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Take to the Skies on Fourth of July With Up to 30% Off Holy Stone Drones
Take to the Skies on Fourth of July With Up to 30% Off Holy Stone Drones
Drones are a great way to explore your surroundings while getting great aerial views. They've been a game-changer for photographers and videographers, and are now popular enough to be a household product that anyone can use. There are many drones on the market and quality can vary greatly, so it's important to choose a drone that won't disappoint. Right now, Holy Stone Drones are on sale at Amazon for prices as low as $45 for a selection that suits beginners and more advanced drone users.
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Take to the Skies on Fourth of July With Up to 30% Off Holy Stone Drones
Take to the Skies on Fourth of July With Up to 30% Off Holy Stone Drones
Drones are a great way to explore your surroundings while getting great aerial views. They've been a game-changer for photographers and videographers, and are now popular enough to be a household product that anyone can use. There are many drones on the market and quality can vary greatly, so it's important to choose a drone that won't disappoint. Right now, Holy Stone Drones are on sale at Amazon for prices as low as $45 for a selection that suits beginners and more advanced drone users.
This drone comes with a 1,080-pixel camera, two batteries that offer 34 minutes of flight time, and customized flight with voice control. You can steer the drone by saying "take off" or "turn left." This drone is kid-friendly and great for entry-level pilots. Originally $110, you can save $42 today.
This pocket-sized mini-drone is Wi-Fi-enabled, and its video is 1,280 by 720 pixels. It has three chargable batteries, is ultraportable and can be easily launched on the go. The drone can perform stunts including 3D flip, circle fly and high speed rotation, and it can be tossed in the air to launch.
For more advanced pilots, this 4K drone is now $100 off. It's equipped with an anti-shake camera with Sony Sensor, which can capture superior images. This drone can hover stably with air optical flow and air pressure altitude contol systems. It offers 46 minutes of flight, two included batteries, and a carrying bag.
Save $64 on this drone that comes equipped with auto return, a brushless motor, and 46 minutes of flight time. This lightweight drone is under 250 grams and portable enough to be used for outdoor traveling.
This is just one of many Fourth of July sales happening right now. Be sure to check them all out before it's too late.
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Take to the Skies on Fourth of July With Up to 30% Off Holy Stone Drones
Take to the Skies on Fourth of July With Up to 30% Off Holy Stone Drones
Drones are a great way to explore your surroundings while getting great aerial views. They've been a game-changer for photographers and videographers, and are now popular enough to be a household product that anyone can use. There are many drones on the market and quality can vary greatly, so it's important to choose a drone that won't disappoint. Right now, Holy Stone Drones are on sale at Amazon for prices as low as $45 for a selection that suits beginners and more advanced drone users.
This drone comes with a 1,080-pixel camera, two batteries that offer 34 minutes of flight time, and customized flight with voice control. You can steer the drone by saying "take off" or "turn left." This drone is kid-friendly and great for entry-level pilots. Originally $110, you can save $42 today.
This pocket-sized mini-drone is Wi-Fi-enabled, and its video is 1,280 by 720 pixels. It has three chargable batteries, is ultraportable and can be easily launched on the go. The drone can perform stunts including 3D flip, circle fly and high speed rotation, and it can be tossed in the air to launch.
For more advanced pilots, this 4K drone is now $100 off. It's equipped with an anti-shake camera with Sony Sensor, which can capture superior images. This drone can hover stably with air optical flow and air pressure altitude contol systems. It offers 46 minutes of flight, two included batteries, and a carrying bag.
Save $64 on this drone that comes equipped with auto return, a brushless motor, and 46 minutes of flight time. This lightweight drone is under 250 grams and portable enough to be used for outdoor traveling.
This is just one of many Fourth of July sales happening right now. Be sure to check them all out before it's too late.
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Take to the Skies on Fourth of July With Up to 30% Off Holy Stone Drones
Take to the Skies on Fourth of July With Up to 30% Off Holy Stone Drones
Drones are a great way to explore your surroundings while getting great aerial views. They've been a game-changer for photographers and videographers, and are now popular enough to be a household product that anyone can use. There are many drones on the market and quality can vary greatly, so it's important to choose a drone that won't disappoint. Right now, Holy Stone Drones are on sale at Amazon for prices as low as $45 for a selection that suits beginners and more advanced drone users.
