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Samsung Postpones The Launch Of The $2,000 Galaxy Fold To Fix The Display: Analysis

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Atherton Research’s Principal Analyst Jean Baptiste Su shares his thoughts on why Samsung decided to delay indefinitely the commercial launch of its foldable smartphone, the $2,000 Galaxy Fold.
It’s been quite a disruptive past week for the smartphone world.
When I was in China last week, attending Huawei’s annual analyst summit in the company’s hometown of Shenzhen, I covered how the Apple-Qualcomm legal settlement, followed by Intel’s decision to quit making 5G chips for smartphones has completely reshaped the future of 5G.
During that same week, I was also monitoring the display issues that some early tech reviewers had while testing Samsung’s $2,000 foldable smartphone, the Galaxy Fold, pointing to the lack of durability of the flexible display and causing the phone to fail.
Initially, to calm early fears about the durability of the phone’s screen, the South Korean electronics giant released a video (below) last month showing a lab test that subjected the device to 200,000 folds and unfolds, which according to the company equals to five years of use, if used 100 times a day, and took a full week to complete.
While the extent of the test may seem like overkill to some, Samsung said at the time, it viewed it as vital to ensuring the durability of the device’s hinged design and Infinity Flex Display.
But, unfortunately, the extensive testing was not enough to prevent the main issue found while doing a real-life test, namely, the peeling off of the plastic screen protector that protects the flexible plastic display. Yes, you’ve read correctly, that’s plastic over plastic.
So, today, after several days of downplaying the problems—mostly faulting the reviewers for purposedly removing the plastic screen protector—Samsung finally decided to delay the launch of the Galaxy Fold which was expected to ship next week, on April 26 and is now postponed indefinitely.
Last Monday, the Korean tech conglomerate began taking preorders for the Galaxy Fold which will also be sold at Best Buy, AT&T, T-Mobile, and Samsung retail stores.
I’ve reached out to Samsung’s analyst relations and was given the following statement on this matter:
Atherton Research’s Take
Although Samsung’s decision to delay the commercial launch of the Galaxy Fold is a wise move and shows that it learned from the Galaxy Note 7 debacle three years ago, it really comes at a surprise—and a bit of disappointment frankly—knowing the eight years it took Samsung to develop the Galaxy Fold.

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