AI helped me decide whether a folding phone was actually right for me

The battery in my Galaxy S24 had started not lasting nearly as long. And yes, I know chargers exist. I own several. This was not some sort of emergency situation. But I use my phone a lot differently than I used to, and battery life was starting to matter more. I'd be a couple of hours away from a charger, using my phone like I normally do, and by the time I got to one it would be practically dead.

So I started looking at what Verizon had available. And one of the offers was for the Z Fold.

Now, I have been against folding phones basically since folding phones became a thing. The screen has a crease in it. That bothers me. It just does. And I've always been a little suspicious of a screen that repeatedly folds in half somehow continuing to behave itself forever. That feels optimistic.

But Jason pointed out that the larger screen might actually be useful for me, which... fair. That's a fair point. It turns out a larger screen is actually useful for people who can't see very well. So I started looking at the Fold along with the other phones and the promotions Verizon had available.

And phone promotions are weird, because sometimes your carrier is genuinely offering you a very good deal. And sometimes it is just very good marketing wrapped around something you do not need nearly as urgently as they would like you to believe. So I showed ChatGPT screenshots of the offers and shared my bill so it could look at my actual account. I wanted to know, okay, what is actually a good deal here? What isn't? What does this do to the monthly bill? Because that's the part that matters after the shiny new-phone part wears off.

Then we got into the phones themselves. Not just, you know, this one has a bigger number attached to the camera or the processor or whatever. What would those differences actually mean for me? There were a lot of numbers. Eric likes his numbers. And that part was useful because I didn't have to start from zero. ChatGPT already had a pretty good idea of how I use my phone from all the other things we'd talked about and worked on. I mean, a lot of my phone use involves talking to ChatGPT in the first place, so there was already a lot of context there.

Then I started poking at all the things that actually bothered me about the Fold. How much had the newer ones changed? Was the screen more durable? Was the crease still going to annoy me? Which features would I actually care about, and which ones were just specifications on a page that I would look at once and then never think about again?

And after enough back and forth, the Fold started looking like it might actually make sense for me. Which was irritating, because I had been very committed to not liking folding phones. But, okay. Fine. So I decided to do it.

I went online to upgrade, and checkout was blocked for some reason. ChatGPT couldn't figure out why. Verizon's AI chatbot couldn't figure it out either. Then I got to an actual human, and somehow that conversation became about Apple protection while I was trying to buy a Samsung phone. And they were also trying to add Verizon protection plan when I already have Verizon protection plan across the account. Not sure how I'm supposed to have it twice.

So at some point I just kind of lost confidence in the entire exchange and left it. Then I called. That was also weird. So eventually I did the technologically advanced thing and physically went to the Verizon store.

And on the way there, I happened to think about my watch. I had a Galaxy Watch 5, and I thought, well, if I'm doing this anyway, is the newer watch actually meaningfully better? Or is it just newer, which is not the same thing. So while we were driving, I had ChatGPT compare them based on the things I'd actually care about. In my car, out loud, while I'm driving to the Verizon store, so I'll be prepared by the time I get there.

Then we got to the store and found out there was an offer to upgrade my watch without adding cost because I was buying the Fold. Well. Okay then. That made that decision fairly easy. So I ended up getting both.

It's a day later, and I'm still setting everything up, because apparently moving your entire digital life into a new rectangle remains a project no matter how advanced the rectangle gets. AI has been useful for that too, mostly helping me find settings and work through the things Samsung has hidden in places I would never think to look, because of course there is always one setting buried three menus deep that controls the thing you're actually trying to change.

But the funny part is that I started this whole process as somebody who was pretty convinced I did not want a folding phone. Now I have one, and I'm really excited about it. The watch feels like a real upgrade too. So, apparently I can be persuaded. It just takes more than a sales page.