This drone comes with a 1,080-pixel camera, two batteries that offer 34 minutes of flight time, and customized flight with voice control. You can steer the drone by saying "take off" or "turn left." This drone is kid-friendly and great for entry-level pilots. Originally $110, you can save $42 today.
This pocket-sized mini-drone is Wi-Fi-enabled, and its video is 1,280 by 720 pixels. It has three chargable batteries, is ultraportable and can be easily launched on the go. The drone can perform stunts including 3D flip, circle fly and high speed rotation, and it can be tossed in the air to launch.
For more advanced pilots, this 4K drone is now $100 off. It's equipped with an anti-shake camera with Sony Sensor, which can capture superior images. This drone can hover stably with air optical flow and air pressure altitude contol systems. It offers 46 minutes of flight, two included batteries, and a carrying bag.
Save $64 on this drone that comes equipped with auto return, a brushless motor, and 46 minutes of flight time. This lightweight drone is under 250 grams and portable enough to be used for outdoor traveling.
This is just one of many Fourth of July sales happening right now. Be sure to check them all out before it's too late.
What has the pandemic changed people have changed since the pandemic how the pandemic has impacted healthcare how the pandemic has impacted healthcare the pandemic changed health care how has the pandemic changed healthcare how has healthcare changed since the pandemic the pandemic the pandemic institute
The pandemic changed health care, and there's no going back
The pandemic changed health care, and there's no going back
This story is part of The Year Ahead, CNET's look at how the world will continue to evolve starting in 2022 and beyond.
If the pandemic has taught us one thing, it's how to take our health into our own hands.
We've become our own triage nurse, analyzing a sore throat with such urgency that, in another time, would've been considered a little obsessive. We've been asked to monitor our temperatures and even become citizen public health surveyors with the help of at-home COVID-19 tests. But one day (hopefully soon), the consequences of leaving the house with a sore throat won't mean we're risking someone's life. Soon, our physical health will remain a core piece of our well being, but we'll shake the neurosis of a pandemic mindset – hopefully, keeping our newfound sensitivity to public health and a desire to not harm others in the process.
But will our health care system?
"The pandemic accelerated a lot of changes that were kind of percolating in the background," says Matthew Eisenberg, associate professor of health policy and management at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. Eisenberg studies how neoclassical economics ("supply and demand") applies to health care. While COVID-19 "catalyzed" many of the changes -- and inequities -- already budding in health care, he said, it will be up to policy makers as well as the supply-and-demand cycle of health care to decide what sticks and what doesn't.
Telemedicine: a thing of the past, or the future?
Video-calls-as-doctor's-visit wasn't a tool created because of COVID-19, but the pandemic has transformed it from an obscure practice to the new way to do health care. Importantly, policy changes made during the pandemic helped knock down some barriers for telemedicine access, and helped providers get paid for it.
Private insurance companies as well as public payers (i.e. Medicare) relaxed their policies on telemedicine reimbursement for health care providers because of COVID-19. As more health care providers get paid for telemedicine (which gives them incentive to provide it), the more supply there is for patients, Eisenberg says.
"Prior to the pandemic, the only way a Medicare provider could be reimbursed for telemedicine would be if a patient was in a rural area where they could not physically travel to a provider," he says. "Even then, they had to go to a specialized facility and do the telemedicine at some out-patient facility's computer."
Even through a computer screen, there are roadblocks to accessing health care. Before COVID-19, some patients, depending on where they live and what medical condition they have, would need to drive across state lines to access a specialist (which requires an amount of time and money many patients don't have). The loosening of interstate licensure laws during the pandemic has allowed people to connect with a doctor miles away, and even fill a prescription across state lines.
Dr. Megan Mahoney is a family medicine doctor and the chief of staff at Stanford Health Care. Stanford Health Care, along with many other providers and organizations, have advocated to keep those restrictions loose once COVID-19 is no longer a public emergency, and the emergency rules no longer apply.
"We have noticed that there are states that don't have a single pediatric endocrinologist," says Mahoney. These specialists treat children with diabetes, for example. "We have a whole team of pediatric endocrinologists."
