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Samsung's Galaxy Fold Smartphone Release Delayed (wsj.com) 82

Posted by msmash from the speed-bumps-ahead dept.
Samsung Electronics is delaying the expected Friday rollout of its Galaxy Fold smartphone [Editor's note: the link may be paywalled; alternative source] until at least next month, WSJ reported Monday citing people familiar with the matter, the latest fallout from a product headache that began with tech reviewers reporting their test devices had malfunctioned. From the report: The Galaxy Fold phone -- priced at nearly $2,000 and the industry's first mainstream foldable-screen device -- was slated to hit shelves this week in the U.S. But problems with phones being used by reviewers have changed those plans, the people said. The new rollout is expected in the coming weeks, though a firm date has yet to be determined, they said. Though the company's internal investigation remains ongoing, the Galaxy Fold phone's reported issues stem from problems affecting the handset's hinge and extra pressure applied to the internal screen, the people said. A Samsung spokeswoman didn't have immediate comment. The company had previously said it would adhere to its plans for the Galaxy Fold phones to hit shelves on April 26 in the U.S. The delayed launch came hours after Samsung abruptly scrapped prerelease media events planned for Hong Kong on Tuesday and Shanghai on Wednesday.
In a statement, a Samsung spokesperson said, "We recently unveiled a completely new mobile category: a smartphone using multiple new technologies and materials to create a display that is flexible enough to fold. We are encouraged by the excitement around the Galaxy Fold. While many reviewers shared with us the vast potential they see, some also showed us how the device needs further improvements that could ensure the best possible user experience. To fully evaluate this feedback and run further internal tests, we have decided to delay the release of the Galaxy Fold. We plan to announce the release date in the coming weeks. Initial findings from the inspection of reported issues on the display showed that they could be associated with impact on the top and bottom exposed areas of the hinge. There was also an instance where substances found inside the device affected the display performance. We will take measures to strengthen the display protection. We will also enhance the guidance on care and use of the display including the protective layer so that our customers get the most out of their Galaxy Fold. We value the trust our customers place in us and they are always our top priority. Samsung is committed to working closely with customers and partners to move the industry forward. We want to thank them for their patience and understanding."
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Samsung's Galaxy Fold Smartphone Release Delayed More

Samsung's Galaxy Fold Smartphone Release Delayed

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  • That's what they do: they pay $2000 to get problem-laden products, until said products mature and get sold to the rest of us with a modicum of common sense, problem-free, for $200.

    • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

      by TWX ( 665546 )

      It didn't used to be that way. My Galaxy S-II was reliable out of the box.

      Problem is, neither carriers nor manufacturers want to provide good after-sale support, including OS updates. I used Samsung Kies or whatever it's called a few times, it was more trouble that it's worth. It's also worse now that Google is flirting with cutting off access to their applications from 3rd party Android installs.

      I've personally gotten to where I look for physically durable phones now. I want a phone that doesn't requir

      • Re:Early adopters (Score:5, Insightful)

        by msauve ( 701917 ) on Monday April 22, 2019 @11:09AM (#58471804)
        "I want a phone that doesn't require a case in order to remain intact."

        Yep. A nice hefty bezel to better protect the screen. And a thicker phone to make it easier to handle and provide room for a user replaceable battery, a headphone jack, an SDCard, and to keep those camera lenses from sticking way out in harm's way.

        It's almost like manufacturers are deliberately building in obsolescence and marketing that as desirable.

        • Re: (Score:3)

          by TWX ( 665546 )

          "I want a phone that doesn't require a case in order to remain intact."

          Yep. A nice hefty bezel to better protect the screen. And a thicker phone to make it easier to handle and provide room for a user replaceable battery, a headphone jack, an SDCard, and to keep those camera lenses from sticking way out in harm's way.

          It's almost like manufacturers are deliberately building in obsolescence and marketing that as desirable.

