Samsung rushed the Galaxy Fold to market in an attempt to prove critics wrong and demonstrate it was an innovator not a follower, insiders claim, hurtling into
Samsung rushed the Galaxy Fold to market in an attempt to prove critics wrong and demonstrate it was an innovator not a follower, insiders claim, hurtling into another embarrassing disaster in the process. The South Korean firm was forced to delay the release of its flagship foldable smartphone, which was meant to arrive with preorder buyers this week, after reviewers discovered it was ominously easy to damage the near-$2,000 device.
Samsung’s roadmap was deceptively simple. The Galaxy Fold was revealed alongside the Galaxy S10 two months ago, billed as the pinnacle of the company’s engineering and development talents. Rather than some proof-of-concept, however, the Galaxy Fold had both a price tag and a release date.
That was to be April 26, with the $1,980 smartphone limited in numbers and – so the expectations went – likely to be in high demand, even at a premium cost. When Samsung handed out a small number of Galaxy Fold devices to reviews last week, however, that roadmap was quickly derailed. Although the futuristic form-factor wowed, screen problems quickly followed.
Indeed it was only on the second day that reviewers had their devices that issues cropped up. Some discovered that what they’d assumed was a protective plastic film installed to protect the internal screen during shipping was, in actual fact, an integral part of the flexible AMOLED panel.