But in order to participate in telemedicine, you need an internet connection. Mahoney called the bipartisan infrastructure bill, which has a $65 billion budget for expanding internet access to rural communities and helping families pay their internet bill, a "tremendous" help in health care access. In the new virtual health landscape, access to broadband is a "social determinant of health," she says. Some policies and benefits put into place during the pandemic to help families access the internet, like the Emergency Broadband Benefit, were temporary. As broadband continues to mold in its form as a public good, its relationship to health care access will only strengthen.
FS Productions/Getty Images
Sliding into your doctor's DMs
In addition to telemedicine, the pandemic also gave us nearly unlimited access to our doctors' inbox through the patient portal. According to a report published in JAMA, which looked at instant messaging data between patients and their providers from March 2020 through June 2021, the number of patient messages increased, despite fewer patients seeking care in some specialties.
"The sheer demand that we're seeing is very much a testament to the patients' desire for this new channel of care," Mahoney says.
Even older patients, whose relationship with technology sometimes gets a bad rap, are sending their doctors messages and embracing telemedicine, she says.
"That was what propelled and accelerated the transformation," Mahoney says. When elderly people, who were originally reluctant to use telemedicine, were forced to use it in order to get care during the lockdown, "that helped them get over that hurdle."
"What I've noticed is the digital divide, while we do need to be aware of it, it can be overcome and sufficiently addressed through additional education," she says.
Some of that education for patients requires medical assistants to take on tech support roles. In addition to taking blood pressure and temperature when patients come into the room, they also need to make sure patients are comfortable signing into their patient account and feel comfortable with the technology, according to Mahoney.
That shift in the patient-provider dynamic, and more direct access to care, is necessary to maintain a system Mahoney says can help people get early intervention and, hopefully, prevent visits to the emergency room.
Many of the messages Mahoney receives from patients involve correcting misinformation patients have heard about COVID-19 -- the type of preventative, education-based work that the current health care structure "does not support," she says. For example, sustaining a more thorough patient-doctor messaging system would require providers be paid for their time consulting with patients off-hours. It also requires online communication to be in the patient's language – a barrier for many people in the US who don't speak English or speak it as a second language.
"I hope that health care can keep up with this cataclysmic shift that's happening," Mahoney said. "It will have to."
There are arguments against telemedicine as the end-all-be-all. Dr. Thomas Nash, an internist in New York City, told The New Yorker in a June 2020 report that though telemedicine is "doable...I worry that it's going to delay a good exam, and get in the way of deeper interactions between people and their doctors." The informal setting of telehealth may also be less likely to pick up on big issues which routine in-person exams would normally detect, such as high blood pressure, California Healthline reported. And it's more difficult to build an open relationship with your doctor through a screen than it is when you're sitting in their office.
But that also assumes people had a relationship to lose in the first place. As of Feb. 2019, one year before the pandemic began, about one fourth of all adults and half of all adults under 30 didn't have an ongoing relationship with a doctor, according to a report from the Kaiser Family Foundation. This is also a group that shows a strong preference for telehealth, and is the target audience for pre-pandemic care-on-demand services, including Nurx, which allows people to get birth control prescriptions and other medications online, sister sites Hims and Hers, Curology and more.
Sarah Tew/CNET
The great vaccine race
Scientists impressed the world by moving quickly to develop highly effective COVID-19 vaccines in record time – doses of Pfizer and BioNTech's vaccine, with Moderna's authorized right behind it, were available to the first round of eligible adults in the US less than a year after the the country went into lockdown. According to Nature, the fastest anyone developed a vaccine was for mumps in 1960, and that took four years from development to approval (Pfizer's vaccine for people age 16 and up has full approval by the US Food and Drug Administration, while Moderna and Johnson & Johnson have emergency use authorization). While there's much left to be desired about how the vaccines are distributed and accessed by populations in countries outside the US (only 8.9% of people in low-income countries have had a coronavirus shot), an estimate from the Yale School of Public Health reports the vaccines have saved about 279,000 lives and prevented 1.25 million hospitalizations a s of early July 2021.
Part of the reason the vaccines were developed so quickly was because research on the technology they use was already underway (the mRNA vaccines were developed using information from HIV research). While the global society has shown we can be very efficient at producing effective and safe vaccines, don't get your hopes up too high that it'll happen that fast again, says Michael Urban, an occupational therapist and program director at the University of New Haven.
"The thing people have to remember is that the federal government pumped tons and tons of money into this development," says Urban. "Globally, not just the United States."
