iFixit's Galaxy Fold Teardown Reveals Its Biggest Design Flaw (theverge.com) 40
An anonymous reader shares a report: Following up on its post speculating on the possible causes of the various screen breakages we've seen on review units, iFixit's teardown analysis seems to reveal a fundamental design tradeoff Samsung had to make -- one that may have doomed the phone. It seems as though Samsung focused quite a bit on ensuring the mechanics of the hinge would be a sturdy and dependable mechanism for folding and unfolding a screen. Yet for whatever reason, the Galaxy Fold does not have enough protection against the ingress of debris. And because that screen is so incredibly delicate (as any OLED is if it's not protected by something like Gorilla Glass), that was a significant risk.
We still can't know the full reasoning behind Samsung's decision to delay the launch of the phone, but this debris/bulge problem feels much more fundamental than the fact that the protective layer on the top looks like a screen protector that should be peeled off (but, again, should not be as that breaks the screen as well). The bulk of the rest of the reviewers who had broken screens tried to remove that layer -- a natural inclination since the review unit packaging didn't have any warning on it.
We still can't know the full reasoning behind Samsung's decision to delay the launch of the phone, but this debris/bulge problem feels much more fundamental than the fact that the protective layer on the top looks like a screen protector that should be peeled off (but, again, should not be as that breaks the screen as well). The bulk of the rest of the reviewers who had broken screens tried to remove that layer -- a natural inclination since the review unit packaging didn't have any warning on it.
Please directly link ifixit (Score:5, Informative)
https://ifixit.org/blog/16025/galaxy-fold-failure-causes/
https://www.ifixit.com/Teardown/Samsung+Galaxy+Fold+Teardown/122600
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Mod up informative. How are we supposed to RTFA if the author of the blurb and the editor don't link TFA?
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I would have agreed, but iFixit's article is not a teardown, but a bunch of informed guesses mostly quoting other websites and reviewers.
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LE: nevermind, I somehow completely missed the second URL :(
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I'm rather impressed that they managed to get their hands on a device that isn't yet available to the general public in order to do this teardown.
Now I wonder if companies worried about preproduction demo units are going to color-code some of the internal plastics and document who received which particular device, to know who provided such to entities like this.
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Now I wonder if companies worried about preproduction demo units are going to color-code some of the internal plastics and document who received which particular device, to know who provided such to entities like this.
Changing colors in injection molding would be prohibitively expensive. If anything, they'd laser etch the parts, which is cheap.
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Changing colors in injection molding would be prohibitively expensive. If anything, they'd laser etch the parts, which is cheap.
However, it would be rather unlikely that a laser etched tag would be read out in passing in the article, nor would it be readable in a photo next to the article.
Color however is pretty obvious in photos, and more than one article writer may be tempted to write something such as "after removing the purple plastic sheet, part XYZ becomes visible under it".
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Changing colors in injection molding would be prohibitively expensive. If anything, they'd laser etch the parts, which is cheap.
However, it would be rather unlikely that a laser etched tag would be read out in passing in the article, nor would it be readable in a photo next to the article.
Color however is pretty obvious in photos, and more than one article writer may be tempted to write something such as "after removing the purple plastic sheet, part XYZ becomes visible under it".
Exactly. These are one-offs already and aren't being mass-produced yet, so the added work to cast either many parts or else certain particular parts in different colors is probably not significantly more labor intensive and may be worth the cost if it reduces the likelihood of these sorts of teardowns. It may require using a different machine to attach the mold fixture to, but if they only need to do a hundred devices this way, picking three components and using five different colors each would yield enou
Permanent marker (Marks-Alot) (Score:2)
It seems to me that 1, 2, 3 or 4 horizontal lines with a permanent marker, and 1, 2, 3 or 4 vertical lines, woils be quicker / easier than changing out colors at the injection molding machine, and much more clear in photos than laser etching.
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Why do people keep pretending that these were preproduction units or beta testers? The broken units were sent to reviewers at major newspapers, and they were going to report on release day that the phones broke after a couple of days of use.
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When helping each other work on their cars, one guy will invariably bring out the old joke, "I found the problem... it's a Ford." (Or Chevy, or Honda, or whatever.) The article struck me the same way. The headline says "Here's Why We Think Galaxy Folds Are Failing" and behind that is a giant picture of the phone with the SAMSUNG logo showing.
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Great tear-down, and excellent photos. Although I'm quite the early adopter (and can afford this thing) the photos and work show it's fugly and engineering is crap. Thank you ifixit!
I frankly don't know who would buy one, unless you're seriously a Samsung Fanboi and/or looking to piss $2k. Praise to Samsung for willing to take a risk with this turd right after wasting billions on their flammable phone efforts, but yeah, time to try again.
I suspect this thing won't launch and some product design guys are
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How come these links aren't clickable? :(
The folding bit is the design flaw (Score:3)
Not the missing gorilla glass.
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That really depends on your design goals.
The primary goal here isn't to create a foldable device that is affordable, durable, and highly reliable -- that was done ages ago. The primary goal is to create a foldable device that exudes *coolness*.
The fact that it only works for about three and a half days isn't so much a design flaw -- it's an entirely predictable tradeoff.
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The ZTE Axon M was released in 2017
And it has two separate screens if my eyes serve me properly, which was exactly my point. Dual-screen clamshells, which give you the screen real estate without the unacceptable tradeoffs we're seeing here, have been around a long time in a variety of form factors.
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There is one unacceptable tradeoff with phones like this, though, and that's that they are not a single screen.
I personally would never buy a phone with two screens. I'm not sure I would have ever bought Samsung's folding display phone either, but it's definitely much closer to something I would buy than a dual-screen phone.
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Scratch that -- missed the intervening AC post and thought you were replying to me.
Blackadder Goes Forth (Score:2)
It has one slight flaw. It's bollocks.
What a Dog's Breakfast (Score:2)
It's actually easy to fix. (Score:2)
It's quite simple to fix really, you install air nozzles that blow air outwards from the openings so debris can't get/stay inside. Then if someone says the Galaxy Fold blows hard, you tell them that's a good thing !
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So they install a non-user-replaceable compressed-air cartridge, and if you don't get it serviced every 3,000 folds, you lose warranty and it quickly breaks. Planned obsolescence at its best!
For good reason (Score:2)
The concept of foldable electronics is useful, but not something that humans hold onto and want relatively stable.
iFixit confirms (Score:2)
It's a $2000 gold plated dog turd.
And here I thought the biggest flaw (Score:2)
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I guess their teardowns are still of use (Score:1)
Unfortunately I have stopped buying their products. Last few iphone screens a mixture of iphone 6,6s and 7 screens. Along with some older samsung screens have all been buggy. In addition, I bought a replacement battery for my personal phone that had poorer performance than the three year old oem that was in it. Its samsung s5 that I wont get rid of until it dies a death of old age. I have also purchased a few iphone batteries from them that had very poor performance. one puffed two days after installati
Who asked for this? (Score:2)