extent it can serve as many devices in one—a phone, tablet, laptop, and desktop—due to the included desktop mode known as Samsung DeX. Yet I ultimately do the vast majority of my work from the phone’s tablet-sized 7.6-inch internal display, which isn’t that much smaller from the screens on the Asus Eee PCs that had a moment in the sun when I was in college. Here are the challenges I encounter when I work from such tiny screens.
- Brand
-
Samsung
- RAM
-
12GB
- Storage
-
256GB
- Battery
-
4,400mAh
- Operating System
-
One UI 8
- Connectivity
-
5G, LTE, Wi-Fi 7, Bluetooth 5.4
Samsung’s thinnest and lightest Fold yet feels like a regular phone when closed and a powerful multitasking machine when open. With a brighter 8-inch display and on-device Galaxy AI, it’s ready for work, play, and everything in between.
Non-Adaptive Websites
In many ways, now is a much better time to work from a small screen than back in 2010. Most websites are designed to adapt to your screen size, since we now browse on everything from old iPhone 12 Minis to 99-inch TVs. Yet occasionally there’s one that is statically designed in a way that just can’t cope with a sub-8-inch screen.
To be clear, I’m not describing desktop sites in general. I can browse the vast majority just fine. In fact, I have my browser set to display desktop sites by default, since they’re so usable on a book-style foldable. But occasionally a site will have a large interactive element hardcoded in such a way that I have to zoom out to see the full window. Others have drop-down menus that were clearly designed for a mouse, which is why I care so deeply about the Galaxy Z Fold 7 losing S Pen support, since my stylus helps so much with navigating sites like these.
Viewing Two Apps At Once
There are many ways to manage windows on a Galaxy phone as though you were on a PC. I can shrink apps into floating windows, line them up side-by-side, shrink apps into floating app icons similar to Facebook chat bubbles, or tuck apps away along the side of the screen. Most often, I rely on the built-in dock and the 90:10 multitasking view introduced in Android 16. I was eager to install the One UI 8 beta for this one feature.
All of this makes it easy to swipe between apps, but there is only so much these options can do for keeping tabs on information in multiple apps at the same time. The side-by-side view works great when working with two conventional mobile apps. It’s less useful when trying to enter information from a desktop website into a Microsoft Word file.
Large Spreadsheets
I don’t juggle many spreadsheets, but I’m not completely free of them either. The experience on a book-style foldable is vastly superior to trying to manage Excel on a conventional phone. It goes from painful to being useful. Yet if I were someone who lived in spreadsheets each day, I’d want a much larger screen.
This doesn’t mean I need to switch devices. Docking my phone to a larger desktop monitor is enough. I have a desktop dock and an external monitor around for that very reason. Connecting a phone to a lapdock also suffices. So does swapping out a monitor for a pair of AR glasses.
This issue with spreadsheets extends to various other types of work that typically depend on desktop software, be that CAD or video editing. Small, internet-connected devices with adequate typing experiences are ideal for bloggers and journalists. Less so for many other professions.
Maintaining Good Posture
Tech neck is a thing—the poor posture you get from using smartphones, tablets, and laptops. Even in a desktop setting, if you don’t have your monitor mounted high enough, then your neck is angled down. This is a bigger challenge on tiny devices, where it’s easy to plop them in your lap and hunch all the way over.
One advantage my foldable has over a laptop is that I can stick it on a phone or tablet stand that elevates the screen to eye-level. This is what I do when I connect my phone to a Bluetooth keyboard and mouse.
With my phone’s super-high resolution, it’s surprising how much more I’m able to see on this device’s 7.6-inch screen than my old netbook’s 10-inch one (I never owned a super-small Asus Eee PC, but I did have a white Toshiba Mini NB205 whose resolution was only 1024 x 600).
Multitasking During Video Calls
I now love placing video calls from my phone. The experience is so vastly superior that I consider video conferencing to be reason enough to buy a foldable. I wish I had this device around during the pandemic. It’s easy to plop anywhere and prop up as its own stand, which eight faces visible in the top half and controls or the chat visible in the bottom. The same can be said about holding the phone vertically, with faces on one side and the chat on the other, which is the method I prefer if I’m actively typing in the chat.
The problem is that video calls nowadays often consist of more than staring at each other’s faces. If I need to pull up a document to view while on a call, that’s still less than ideal. It’s doable, and I do it, but it’s a hassle. And unlike with spreadsheets, DeX isn’t as big a help here. The angle of my phone’s camera when docked to an external monitor isn’t typically the one I want.
Using a small screen isn’t new to me. In fact, I’ve done more work on small laptops and tablets than I have from desktop monitors. I find the portability and versatility adds more than it takes away. But I must admit, even I’m surprised how few challenges remain for me when working on a smaller screen.