One reason for that is because COVID-19 had such a prominent impact on our economy. "The fact that this [vaccine] came out is because this is disrupting the fabric of life," Urban says. "How we make money, how we engage with people – how we enjoy our lives."
While it's tempting to hope that because scientists banded together to create a vaccine for COVID-19 and the US government helped fund much of that work it will usher in more resources to find preventative measures and treatments for other diseases, it's unlikely. The incentive for the government to subsidize research and development of treatments for other things that are more individualized, such as cancer or HIV, Urban says, might not be as strong, which leaves it up to the drug companies themselves. And without a public health emergency as transmissible and widespread as COVID-19, it's unlikely drug companies will pour quite as much time and effort into finding treatments.
And when addressing a drug company that profits "billions off of cancer treatments," for example, is it really in the best interest of the company to find an effective preventative measure?
"If they can do one shot and get rid of cancer, is it really in their best interest?" Urban says. "I hate to say that," says Urban.
Two steps forward, two steps back
In addition to propelling us into trends that've been helpful in health care, the pandemic has magnified our shortcomings and has disproportionately affected the same people who have been mistreated by the medical system for years. Black and Hispanic Americans have been hospitalized with COVID-19, and died from the disease, in much greater numbers compared to white Americans.
Dr. Shantanu Nundy, a primary care physician and author of the book Care After Covid: What the Pandemic Revealed Is Broken in Healthcare and How to Reinvent It, told NPR in a May 2021 report that the pandemic scramble to find a testing site, get a vaccine appointment or access preventative care exposed those who might not have ever experienced it to the perils of health care.
"The pandemic magnified long-standing cracks in the foundation of the US healthcare system and exposed those cracks to populations that had never witnessed them before," said Nundy in the NPR interview.
Another weak spot exposed because of COVID-19 was the US public health response, and its subsequent communication to the public about what to do when you're sick. When the pandemic struck, public health agencies were relying on "old methodologies" in terms of quarantine requirements and testing rules for COVID-19, Urban says. Compared to other countries, we have issues with containment and quarantine restrictions that don't always prevent people from spreading the virus, he says. The CDC's latest isolation guidance for people who test positive for COVID-19, for example, has been criticized by some for being too relaxed and not requiring a negative test.
In the US, there's a one-and-done mentality. "You do a one-time test, you're cleared," Urban says. "Have a nice day."
When the next pandemic happens, he says the US is likely still not set up with the structure and tools needed to respond appropriately to a public health emergency. "We didn't learn from the Spanish flu," Urban says.
An early December report from the Global Health Security Index, an assessment of health security across the globe developed by the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security and the Economist Impact, backs that up. According to the report, 195 countries across the globe are "dangerously underprepared for future epidemic and pandemic threats, including threats potentially more devastating than COVID-19."
But importantly, the blame isn't solely on public health agencies, Urban says. The CDC, for example, is "under pressure" to get people back to work and everyday life, Urban says. To do so, the agency has to work within US federal law and the vastly different state and local laws which govern what we can and can't expect people to do.
Looking forward
As we move away from the immediate threat of COVID-19, our appreciation for mental health care is likely to stay. Eisenberg says that we may see specialized mental health services, including some practices that are virtual-only, and some that are a hybrid of in-office and virtual visits. There may also be a shift away from medication treatments for mental health conditions and more provider-focused psychotherapy, Eisenberg finds.
"It's a small shift, but that could have big implications down the road," he says.
While there are structural and policy changes needed to ensure everyone has autonomy over their health, the pandemic has shifted the way care providers approach health care. Now more than ever, there's an emphasis on public health.
In an interview with the American Medical Association, Nundy explained the framework he believes is necessary to progress health care after the pandemic. Through the course of the pandemic, Nundy said, doctors "built a muscle" for operating with public health in mind.
"Let's take that muscle and let's start applying it to diabetes, let's start applying it to mental health," Nundy said. "So much more is possible."
Correction, Jan. 14: The original version of this story misspelled Shantanu Nundy's last name.
The information contained in this article is for educational and informational purposes only and is not intended as health or medical advice. Always consult a physician or other qualified health provider regarding any questions you may have about a medical condition or health objectives.
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VA Refinance Rates for August 2022
VA Refinance Rates for August 2022
If you or your spouse are a veteran, you may be able to lock in a lower mortgage rate by refinancing with a VA refinance loan. Refinancing your mortgage through a VA refinance loan could reduce your interest rate, make monthly payments more affordable or shorten your loan term so you can pay off your mortgage faster.
