The Samsung Galaxy Fold hasn’t even been launched to the public yet and issues of the display failure on review units have surfaced. Samsung had just started giving out the units to tech journalists of the first ever foldable screen phone/tablet when they started breaking a few days later.
The screen on my Galaxy Fold review unit is completely broken and unusable just two days in. Hard to know if this is widespread or not. pic.twitter.com/G0OHj3DQHw
— Mark Gurman (@markgurman) April 17, 2019
Samsung introduced the Galaxy Fold during its launch event of the Galaxy S10 and S10+. However, at that time, the actual device wasn’t available to be used or reviewed hands-on. Now, a few days ago, Samsung started sending out the review units to journalists before the actual launch of the device, which is announced to be 26th April. Everything was fine until the review units started breaking.
While it’s common for early builds of a completely new design to have faults, I’ll have to admit, a disaster of this caliber wasn’t just some minor issue. So what was the issue exactly? Well, it had to do with the Galaxy Fold’s display. The device uses, what Samsung calls, an Infinity Flex Display.
As the name suggests, the Super AMOLED panel is flexible, which enables it to fold from the middle, enabling the device to transform. The Galaxy Fold is the first-ever mass market device to ever offer this feature, making it susceptible to problems, especially with its display. And from the looks of it, that’s exactly what is happening.
Multiple reviewers and tech journalists all around the globe, who received the review units, have reported display failure just after a day or two of use. While Samsung was happy enough to replace the broken units without a hassle, no one seemed to know the reason behind this display-failing epidemic. Well, not until @MKBHD, a YouTuber and tech reviewer, tweeted this:
PSA: There's a layer that appears to be a screen protector on the Galaxy Fold's display. It's NOT a screen protector. Do NOT remove it.
I got this far peeling it off before the display spazzed and blacked out. Started over with a replacement. pic.twitter.com/ZhEG2Bqulr
— Marques Brownlee (@MKBHD) April 17, 2019
It seems like there was a protective layer of plastic on the screen, that most people mistook for a regular protector and peeled it off. Some other reviewers, who had their devices broken, confirmed this probable coincidence. You may now think that this may not be such a big issue anymore. I mean, if you don’t peel off the protective layer, you’ll be good, right? Well, not quite. For you see, there were some who claimed not to have touched it and their devices still broke.
https://twitter.com/backlon/status/1118573836226658304
As you can see in the picture of the tweet above, the protective layer is still intact and instead, a weird bulge appeared in the middle of the screen. This proves that the Galaxy Fold does, after all, have a manufacturing fault and probably will cause issues to, at least, the first batch of customers who have pre-ordered the device.
I’ve mentioned before that it isn’t wise to buy the Galaxy Fold just yet. The device is the first of its kind, uses unproven technology and costs just a hair under $2000. This incident backs it up further. I’d suggest that if you have plans to buy the Fold, wait for and observe the retail units as they get rolled out. If the problem persists, then it’s definitely a no-go.