It’s not exactly a secret that Samsung opted to postpone the Galaxy Fold’s launch, and AT&T may have just revealed a new release date for the phone. According to “MightyDroid” Twitter user (also David Cogen, and a number of others), who received an e-mail from AT&T, as he pre-ordered the device, the Galaxy Fold will ship on June 13.
The source actually included an image of the e-mail he received, and it is clearly visible that AT&T moved the shipping date from April 24, to June 13. The device was supposed to become available on April 26 in the US, so if the June 13 is set as the new shipping date for pre-ordered units, the launch itself may be scheduled for June 15.
Pocketnow does note, however, that this new date could just be a placeholder, as Samsung is rumored to start shipping the Galaxy Fold in June. The outlet notes that AT&T did not respond to The Verge’s e-mail regarding the matter, which could indicate that the company does not yet know when will the Galaxy Fold be ready.
This may as well be accurate, as it seems like Samsung is still trying to figure out what went wrong with the Galaxy Fold, and thus could not anticipate a new timeline for the Galaxy Fold launch. There is always a possibility that Samsung did figure things out already, and did let AT&T know what to expect, but that’s not as likely. In another scenario, Samsung may have set June 13 or 15 as the new launch date as it expects that it will be able to fix everything in time. As you can see, we’re mostly guessing here, so until Samsung officially confirms this, or AT&T, at least, we’re in the dark.
Samsung is currently having issues with the Galaxy Fold, as the initial review samples turned out to be quite problematic for the company. Luckily for Samsung, issues arose before it could ship the Galaxy Fold to consumers who purchased it, so it still has time to fix whatever went wrong.
Speaking of which, a number of reviewers had issues with the Galaxy Fold’s display. Some of them tried to remove the plastic layer on top of the phone’s display, thinking it was a screen protector, which ultimately destroyed the display, as it was a part of it. Others, however, are not to blame for messing up their Galaxy Fold units, as several displays started acting weird on their own, and ultimately stopped working completely. In one instance, white lines appeared before the display died, while in another example, the display started malfunctioning and started flickering at the same time.
This will hopefully be a somewhat easy fix for Samsung, so that the Galaxy Fold launch can proceed, but it does seem to be a hardware issue, which automatically makes it more difficult to fix. Samsung has started gathering all units that it sent out to reviewers, and it is hoping to fix all the units that it produced thus far, and considering that the launch was only a couple of days away before such issues started happening, there are quite a few Galaxy Fold units that need attending before pushed out to consumers. Samsung is expected to provide us with an update soon.