Just like VA loans, VA refinance loans are backed by the US Department of Veterans Affairs, which makes them especially secure loans in the eyes of private lenders that issue them. If you are eligible for a VA refinance, you can take advantage of lower interest rates — especially if you're refinancing from a conventional loan. Conventional loans and refinances tend to have higher interest rates and more fees than VA options, which is why VA refinancing can be particularly appealing.
Here's everything you need to know about VA refinance loans, who is eligible and what current rates are.
Current VA refinance rate trends
Right now, VA refinance interest rates are hovering between 4.5%-5%, compared to the 30-year fixed-rate for conventional refinances which has dropped into the low-to-mid 5% range. Until the Federal Reserve increased its benchmark interest rate for the fourth time at the end of July, mortgage rates overall had been rising since the beginning of the year, but reversed course and dropped in response to the Fed's action.
Some volatility in mortgage rates is anticipated as concerns grow over the potential slowing of the economy, but regardless of the economic climate, securing yourself the lowest refinance rate possible will help you save tens of thousands of dollars over the lifetime of your loan.
What are VA refinance loans and who should consider one?
To qualify for any type of VA loan, refinance loans included, you must be either an active or retired member of the military, or the spouse of one.
Refinancing (whether through a VA or conventional refinance) allows you to replace your existing home loan with one that typically has a lower interest rate and a new loan term that will offer valuable savings over the long run.
There are many different reasons to consider refinancing. If you want to shorten your loan term and pay off your mortgage faster, you can refinance from a 30-year mortgage into a 15-year mortgage. Doing this will decrease the amount of interest you pay over the lifetime of the loan, but it will increase your monthly mortgage payment.
If your current mortgage rate is high, you also might be able to lock in a lower rate, which could decrease your monthly payment. Doing this could free up cash flow available for other expenses like car payments, high-interest debt, home improvements or education expenses.
Pros of a VA refi
Lower interest rate: You will pay a much lower interest rate compared to a traditional 30-year or 15-year refi, potentially saving you tens of thousands of dollars over the course of your new home loan.
No down payment required: There is no down payment needed to complete a VA refinance.
No private mortgage insurance requirement: If you refinance a conventional loan with less than 20% equity in your home, you typically need to purchase private mortgage insurance, but no mortgage insurance is necessary for VA refinancing.
Less stringent credit requirements: Like regular VA loans, VA refinance loans tend to allow for lower credit scores and incomes than conventional refis.
Cons of a VA refi loan
VA funding fee: Although it's a one-time expense, this upfront fee can add thousands onto the total cost of your refinance. However, it can be rolled into the refinance amount rather than paid upfront.
Occupancy restrictions: You must live in (or at some point have lived in) the house you are refinancing.
Service requirements: You must be an active or retired military member, or the spouse of one.
Fewer options: If your current home loan is not already a VA loan, you can refinance, but only as a cash-out refinance (which we'll explain down below).
Current mortgage and refinance rates
We use information collected by Bankrate, which is owned by the same parent company as CNET, to track daily mortgage rate trends. The above table summarizes the average rates offered by lenders across the country.
FAQs
What types of VA refinance loans are available?
There are two main types of VA refinance loans available. If you already have a VA mortgage, you can refinance with an Interest Rate Reduction Refinance Loan (IRRRL), or what is commonly known as a "streamline" refinance, which can give you a lower interest rate on your new mortgage. However, if you have a conventional mortgage or other type of home loan you cannot refinance with a VA IRRRL. Just as with all refinances, this type of refinance replaces your current mortgage with a new one. To qualify for a VA IRRRL refinance, you must be able to prove that you currently live or have at one point lived in that home.
If you want to refinance a different type of mortgage into a VA refinance, your only option is to refinance with a cash-out refinance loan, which is a bit more involved. A cash-out refi allows you to take a lump sum of cash from the equity you've built up in your home and it works a little differently than a standard rate and term refinance (which is essentially what the VA's IRRRL option is).
When you complete a cash-out refi, you're still replacing your old mortgage with a new one, but you end up with a bigger loan than you had before. That's because you receive the equity you've built in your home back as cash -- and this amount is added on to the loan. As a result, cash-out refis may come with higher fees and rates. You'll also pay more interest over the long run, but the trade-off is the immediate access to cash you can use to pay off other debt or life expenses.
