I put a preorder down on the Galaxy Fold back on the 12th, half convinced I was buying into the future and half convinced I was an idiot with $1,980 burning a hole in my pocket. As of about an hour ago I cancelled it. Turns out the second half of me was right.
If you havent seen it yet, go look up what happened to the review units Samsung sent out this week. Dieter Bohn over at The Verge had his screen fail on the second day, a bulge showing up under the crease like something was trying to escape from inside the hinge. CNBCs Steve Kovach had a chunk of his display just stop working entirely after he peeled off a layer on the screen that, in fairness, looked exactly like the kind of plastic protective film you're supposed to peel off every other phone on earth. Except on this one it wasnt a protective film, it was part of the actual display stack. Nobody told him that. Nobody told anybody that, really, until phones started dying.
Multiple reviewers, multiple units, same failure window of a day or two. Thats not one bad unit off the line, thats a pattern.
Im not writing this to dunk on Samsung for the sake of it. Ive owned a Note since the Note 3 and I still think their hardware team is one of the best in the business when theyre building something thats been done before. Phones with a hinge and a screen that folds in half is not something thats been done before, not at this scale, not for two grand, not with a launch date of April 26th that as of this morning Samsung still says its keeping. Eight days from now. Ive read nothing suggesting theyve pushed it back, which honestly is the part that worries me more than the broken screens themselves.
Heres my actual complaint, separate from the screens: the whole pitch for this thing was "tablet in your pocket," and I was excited about that specific idea, not about foldables as a category. I dont care about the fold as a trick. I care about having a 7.3 inch screen for reading and a normal phone screen for pocketing, in one device, so I stop carrying a phone and an iPad mini everywhere like some kind of gadget mule. That's a genuinely good idea. But a good idea built on a hinge mechanism this fragile, sold at a price that's more than my first car cost in parts, is not a good idea I want to be a beta tester for. Somebody else can find out if the second and third batches are more durable. I'll read about it.
Small tangent because I cant help myself: the same week this is happening, Zoom and Pinterest both went public today, and Zoom is up something like 70% on its first day of trading, which is a wild number for a video calling app that most people only started using because their IT department made them. Ive used Zoom maybe four times ever, all for job interviews, and it worked fine every time, no complaints, but Im still surprised a company doing exactly one boring thing very well is worth what it apparently is now on the market. Maybe thats the lesson from this whole week actually. Boring and reliable beats flashy and breaks-on-day-two. The stock market seems to agree with me for once.
Anyway. Refund is processing, my case says 3 to 5 business days, we'll see. Im keeping my S10+ a while longer, which I already like fine, the camera bump notwithstanding (still not a fan of how it looks, still havent found a case that hides it well). Ill probably eat my words in a year when Fold 2 or whatever they call it comes out with a sturdier hinge and I buy it on day one anyway, because thats apparently who I am as a person when it comes to gadgets. But not this batch. Not at this price, not with this failure rate, not eight days before launch with zero word of a delay.
If anyone reading this did keep their preorder, Id genuinely like to hear how it goes. Email's in the sidebar like always.