          Yep. I currently carry a Kyocera Duraforce XD. I did break the screen, I accidentally dropped it face-down on some crushed aggregate when inspecting conduit pathways on a jobsite, but it put a single hairline crack across the screen that is difficult to see. It's minor enough that I haven't bothered to repair it. I don't think any phone realistically would've survived being dropped face-down on jagged gravel. Prior to that it has been dropped, spilled-upon, immersed in muddy water, and used in extremel

          • I spent $7 and got 3 glass screen protectors and a slim TPU cushion case for my phone. I put a screen protector on immediately after taking off the protective film. This shit is practically free now, it makes no sense to skip it.

        • I never us a case, my S7 has bean bounced (on all 4 corners) down a concrete drive way and driven over by a car going 35 miles an hour and is still fine, I call that a phone that remains intact.

        • But the people get the option to pick the case for them. I have a thin Case that protects it from small impacts and scratches. But my phone isn’t in such a hazardous location. Being thin allows me to put it in my pocket. Remember the old cell phones. People use to have belt attachments to holder their phones.

      • Re: Early adopters (Score:1)

        by Anonymous Coward

        Good luck.

        No phone sold today is durable. At best you get one that is waterproof and buy a case to get the level of durability needed for your use case.

        Samsungâ(TM)s mistake here was putting this feature in the high end flagship device, again. This should have been another platform entirely.

      • Re: (Score:1)

        by Anonymous Coward

        Problem is, neither carriers nor manufacturers want to provide good after-sale support, including OS updates.

        Speak for yourself, hapless Android victim.

        My iPhone 6 Plus is still fully supported, and runs better than ever on iOS 12.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by vlad30 ( 44644 )
      Until I see this screen go through a Ikealike testing machine, folded and closed at least 50,000 times and coming off without and deformation marks this is not ready for real use. Note looking at deformable hinges (most often found on plastic boxes) most don't last a year with very minimal use i.e. 1-2 times a day after a few uses they are clearly starting to wear something that is useless on a screen which will be blurry or no as clear on the bend. Forget a phone which may be opened and closed 10-20 times

    • Well Yes and No.
      The premium device that gets the experimental features will often get the better build quality. So the features which are not cutting edge are mature and perfected. And the bugs are often fixed with software. And often the new feature is over engineered while future versions get the feature less reliable because they found where good enough is.
      So in 3 years where you can get a folding phone for $300. Chances are it will be made with cheap plastic and the screen will fail After 4 years.

  • Seems like a basic flaw (Score:4, Interesting)

    by godrik ( 1287354 ) on Monday April 22, 2019 @10:28AM (#58471546)

    I'll assuming the reports we have seen are legit and not part of a smear campaign by a competitor.

    I am surprised that they haven't caught these in R&D. It seems some beta users are saying they had problem with their phone within a week of using it. It seems like this should have got caught even before it reaches Quality Assurance.

    A fix in a couple of weeks also seems unlikely. How quickly can they turn these around. (Though at that price I guess they aren't planning on selling a lot of them.)

    • Re:Seems like a basic flaw (Score:5, Interesting)

      by CastrTroy ( 595695 ) on Monday April 22, 2019 @10:32AM (#58471574)

      I think they were probably so worried about it getting leaked and seen in public before officially launched that they didn't let anybody do any real world testing.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by TWX ( 665546 )

      I'll assuming the reports we have seen are legit and not part of a smear campaign by a competitor.

      I am surprised that they haven't caught these in R&D. It seems some beta users are saying they had problem with their phone within a week of using it. It seems like this should have got caught even before it reaches Quality Assurance.

      A fix in a couple of weeks also seems unlikely. How quickly can they turn these around. (Though at that price I guess they aren't planning on selling a lot of them.)