To complete a VA cash-out refi, you must currently live in the home, qualify for a VA-backed home loan Certificate of Eligibility, and meet both the VA's and your lender's requirements for income, credit score and other requirements.
Do VA mortgage refinances have fees?
VA mortgage refinances do have an upfront funding fee, but it's minimal compared to the fees you typically pay for a conventional refi. You can also roll this fee into the refinance loan amount and pay it off over time. For an IRRRL, you are required to pay a fee equivalent to 0.5% of your loan. For a cash-out refinance, you must pay a fee worth 2.3% of your loan's value for first-use and a 3.6% fee after first use.
You will still have to pay lender-specific fees such as closing costs, which can add up to thousands of dollars that you will pay no matter what type of mortgage you are refinancing.
What's the difference between a VA refinance loan and a conventional one?
The biggest differences between a VA refinance and a conventional refinance are the criteria, the interest rate you will pay, the fees you will be required to pay and the credit and income requirements lenders will expect to see from you as a borrower. VA refinance loans are only available to current or former military members and their spouses, and they have lower interest rates, fees and income requirements.
More mortgage tools and resources
You can use CNET's mortgage calculator to help you determine how much house you can afford. The CNET mortgage calculator factors in variables like the size of your down payment, home price and interest rate to help you figure out how large of mortgage you may be able to afford. Using the CNET mortgage calculator can also help you understand how much of a difference even a slight increase in rates makes in how much interest you'll pay over the lifetime of your loan.
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Here's One Feature Samsung Could Use to One-Up Apple
Here's One Feature Samsung Could Use to One-Up Apple
Samsung's next big phones expected to be revealed at its Unpacked event this week are rumored to be its best foldables yet, with improved cameras, new hinges and slimmer designs. But as the holiday shopping season approaches, the feature Samsung should lean on is a price cut.
Samsung has driven high sales with two-for-one offers and generous discounts when trading in old devices. That goes for both its pricey Galaxy Fold and Galaxy Flip devices that go for as much as $1,800, as well as its Galaxy S smartphones, which start at $800.
The way Samsung charges us for its phones is a stark contrast with Apple, which largely holds firm on its prices even through discount seasons like Black Friday, only allowing discounts from carriers or retailers.
This week, Samsung has a chance to make a change.
Read more: Samsung, the Galaxy Z Fold and Flip Could Be Even Better
Samsung is planning a large product reveal event, called Unpacked, for Wednesday, Aug. 10, during which it'll announce its newest foldable smartphones. The two devices, expected to be called the Galaxy Fold 4 and Galaxy Flip 4, aren't going to appeal to the masses like the Galaxy S line of devices, in part because they cost so much.
But price is where Samsung could make a difference. Despite offering more discounts, in recent years Samsung has lost market share to Apple at the top of the phone market -- the so-called premium segment where 7 of every 10 $800-and-up phones sold globally are iPhones. And in the lower-priced models, where the Galaxy S competes with the standard iPhone at around $600 and up, sales have actually begun to decline around the world, per a recent Canalys report.
Though Samsung's Unpacked event on Wednesday will focus on foldables, it also serves as Samsung's big product release just before Apple announces its expected iPhone 14 series of phones in a few weeks. Unpacked represents Samsung's chance to make a big impression ahead of Apple's own event, and any deals could make a difference.
It'll already be hard to convince people to buy any new phone this year with rising inflation and a looming recession. Our collective confidence in the economy has fallen through the floor, with one survey from the University of Michigan finding consumer sentiment is at its lowest point in at least 70 years.
Historically prices for many of these phones have stayed mostly the same over the years. Starting price for Samsung's Galaxy S and Apple's latest iPhones typically sit between $700 and $800, so it's unlikely Samsung would break from that model.
Still, if Samsung were to introduce a price cut for all its phones, effectively driving the price down to what it actually charges us through those special deals rather than the sticker price, it could potentially "change the equation," said Bob O'Donnell, an analyst at Technalysis Research. But convincing Apple users to switch to Android will take more than just a price cut.
"There are people who will never give up iOS for a variety of reasons -- green bubbles being one of them," said O'Donnell. "They're not going to change, as cool as [foldables] may be, until they can have [iOS.]"
