Technology

In theory the benefit is supposed to be more screen size without sacrificing portability. In practice though durability is always going to be more of an issue the more moving and especially bending parts you have, since that causes friction and stresses that sooner or later will damage any material.

Personally if i want a tablet, i'll get a tablet. It'll be cheaper and have better performance for the price. But there are always going to be people who are drawn to gimmicks, and if they are the type of person to buy a new phone every year anyway then they also don't need to care about long term durability either.

Here's what i mean when i say these things can be extremely fragile. Obviously this is a pathological example since most fold phones don't take it to this extreme, but even on a regular fold phone you will have some of these problems. Simpler really is better most of the time. Especially when for that price i can buy a tablet and a phone and still have money left over.