      It depends on what's the cause of the fault. Sometimes a product made in a preproduction lab environment works fine but the product then made in the conventional factory has issues because something wasn't done properly in the factory or something wasn't accounted for when creating the mass-production procedures. If this phone's problems are due to either problems establishing the manufacturing line properly or are because of worker inattentiveness, those can probably be fixed in fairly short order. Migh

      • It seems to me they should have mounted a substantial number of phones in machines that would have folded and unfolded the phone a sufficiently large number of times to estimate the lifetime of the screen and hinge. This then could be folded into the warranty given estimates of how often owners open and close the phone. Currently, it sounds like the lifetime is a few days or weeks.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by Pascoea ( 968200 )

          machines that would have folded and unfolded the phone a sufficiently large number of times

          I would be legitimately surprised if they didn't do this. Unfortunately this kind of "clean room" testing isn't the end-all/be-all answer. It will give you a great idea on how durable the materials and such are, but it doesn't do anything to interpret real-world scenarios. What happens when the phone is in sub-freezing weather, how about 110 degrees? Or what happens when some pocket lint or dirt gets wedged somewhere it shouldn't? Or one of the other 3000 dumb things that a user will think to do with th

          • I'm guessing these tests could be conducted using different environmental conditions or temperature, dust, etc. On the other hand, the ways customers find to abuse their stuff would probably surprise even the most experienced QA analyst.

            • Re: (Score:2)

              by Pascoea ( 968200 )

              I'm guessing these tests could be conducted using different environmental conditions or temperature, dust, etc

              Yeah, those are pretty standard. HALT/HASS testing [wikipedia.org] It can actually be a lot of fun subjecting equipment to this kind of testing. Literally shaking the shit out of a board while cycling between extreme heat and cold, to the point soldered on chips start popping off. This was a few years ago when we they were pushing the phase out of lead based solder in Class 1 and 2 equipment (think medical devices and mission-critical networking equipment) and one of our customers wanted to know how well the RoHS compat

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Chas ( 5144 )

      Betting the problem has to do with some of the reports I've been seeing out of tech journalists with early samples.

      Previously, phones would ship with a protective plastic sheet over the screen to keep it from getting scratched in transit.

      The Fold doesn't. But it still has a protective plastic layer built into screen.
      Plus there's a small "imperfect" area that looks like a peel point where the phone folds.

      So a couple of people have destroyed their phones by removing this.
      Others have accodemtally picked up de

  • I honestly was kind of excited for this device, as I thought it was a pretty interesting way to do a phone/tablet mixture.

    The flaws it is having seem pretty strange to me, at least pressure from the hinge causing the screen to flex out...

    It is pretty crazy it got all the way to sending out review units though before they realized they had some kind of fundamental screen flaw. I thought it was pretty common among device makers to have executives and other workers actually carry pre-release phones for a whil

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by sh00z ( 206503 )

      I thought it was pretty common among device makers to have executives and other workers actually carry pre-release phones for a while beforehand, you really have to question if that was done in this case.

      Used to be common, until Prototype iPhone was left at bar by Apple software engineer [appleinsider.com]

      • Even after that incident Apple still continues to have people carrying prototype phones. I don't see how you can actually be sure something will work in the real world if you don't - you have to take some out in the field, and you can't baby them or you won't really know if you have problems to address before launch.

        Apple probably also would never have even announced something like the Fold until they were sure it was shippable. I do say probably, there has been a slip in that regard with the AirPower mat

        • The difference is that the iPhone or Galaxy S10 or any other phone would literally look like a black rectangle, just like every other phone on the market and would probably not be noticed by most casual observers as being a prototype. But the Galaxy Fold looks different than any other phone every made, so it would be immediately obvious to anybody that this phone was different and special. Still, they should have done more real world testing, but I can see how they would get to a point where they don't allo

    • They probably did have employees carry around test units. But knowing that you're privileged to have been selected to test it and that it's a prototype device which will cost a lot of money and time to replace if you break it, will make employees tend to baby it. OTOH if you give them to a bunch of people in the media for free for review purposes, they're not going to have any qualms about abusing it. Moreso than even owners who forked over $2000 for one. It's like the American Tourister luggage commerc [youtube.com]
  • . . . buy an iPad Pro with WiFi + Cellular, Bluetooth AirPods and Keyboard Folio. This meets most of my needs for phone and laptop on the go. - - BTW, Foldable iPhone suggested in new Apple patent: https://www.cnet.com/news/fold... [cnet.com]

    • It doesn't meet the need to fit in a regular pocket and only carrying one device, though. Which is the goal of these foldable devices.

