Friday, March 29, 2024

MrMobile: ‘Not surprised, just disappointed’ his Galaxy Fold is defective

Share

It’s harder when it hits one of your own. Here are Mobile Nations, between our three Galaxy Fold review units, we thought we’d escaped unscathed — none of our units had developed the issues we’d been seeing all over the place for the last few days.

Until now.

Sigh. A little grain of something found its way beneath my Galaxy Fold display. Like the saying goes: “not surprised; just disappointed.” Sending this back to Samsung hoping they figure out a way to seal up that hinge. Silver lining: video tomorrow! pic.twitter.com/9UfYDMOEul

— Michael Fisher (@theMrMobile) April 23, 2019

Our own Michael Fisher, AKA MrMobile, seems to have a piece of debris under his display. The same piece of debris that found its way into Dieter Bohn’s unit over at The Verge. (Well, probably not the same piece of debris, but one equally ruinous.)

Doesn’t matter, though: Samsung’s collecting all the review units and inspecting them for defects, a consequence of the indefinite delay the company issued earlier this week as it tries to dig into why this trouble unfolded in the first place. Then it has to fix the problem, likely by plugging the exposed parts of the hinge, which iFixit believes is the culprit of this mess.

While it’s figuring out that little problem, Samsung will likely make it much more difficult for the average person to remove the not-exactly-a-screen-protector that ostensibly keeps the plastic display underneath from sustaining too much damage. It also hopes to do all this before the inevitable release of the Huawei Mate X, which is expected to start selling sometime in June. According to AT&T, the Galaxy Fold could go back on sale June 13, but that may be a placeholder.

Samsung’s also in the unenviable position of needing to salvage a now-damaged phone launch while also convincing consumers that, despite its $2000 price tag, the Fold and phones like it are indeed the future.

No pressure.

I may be in the minority but I’m still very bullish on the Fold. I love this phone more and more every day, and I’m pleased that Samsung is taking the time to fix whatever needs fixing so the few people who do buy the Fold will have an awesome experience.

— Daniel Bader (@journeydan) April 22, 2019

As for me, I really like the Fold. It’s got some really good ideas and, despite a few rocky implementations of said ideas, a solid foundation. There’s plenty to like here, and most of the time I don’t see the compromises — I just see the incredible versatility of having a tablet display in a phone’s body.

But we can’t all agree, can we?

Read more

More News