Samsung's star phone is in tragedy again! The folding screen worth tens of thousands of yuan can't last more than two days, the screen is black, and the honey bulges

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Samsung's foldable phone Galaxy Fold broke before it was officially launched.

The problems were all with the screens, some flickered, some were black, and some had mysterious bulges.

Unfortunately, they just happened to break down in the hands of several foreign technology media. After a day or two of use, these review machines all broke down at the same time, instantly becoming a hot topic in the technology circle.

You should know that this phone will go on sale in the United States on April 26, and it will be expensive. The official website of the US operator AT&T lists it at US$1,979.99 (RMB 13,250).

The domestic sales start date is May 3, and the price will be nearly 15,000 yuan.

Just when it was about to go on sale, a big problem occurred. This caused a lot of onlookers to watch. It was really embarrassing.

He died before he could accomplish his mission, and the onlookers were all laughing.

At this rate of rollover, if you really want to buy one just to try it out, the cost of a day's experience will be at least 6,000 to 7,000 yuan, and at least 250 yuan for an hour.

Evaluation machines died one after another

Samsung once released a test video to show how durable the Galaxy Fold is: it can be folded 200,000 times, and even if someone opens and closes it 100 times a day, it can be used for 5 years.

The folding screen phone that can be used as a clapperboard on the test machine suddenly becomes fragile in human hands...

As a folding screen mobile phone, the most worrying thing is the folding part in the middle. Whether the screen can withstand folding.

Wherever you worry about, there will be problems. Sure enough, the folding part in the middle of someone’s mobile phone broke.

CNBC's technology editor Steve Kovach used the phone for just one day before it broke. According to the official claim of 200,000 foldings, even if you fold it 24 hours a day, you'd have to fold it 139 times per minute... This foreigner has an impressive hand speed.

A thick black line appeared at the fold in the middle of the screen. It was obvious that the pixels in this part were no longer bright, and the left half of the screen entered a state of continuous flashing.

At this time, the screen still says "Check out some info to get started", which looks like a page for user permissions of a new phone. It seems that this phone was stillborn and the user will not even get to see what the desktop looks like.

There really is no unusual use, he said.

He was not the only one whose phone broke down starting with the middle folding part, but another colleague who encountered the same problem was more "lucky" and it took him two full days of use before half of the screen went black.

Then the right half of the screen also broke, and the pixels on the left side of the broken screen turned black.

After a few hours, the screen went black, and only a small area on the right was still visible.

That night, the phone ended up being completely black, with not a single pixel glowing.

This phone comes from Bloomberg reporter Mark Gurman, who also found that when he raised his finger and touched the screen with his fingernail, a small fingernail-shaped hole would be poked on the screen and it could not be restored.

The third phone's failure was even more bizarre. The screen did not flicker or turn black, but instead showed physical mutations.

There is a stubborn little bulge on the screen above the hinge.

At first, the bulge was not obvious, but with normal use and after opening and folding it several times, the bulge finally gained enough strength to break through many obstacles, puncture the screen, and upgrade to a small hole.

Now, white horizontal and vertical lines appear on the screen where the small hole is located. Obviously, the surrounding pixels are broken.

This phone with a hole in it comes from Dieter Bohn, editor of The Verge. He just performed some normal operations. The only difference from ordinary people was that he used it in a way that was different from that of ordinary people. He placed a small piece of clay on the back of the phone to make it "stand up" in order to shoot a scene where the phone stood on the table. Similar operations of placing clay have been done on other mobile phones and there has never been a problem.

He speculated that perhaps a small piece of clay had been transmitted to the screen by the hinge like Chaplin in the gears, or perhaps a small internal part of the hinge itself had escaped.

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Netizens complained in various ways: Lei Jun’s divine prediction

Samsung never imagined that the test machine it sent to the media would die young, and it was slapped in the face on the spot.

Such a large-scale rollover scene attracted various complaints from netizens at home and abroad.

Weibo user @我是老朴 joked that it turns out that a foldable phone is just “folding (zhe) and folding (zhe) and it folds (she)”.

Netizen Rahim Ahmed said that this feeling of falling apart must be very painful.

