Samsung has postponed the sale of the Galaxy Fold, its first awaited smartphone with a folding screen, presented for the first time at the end of last February. The postponement was announced on Monday, April 22, a few days after reports of unexpected screen breaks by journalists who had received the Galaxy Fold to review it. Sales to the public should have started at the end of this week in the United States and in some other countries, while for Italy there was talk of the first days of May.
Last week several reporters had reported problems with their Samsung Galaxy Fold received for reviews, after just one day of use. Dieter Bohn, of the technology company The Verge, said he noticed that under the folding screen, near the point where it folds, a small swelling had formed, caused by something that had ended up under it. As tiny as it was, the extra thickness caused the screen to crack, rendering the smartphone unusable.
The Galaxy Fold opens and closes like a book. It has a smaller external screen – for reading notifications, replying to messages and quickly browsing the Internet – and a larger, foldable one, which becomes visible when you open your smartphone. A hinge allows you to open and close the device, but according to Bohn it still leaves a minimum of space under which dust and tiny fragments can slip, which would then have caused the screen to break.
Other journalists after Bohn had reported similar problems with their Galaxy Folds, some related to the removal of a protective film on the screen that should not be removed. On the smartphone, however, there were no indications to this effect and many believed that the film was one of the classic protection systems inserted by Samsung on the new models to protect the screen until they are put on sale. The Galaxy Fold film instead serves to reinforce the screen, preventing it from being damaged near the point where the smartphone is folded.
PSA: There's a layer that appears to be a screen protector on the Galaxy Fold's display. It's NOT a screen protector. Do NOT remove it.
I got this far peeling it off before the display brushed and blacked out. Started over with a replacement. pic.twitter.com/ZhEG2Bqulr
– Marques Brownlee (@MKBHD) April 17, 2019
After the reports last week, Samsung had ordered the withdrawal of the damaged models and had promised to investigate, without referring to any postponements of the sale of the Galaxy Fold. The first checks evidently led to not very encouraging conclusions, prompting the executives of the South Korean company to postpone the sale of one of the most anticipated smartphone models of the year until a later date.
In its statement, Samsung explains that the problems occur if the ends of the hinge are hit, causing damage to the internal folding screen. The company also admitted that in some cases small debris could slip under the screen and damage it, as Bohn of The Verge had reported. The problems therefore seem to be quite substantial and, as regards the hardware, of a complicated solution.
Samsung promised to “take steps to strengthen the screen protector”, possibly referring to the protective film that was mistakenly removed by some reporters. Clearer instructions will also be included to prevent the film from being removed making the screen more fragile.
The postponement of sales of the Galaxy Fold is certainly an image damage for Samsung, but the company would have had to face a bigger one if it had also put on sale a product that costs about 2 thousand euros and which proved to be more fragile than expected. It is not known how many thousands of Galaxy Folds have been produced by Samsung so far, nor what the economic damage could be for the company. The lack of a certain date on the sale implies that the company is still working to assess the extent of the problem, which could cause a postponement until the summer.
