Samsung confirmed early Monday rumors about its first bendable Android smartphone being delayed, going on record to clarify the move affects every market, and not just the United States where the Galaxy Fold was scheduled to be released on Friday.
While extremely careful in its wording of the issue, the company’s latest statement on the matter is clear in regards to the main reason for the delay as Samsung admitted it needs more time to evaluate the early feedback it received from reviewers, including all of the concerns stemming from it.
Display performance appears to be Samsung’s main concern at the moment seeing how some reports suggest multiple reviewers managed to break the supposedly revolutionary phone within 48 hours. While that would be cause for alarm regardless of the handset in question, the Galaxy Fold’s $2,000 price tag makes this a particularly bad look for Samsung and indicates the firm was too way too eager to beat Huawei and other rivals to the market with the world’s first consumer-grade bendable handset.
One may take some solace in the fact this is nowhere near the scope of the Galaxy Note 7 fiasco from 2016 seeing how no lives are in danger but Samsung is unlikely to follow the same train of thought for obvious reasons. The South Korean technology giant hence vowed to do whatever it takes to strengthen the overall degree of protection of the Galaxy Fold’s Super AMOLED display before revising its launch plans for the device.
No additional details have been provided by the company, making it unclear how far away from the market its seminal device actually is at this point.
Granted, a number of reviewers who complained about the Galaxy Fold display broke it themselves by removing a plastic layer on top of it under the wrong assumption of it being a screen protector. The number of those that handled the device correctly and still ended up encountering significant problems is still significant enough to warrant a delay. Even if all of the recorded problems stemmed from wrong handling of the handset, Samsung at the very least needs to work on making the instructions it bundles with the device more clear and make sure there’s no mistaking the fact the handset’s protective film must remain intact at all costs.
Sure enough, Samsung also confirmed plans to work on the latter aspect of its foldable mobile package so as to minimize the risk of future Galaxy Fold owners breaking their bendable handsets inadvertently.
While many questions remain, major product design changes such as the one Samsung just announced usually take weeks to be implemented and the fact that the South Korean company already started Galaxy Fold production also suggests it’s about to take a major hit on that initial batch of devices which will presumably be scrapped. Whether Huawei seizes the opportunity and ends up beating the Galaxy Fold to the market with the Mate X is unclear, though the Chinese firm is itself presently staving off rumors about its own bendable Android phone being pushed back due to similar concerns.