Who needs a laptop when you have a flip phone?

The first rule of computer wallet is to check your bag before leaving the house.

A few days ago, I walked 15 minutes to a nearby café thinking I had my new foldable keyboard in my bag — the key item that will turn my Galaxy Z Fold 7 into a mobile workstation. I spent the entire flight congratulating myself on how light I felt compared to carrying my MacBook. “It’s as if he doesn’t exist,” I thought.

It was because he wasn’t there, which I only discovered when I was at my destination. I tapped out a few emails with my thumb, drank a latte, and went home feeling self-conscious.

After using all of 2025’s flagship phones in a row, early 2026 gave me some time to revisit some of my favorites. While I was impatiently waiting for the Galaxy Z Trifold to arrive, I started holding it Z Fold 7which is extremely thin and light and comes with virtually all the benefits of a foldable phone, without any of the usual weight and size penalties. Once i I realized I was holding a Chromebook with no keyboardI thought I’d better get a keyboard and see how far I could get with a flip phone as a laptop. It’s not perfect, but I would have a very hard time going back to it.

You don’t need to be a wallet holder to use the wallet computer; It’s what I call a combination of a lightweight travel keyboard and a flip phone. And look, I know this isn’t a new concept either. He was a fan of the foldable phone Equip their devices as mobile workstations For years now, there have been iPads with keyboard cases, and hell, Remember netbooks? Collectively, we’ve been trying to downsize our laptops in all sorts of creative ways for almost as long as laptops have been around.

That’s exactly what Purse Computer is to me: a replacement for my laptop, also known as Backpack Computer. As is the case with laptops, the company’s MacBook Air is very light, frankly. Technically, it fits into the (huge) bag that I go with me everywhere. But it’s too heavy to carry this way for more than just walking from my car to the coffee shop, so trips to a coworking space or other remote work setting require stuffing the “backpack” into my computer backpack. The problem is that once I’m done working and need to do a task, I still have my laptop on. I’m burdened. What do I do when I need to reach a goal? Put my MacBook in the trunk? Drag it up and down the aisles of the store while I buy toothpaste? Everything seems wrong. This is where Purse Computer comes into play.

Most of my journey revolved around finding the right keyboard. My requirements: Light and small enough that I barely notice it in my bag, but large enough to feel like a real keyboard when in use. I tried Protoarc foldable keyboard (very large), Cheap summers Off Amazon (very squirrel), we finally settled on a Logitech Keys 2 Go. It’s the one I enjoyed the most, it’s so thin and light that I barely notice it in my bag, and it has full-sized keys. Unlike the other two, it doesn’t come with a phone holder (though First generation 2 Go switches It appears to come with one) or charge via USB-C. But it’s easy to get a separate holder for the phone — I’ve been borrowing the one that came with the Samsers — and Logitech says the Keys 2 Go’s coin-cell batteries will last a full three years before they need to be replaced.

You may know the Purse Computer by another name: the four-pocket laptop. This is what Michael Fisher is known for doing Mr. Mobile channel on YouTube He is fond of foldable phones, and he gave them a name. He’s been experimenting with the concept of a foldable phone as a computer since the Fold 3 came out in 2021. So when I decided to embrace the Purse Computer life, there was really only one person to call for some guidance.

His first tip is to get the one thing I don’t currently have: a phone case with a kickstand. He says the detached attitude is painful. “It adds another pocket to it. It’s another thing to forget. It’s another thing to mess with when you’re setting it up.” Having played around with one in several coffee shops so far, I’m inclined to agree. Samsung offers Z Fold 7 case with attached kickstand That would do the trick.

Fisher’s current setup with the Galaxy Z TriFold includes a kickstand case, which the company doesn’t sell here; He bought one when he was in Taipei. It is currently used Nuphy keyboardwhich he admits is still a little older than he wants, but he adores him anyway. “It’s so much better when I type on it, and it makes me feel like I’m using the computer more deeply.”

That’s the other part of this challenge: convincing yourself that a phone is a computer. The keyboard is an important addition here; Although I could write an entire blog using the on-screen keyboard, it wasn’t my favorite experience. The physical keys go a long way in putting me in the right space for typing. But the other thing is convincing phone It’s a computer. Samsung’s UI is pretty undemanding – you can open up to four apps in progressively smaller windows and resize them to your heart’s content. But I still encounter strange issues when I try to use some Android apps on the internal screen.

Chrome insists on returning to my default profile whenever I open a new tab, and my attempts to avoid using the unpleasant Google Docs mobile app have been unsuccessful. The phone refuses to let me open the Google Docs desktop website in the browser while using my work profile, no matter how many ways I try to sneak it in. Apps like Slack don’t take advantage of the extra screen real estate, instead offering an expanded version of the mobile app with a lot of white space. but Edge Richard Lawler, our senior news editor (and fellow foldable fan), told me a better way: open Slack in a Chrome tab instead of the in-screen Slack app. It’ll prompt you to open the app instead, because you’re using a phone after all, but you’ll just have to take the extra step to get around it. maybe ChromeOS and Android unified It would have some trickle-down benefits to the tablet portion of the foldable Android device, but even if it does It may not happen for a while.

However, this is all part of the invisible ingredient in this arrangement: patience. It takes a certain type of person He wants To find a way to open Slack in a Chrome tab on the foldable phone’s internal screen. Judging by some of the looks I’ve gotten in the café when I’m using my mobile setup, this isn’t something for everyone. And there are still limitations to working with – the battery life is nowhere near as good as my MacBook, and when the phone dies, it’s also a lifeline to the rest of the world. I’ve found it’s well-suited for shorter periods, maybe an hour or two, but I wouldn’t try to spend a full day using a wallet without taking the time to recharge.

And you know what? I’m fine with that. I don’t need a foldable device to be my laptop all day, because that’s not what a computer wallet is. I just want something that’s easy to carry in a regular bag so I can be a human in the world for a few hours. The friction of packing my bag is enough to keep me from leaving the house on most workdays. But when it came down to just carrying the phone I was going to bring with me anyway, plus a small keyboard that fit into the small bag I already had on the back of my bike, suddenly the ride became much easier.

Mr. Mobile agrees. “You have to use it to understand its benefit,” he says. Once you’re hooked, “going back to another phone seems almost primal.” I’ll have to move on from the Fold 7 soon enough, because the phone reviewer doesn’t feel very comfortable. But I have a feeling that the Trifold I’ll be testing soon will offer plenty of ways to experiment with leaving your laptop at home.

Photography by Alison Johnson/The Verge