It's a steel frame? Really? It must be heavy. The bike this frame is copied from, the Dahon MU, has an aluminum frame that's not particularly light. Copied in steel it would weigh ~3x as much.
Most
folding pedals are lower quality. Suggest removable pedals: MKS Ezy, Wellgo QRD, etc.
Yes, a few folks use drop bars on their folding bike. No, they typically don't fold well.
Yeah, that doesn't fold well indeed. I reckon it's gonna be a flatbar for me. The MKS pedals look neat (as one would expect from a Japanese manufacturer). Not sure, however, if I should buy pedals that cost more than the rest of the parts combined...