The Z Flip folds up to take up half the space of a normal phone, while the Z Fold expands to have twice the screen size.
Sarah Tew/CNET
Apple and Samsung's premium horse race is an iOS vs. Android battle
Over the past decade, there's really only been two phone-makers worth paying attention to outside China. One is Apple, the other is Samsung. Apple's iPhone gets praised every year because of its industry-leading software and powerful chips. When CNET Senior Editor Patrick Holland was thinking of a headline to sum up his glowing review for images he took with the iPhone 13 Pro last year, he ended up with "Damn, these cameras."
Samsung often positions itself as the alternative, offering sleek designs without all the Apple baggage like requiring you to use its App Store or having to deal with iMessage. It's also often the lower-priced option whenever you walk into an AT&T, Verizon or T-Mobile store.
To be sure, people are buying as many iPhones as ever, said Tim Cook during a July conference call discussing Apple's latest financials. And other premium brands aren't feeling the squeeze of a shrinking economy just yet.
While Apple has pulled ahead in the premium smartphone race in recent years, both companies have been at each other's throats for a lot longer than that. The companies have traded blows in big ad campaigns, like Samsung mocking Apple for removing the headphone jack in 2016. Apple for its part has accused Samsung of stealing its designs, including in a worldwide years-long court battle that ended in a 2018 settlement.
Most other phone-makers have rarely been able to compete. LG lost money before leaving the phone game in 2021, while Microsoft gave up when its Windows Phone OS lost to Apple's iOS and Google's Android in 2017. Google gets good reviews for its Pixel phones, few people buy them, and the phones have a negligible market share, which Holland calls "a conundrum."
"Maybe that's a failure from Google's marketing, limited carrier relationships in Pixel's early days, the dominance of Apple and Samsung in the US or just that people don't trust the search company with their data," Holland said.
Which is a long way of saying that Samsung is Apple's only real competition outside China. Samsung sells more phones globally than any other manufacturer, though the majority of those are midrange and budget A-series phones.
One of Samsung's current obstacles is convincing iOS users to switch. They aren't having trouble converting the Android faithful to try out their Galaxy S phones, which this year featured a stylus, larger screen and better cameras. Even its pricey folding devices are catching on, somewhat -- making up an astonishing 36% of the premium Android phone market, according to IDC research director Nabila Popal.
But getting Apple faithful to leave their blue bubbles may be very difficult.
"I personally think Apple consumers are just so glued to Apple with brand loyalty and the ecosystem that they're used to," Popal said. "As great as foldables are, it will not be the driving factor to convert an iOS [user] to Android and Samsung."
Read more: When I Switched to iPhone, Blue iMessage Bubbles Made My Friends Far Too Happy
The other big factor is awareness. Even three years after the first Galaxy Fold arrived in early 2019 and a fourth version coming soon, they haven't been sold in enough numbers. "You still don't see many [foldables] in the wild," said O'Donnell. And one of the best ads for any technology is when you see a happy customer actually using it in your family or walking down the street.
"When people do see [a foldable], if that's their thing, they're still knocked out, they're like this is crazy, this is incredible," O'Donnell said.
Foldables will grow from 8 million sold in 2021 to 25 million sold in 2025, IDC predicts.
Sarah Tew/CNET
Unfolding the future
This year, rumors suggest Samsung's Z Fold 4 and Z Flip 4 are only getting rudimentary improvements for their screens and cameras. The same happened last year, but the big upgrade was in affordability, with discounts dropping the Fold's price below $2000 and the Flip's down to roughly the same price as other premium smartphones. But then Samsung started offering even more discounts afterward, with two-for-one deals across its product line.
The message was clear: Samsung still has an opportunity to introduce another price drop, which would put them in better competition with cheaper premium handsets, and make them much more attractive to people today.
For its part, Apple doesn't seem concerned enough about foldables to rush out one of its own. Instead, Apple's stuck to its well-worn plan of annual improvements, including for its upcoming iPhone 14, which is rumored to include a smaller front-facing camera notch, better battery life and a new always-on display.
Prices, meanwhile, are likely to remain the same if not increase along with inflation, like they did last year. This creates the opening for Samsung, both with its mainstream Galaxy S phones and its foldables alike.
"I feel that foldables are at a tipping point, the brink of a breakthrough, where it's just a matter of a bit more time before they just explode," Popal said.
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