Shocking! Samsung's $2,000 foldable phone broke after two days?

After the mobile phone battery explosion incident, Samsung encountered another public relations crisis.

The problem this time was with the Galaxy Fold, a flexible folding screen phone that is said to be one of the most expensive smartphones in history. At least four reviewers found that the phones broke down on the second day of use.

Steve Kovach, technology editor of financial media CNBC, posted a short video. After two days of regular use of the prototype, the left screen of the Galaxy Fold continued to flicker. When the foldable screen was opened, the center line was black, indicating that there were bad pixels on the screen near the central hinge.

Slashgear, a world-renowned pan-tech media, commented that this phenomenon is very strange. Usually, the screens of Android phones break at once, rather than half flashing and the other half remaining intact. Therefore, it seems that Samsung's foldable screen phone has encountered a hardware failure, not a software problem. If it was a software problem, both screens should have broken down long ago.

Bloomberg reporter Mark Gurman also said on Facebook that the screen of his Galaxy Fold review unit was completely broken. From the pictures he posted, it can be seen that after opening the screen, the screen started to turn black from the left and continued to spread to the right. By the next day, both screens were basically black. He believed that this was because he tore off the screen protective film, which Samsung called the "polymer layer".

A Samsung spokesperson said on Wednesday that the protective film should not be removed. But Gurman said that like many consumers, he was unaware and thought that the screen protector that usually comes with the phone can be torn off. After getting the prototype, the protective film was easily torn off from the left end of the screen after it was opened.

This statement was also confirmed by YouTube online reviewer Marques Brownlee. He posted a picture on Twitter saying that he also thought the screen protector could be removed, so he started to tear it from the center axis of the two screens, and the screen immediately "buzzed and turned completely black." He therefore warned other consumers that this film is not a traditional screen protector.

Dieter Bohn, a reporter for the cutting-edge technology media The Verge, found that there was a "small protrusion" on the lower hinge of the central axis of the evaluation machine. It felt very hard when touched at first, and even slightly distorted the screen. He guessed that either the central axis hinge itself had a problem or was broken, or something got mixed into the hinge gap when he was doing the video review.

Eventually, the bump damaged the screen, and after opening the phone, white lines appeared around the right display around the bump, revealing the shape of the screen itself:

"We just did the normal opening and closing motions and put the phone in our pocket. When doing the video review, we attached a small piece of modeling clay to the back of the phone as a stand, as we would with any phone. Anyway, I have no idea where the protrusion came from, I just know the screen is broken."

Wall Street News found that both The Verge and Bloomberg reviewers mentioned that the phone screens are easily scratched. For example, both reviewers had tiny fingerprints on their phones, which were invisible if you didn't look closely. CNBC and The Verge reviewers didn't remove the screen protector, but the left and right screens still had problems.

Wall Street Journal mentioned that on February 20, Samsung officially released its first foldable smartphone Galaxy Fold in San Francisco, the United States, ahead of Huawei, with a starting price of US$1,980 (about RMB 13,000), which is more expensive than the top-end iPhone XS MAX, known as the "most expensive iPhone in history". The phone has two AMOLED screens that can be folded in half like a book, and when opened, you get a 7.3-inch ultra-large screen.

Slashgear commented that Samsung began to distribute prototypes to reviewers last weekend, but they all broke down after a day or two, proving that the screen may not work properly after folding, and also making people suspect that Samsung did not spend enough time to fully test the prototypes. For an expensive phone that costs nearly $2,000, "it's a bit too cheap for them to say that this is a disaster."

Financial media CNBC said that Samsung will supply this phone to retail channels on April 26 and began accepting pre-orders last weekend, but the website showed that there were no more places available soon, which may indicate that the supply of this phone will be limited.

All-Weather Technology, a subsidiary of Wall Street Journal, once mentioned that more than one company is working on foldable screen phones this year:

• On January 23, Xiaomi unveiled its first dual-folding screen mobile phone, which caused a huge response in the industry. Lei Jun, founder and chairman of Xiaomi Group, said, "(Xiaomi folding screen mobile phone) should also be the world's first."
• This immediately triggered a "war" between Xiaomi and Royole Technology. The vice president of Royole Technology blasted Xiaomi's dual-folding phone as a phone without technology, mass production, or a complete machine. He also said, "The world's first truly foldable flexible screen phone, FlexPai, was released in October 2018 and sold on the Royole official website."
• At 9 pm Beijing time on February 24, Huawei released its first 5G foldable screen phone, Huawei Mate X, in Barcelona, ​​claiming to be "the world's fastest foldable 5G phone". This means that in the next few months, various foldable screen phones will compete in the market.