Some netizens also said that we should look at the bright side of this incident. At least it didn’t explode like the Note 7, which is a blessing.

So, you must be asking too much, at least this can be taken on the plane.

Netizen Worathiti Pung directly posted a large headshot of Jobs laughing wildly, implying: Well, Jobs might be very happy.

Netizen Angelo: Apple engineers also laughed.

The bug in Samsung's folding screen has also made many netizens look forward to Huawei's folding screen mobile phone Mate X. Samsung's inward-folding phone has failed, so what will happen when Huawei's outward-folding phone is shipped?

Although they may not be able to afford it, netizens have already brought their own stools.

Lei Jun was also mentioned by netizens. At the MWC2019 conference in March this year, when asked why Xiaomi did not have a foldable screen phone, Lei Jun said that the current foldable screen technology is not mature, pouring cold water on the current foldable phone manufacturers. Looking back now, netizens said that this was a divine prophecy.

A Weibo user analyzed that folding inwards will put more pressure on the screen, while folding outwards will cause it to wear out easily. Unless there is a new breakthrough in screen material technology, foldable screen phones are still a deep pit.

The "protective film" that cannot be removed

It’s the second day since I got my new phone, and the novelty hasn’t even worn off yet, so why did it break?

Part of the blame may be placed on people who love to tear off the film on their phones.

(YouTube) Video review blogger MKBHD had a bad experience when peeling off the film. He tweeted that he had just peeled off a little bit when the phone screen went black, so he had to change the phone and retest...

Bloomberg reporter Mark Gurman removed a protective film from the screen when he was using it. It is as follows:

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Gurman said he felt a little aggrieved because when he got the new phone, there seemed to be a gap in the lower left corner of the film. It looked like the same protective film as an ordinary non-folding phone and should be torn off.

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Although photos leaked by US operator employees show that the retail version of Galaxy Fold should come with a "Do not tear the film" reminder.

But The Verge clearly stated that there was no such prompt on the review machine, and no trace of any prompt was seen in photos taken by other media.

@凤凰家评测 of Phoenix Digital also posted on Weibo that the domestic version of the review machine also did not have any prompts, so... of course they also tore it up.

△ To our Galaxy Fold that died young…

However, machines that did not have the protective film removed also made it into this issue's casualty list. For example, the one on CNBC broke down after just one day of use, because the protective film was not removed at all.

Regardless of whether the film tearing is the direct cause of the death, these rollover accidents tell us:

Foldable flexible screens are indeed very delicate.

Samsung has been working on flexible screens for many years. At the end of 2014, Samsung launched the Galaxy Note Edge, its first curved screen phone, which laid the technical foundation for future foldable phones.

In November 2018, Samsung officially unveiled its foldable phone, the Galaxy Fold, at the Developer Conference, which of course used its own screen. After several years of accumulation and evolution, the flexible screen has not been able to become strong.

In general mobile phones, the display part of the screen is glued to the glass.

However, for foldable phones, glass cannot meet the requirements of repeated bending at large angles. At present, the protective layer outside the foldable screen can only be made of plastic.

Hardness and flexibility cannot be achieved at the same time, which leads to the surface hardness of foldable screen mobile phones being lower than that of ordinary mobile phones.

The hinge that won't fold

In addition to the flexible screen itself, another important component of the foldable screen mobile phone is also not clear.

The problem with The Verge's device is different from that of other devices. The problem is probably with the hinge inside the folding part.

They speculated that the most direct reason why the phone broke down within a day or two was that there was a problem with the internal design of the folding part.

Similar to Apple's patent and Huawei's folding screen design, the Galaxy Fold also uses a "hinge" structure to fold the screen. Samsung uses an interlocking gear design to nest the left and right parts of the screen on the hinge in the middle.

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When the phone is opened, the hinge supports the left and right screens.

When folded, the hinge changes angle and the left and right screens are pressed against each other.

The numerous hinge components exposed hidden dangers in the hands of The Verge.

As of press time, Samsung has responded to the malfunction of its foldable screen phones, saying it will conduct a comprehensive investigation of the faulty phones to determine the root cause of the problem.

What do you think about this?