Samsung Galaxy Fold Trouble For Some Reviewers

Reviewers of the latest and greatest smartphone from Samsung Electronics have reported some display problems with the handset.

The Samsung Galaxy Fold folding smartphone-tablet hybrid, was launched in February this year, with a hefty price tag of nearly $2,000 (£1,534).

But a number of reviewers have encountered problems that surrounding the centerpiece of the handset, namely its folding screen.

Display issue?

On its launch, most people agreed that the Samsung Galaxy Fold was an impressive feat of hardware engineering.

The $1,980 device features a 4.6-inch phone display that opens out to a single large 7.3-inch screen when the device is unfolded, with no fold lines visible.

Samsung also earned kudos for just beating its rival Huawei to market, after the Chinese giant launched its folding phone called the Mate X a week later.

But now question marks have been raised about the durability of the Samsung Galaxy Fold, after a number of tech reviewers found issues with it, before it goes on sale from 26 April in the US.

Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman for example tweeted “the screen on my Galaxy Fold review unit is completely broken and unusable just two days in. Hard to know if this is widespread or not.”

The Verge’s Executive Editor Dieter Bohn tweeted that his review Fold “had that weird bump under the screen at the hinge. Whatever it was eventually broke the screen.”

CNBC’s tech editor Steve Kovach also tweeted about a problem with the display of the Galaxy Fold.

Samsung inspection

Samsung Electronics was quoted by Reuters as saying that it had received “a few” reports of damage to the displays of samples of its upcoming foldable smartphone.

“We will thoroughly inspect these units … to determine the cause of the matter,” Samsung said in a statement.

Reports indicate that some of the reviewers had removed a plastic layer on the screen that was not meant to be removed and the phone malfunctioned afterwards.

However both the Verge and CNBC insisted they did not remove the special film over the screen.

There is analyst speculation that Samsung’s in-folding design is likely to be less durable than Huawei’s out-folding approach.

“In-folding is more difficult to make than out-folding, as it adds higher pressure to screens, which people have worried about,” analyst Park Sung-soon at BNK Securities was quoted by Reuters as saying.

Samsung will be hoping that it does not have another troublesome handset to deal with. In 2016 the Galaxy Note 7 was recalled after some of those smartphones caught fire.

Samsung’s investigation into what caused the catastrophic Galaxy Note 7 safety failures later found a battery fault was chiefly responsible.

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