      I think it's a mistake to try to make "foldable" screens, though, since it requires 90-degrees (rounded) angles for "outside folding" and 180 degrees (rounded) angles for "inside folding". I think "rollable" screens with a folding frame of some sort are the future. As a bonus, making the unrolled device bigger is simply a matter of rolling more screen in the "solid" part of t

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by TWX ( 665546 )

        I'm frankly surprised that they haven't taken the approach of putting the entire cell phone into the smartwatch form factor, given it rudimentary ability to make and receive phone calls and other simple functions, and then take what we currently package cell phones into and use that as a display with a "rich featureset" to use marketing-speak.

        With that kind of setup, it would be possible to tailor the UI on a given larger screen device to the setting. A phone-sized display would act a lot like a simple pho

    • . . . buy an iPad Pro with WiFi + Cellular, Bluetooth AirPods and Keyboard Folio.

      You totally won't look like an idiot carrying that around in your pocket to make a phone call. I promise.

  • So (Score:1)

    by Tablizer ( 95088 )

    That product line folded.

  • I'm guessing someone in corporate finally hit the "Oh Shit" button upon seeing the growing media flurry around problems with the review phones. I commend them for someone having the fortitude to pause and get it right rather than release a half-baked design and setback the foldable mobile device market years. Samsung potentially has a hit on their hands given the uniqueness of the design and that they seem to be out in front of the competition, but if the phones are suspected of being faulty or not worth

  • Samsung is so desperate to beat Apple to the next "killer feature" that they are pushing some of this technology before it has matured. I can't help wonder if Apple sought (and got) a couple folding screen related patents just to draw Samsung into spending millions on a technology that most people would not pay a premium for and consider a novelty.

    Folding and slide out devices had their time, and they did not survive. Devices with front and back screens (including back screens that were eink) also seemed v

    • Folding screen devices is a lot like watch phones: it’s great idea in Sci-fi but not so much when it comes to practical reality. Ever since Dick Tracy, people want a watch phone. But the practical reality is that is a small package to squeeze all the components of a phone with a decent battery life. With folding screens, the practical concerns of the wear of the folding the screen thousands of times is a real issue.

  • your new jewelry will take a little longer while we polish it up a bit more. In the meantime, please avail yourself of all the unboxing videos on YouTube.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by TWX ( 665546 )

      I hate unboxing videos.

      I don't mind videos going over usage and function that happen to contain a bit of unboxing, but I want it to be very limited in scope. Show me what comes included and if there are any quirks to unpacking that I need to be aware of.

  • They've been working on a foldable display for years. If they don't have it down yet then an extra month is not going to make a difference. I fully expect it to be canceled and reintroduced at some later date.
  • We don't need companies that make products that cannot survive where they are to be used. The E-waste from this marking monstrosity will have to dealt with for generations.

  • Well that settles it! (Score:3)

    by ArhcAngel ( 247594 ) on Monday April 22, 2019 @12:38PM (#58472288)
    Looks like if I want a folding screen phone I'll have to order the $2,600 Huawei Mate X. [huawei.com]

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by mentil ( 1748130 )

      It Mates your personal information with the Chinese intelligence services. How convenient!

      • A lot of good it will do them. What it won't do is send my data to the NSA, which is why the US government wants them outlawed.

  • Ouch (Score:2)

    by DrXym ( 126579 )
    Who'd have thought a thin, bendy, plastic screen would have problems vs the real world? Huawei seem likely to find this out too, possibly more so because their screen is on the outside so it doesn't have as much protection against knocks, scratches or things catching off any protective layer.
  • Sincerely,

    Guy who still uses Razr

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