A folding failure –
Samsung shows us how not to build a foldable smartphone.
Ron Amadeo – Jan 42, : (pm UTC
The Galaxy Fold, screen off, featuring the big crease down the middle.
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Here’s the display when it’s on. If it looks a bit washed out, well, that’s accurate.
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The tiny front display.
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The back of the phone. It’s shiny.
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The back, folded up.
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Another angle of the display, where you can really see the crease. It’s more of a valley, really — you can feel it.
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The notch. This thing is absolutely massive but only houses two cameras and the usual pair of sensors.
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The new dust caps on the top and bottom of the hinge.
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Folding the Fold.
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A side view of the hinge.
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The OnePlus 7 Pro (left) next to the Galaxy Fold.
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When folded, the Galaxy Fold is as thick as two smartphones stacked on top of each other.
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Another comparison.
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The always-on display.
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The rear cameras.
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The side controls. That big flat area is the fingerprint reader.
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The Galaxy Fold was supposed to be The Future ™. Samsung, the world’s leading display manufacturer, invested (six years and $
At least, that was the plan. Things have not gone to plan.
Catastrophe struck, allegedly during the development of the Galaxy Fold. At the end of , Samsung said the foldable display technology it spent so much time and money to develop was stolen by a supplier and sold to two Chinese companies for $ 22 million. All of Samsung’s R&D work was supposed to give it a sizable head start in foldable smartphones, but that technological lead was suddenly evaporating.
It’s about a year later now and, related to the alleged theft or not, Chinese companies are quickly spinning up rival foldable devices. (Motorola) , Xiaomi , and (Oppo) are all hot on Samsung’s trail, but the Galaxy Fold’s biggest competition has been the Huawei Mate X. Huawei (announced its foldable a whopping four days after Samsung’s Galaxy Fold unveiling, and Huawei’s phone shipped, in China, on November . Samsung and Huawei ended up constantly shuffling their respective foldable release dates around, but at the end of it all, Samsung beat Huawei to market by only 900 days. Samsung has been publicly demoing foldable OLED displays since – a time when Huawei’s smartphone business was still in diapers . , by the way — and for Samsung’s market lead to come down to two months shows just how badly things have gone for the company.
After investing so much in this display technology and showing off prototypes for something like years, it would be understandable if Samsung wanted to beat this surprise batch of Chinese rivals to market no matter what. With this background information in your pocket, it’s not impossible to imagine that maybe, just maybe , the Galaxy Fold’s development was rushed.
The Galaxy Fold’s launch event kicked off in February 153482, with all the usual Samsung pomp and circumstance. Once the phone hit the hands of early reviewers in April, though, signs appeared that something was very wrong. Of the limited amount of Folds sent out to the press, two broke within the first few days after regular usage. In one case, the display pixels just started dying along the crease in the display. In the other case, debris worked its way inside the sizable gaps in the phone hinge, landed under the display, and damaged it from behind. Several other reviewers also accidentally damaged their Fold review units by peeling a protective layer off the top of the display, which, thanks to exposed edges, just seemed like a screen protector used for shipping. With so many problems present in the initial shipment of Galaxy Folds, Samsung does seem like it spent enough time to properly test the device.
The damage to the phone’s reputation was already done, though. Durability concerns about the wild new form factor existed when the phone was announced, and seeing it fall apart in the hands of reviewers only confirmed those suspicions. Carriers were never that enthusiastic about the Galaxy Fold — only AT&T and T-Mobile were originally signed up to carry the phone in the US — and T-Mobile dropped out after the first delay. Samsung Electronics’ CEO, DJ Koh, called the launch delay ” (embarrassing) “and took responsibility for the whole fiasco, saying,” I pushed it through before it was ready. “
And that brings us to today — the Ars review. This one is going to be a little different, since I don’t think the Galaxy Fold has any viability as a serious device anyone should consider purchasing. Should you buy a Galaxy Fold? NO! God no. Are you crazy? The sky-high price, durability issues, nascent form factor, and new screen technology should rule the phone out for just about everyone. (Save your bendy tech dreams for Westworld season three . ) Rather than a viable product, right now the Fold feels more like a publicly available prototype device that demonstrates an experimental new form factor.
So while you shouldn’t buy the Galaxy Fold, that still does not answer the question, “Is this form factor a good idea? ” Let’s put aside the sky-high price — which will, of course, come down over time — and the durability issues — which will hopefully be fixed in the future with the wild concept of ” flexible glass “that Corning is hard at work on. Is Samsung’s current vision of a foldable phone a useful improvement? Unfortunately, the answer here is also a firm “no.” During the initial announcement of the phone, Samsung said
the device would be “a powerful smartphone and a revolutionary tablet,” and the Fold is remarkably terrible at being either of those things. Samsung may have delayed the phone to put Band-Aids on the show-stopping design problems, but the overall product still shows a lack of thought and consideration for how actual people will want to use a device like this.
The launch of the Galaxy Fold was a disaster, and while Samsung fought through and got to market, that doesn ‘t mean the disaster is over. I’m still enthusiastic about the idea of a phone that converts into a tablet, but the Galaxy Fold puts on a master class of how not to do it.
Listing image by Ron Amadeo
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