There is at least a decent advantage in the flip phones of having the screen protected when the phone isn’t in use.

I’m not sure about that. I’d think it’s safer if you drop it for instance, but I’d be worried about getting a piece of dirt/sand/something in between the two sides that’d rub between them.

I think the hinge mechanism has the same risk - if you get a piece of … let’s say sand because that’s hard as fuck, in there, it’ll probably destroy itself.

And I don’t know how more iterations would fix these issues. I think it may just be a bad design.