While Samsung was breathing a bit of fresh air after the Galaxy Note 7 fiasco, which saw batteries of 2016 Note 7 models explode and made the company recall most of the units, another disaster hit the South Korean tech giant, namely the failed launch of the revolutionary Galaxy Fold.
Part smartphone and part tablet, the Samsung Galaxy Fold has been designed to offer users an entirely new kind of mobile experience. Samsung claims that the phone will serve as the ‘foundation of smartphone tomorrow,’ but unfortunately, the smartphone has hit a roadblock – many users have reported that the foldable screen of their Galaxy Fold has broken.
‘It is embarrassing. I pushed it through before it was ready,’ said DJ Koh, CEO of Samsung Electronics in a recent meeting with The Independent.
Koh oversees a company that has been the world’s number one smartphone maker since 2012.
Samsung introduced the Galaxy Fold at a time when the innovation in smartphones seemed to have reached some kind of saturation level and became limited to bigger screen experience and iterative camera updates. The foldable screen offered a much-needed break from the boringly rectangular slabs that the smartphones have become nowadays.
Launched in February, the Galaxy Fold features a 7.3-inch Infinity Flex Display, which folds into a compact device with a cover display. And soon after, Huawei announced its own foldable phone Mate X, which became the biggest threat to Samsung in this new foldable business.
This immense pressure from other tech giants resulted in the speedy launch of the Galaxy Fold even before the adequate testing of the device.
‘I do admit that I missed something on the foldable phone, but we are in the process of recovery,’ Koh said and added that at the moment over 2,000 devices are being tested. He further said, ‘We’ve identified all the issues. Some issues we didn’t even think about, but thanks to our reviewers, mass volume testing is ongoing.’
Anticipating the delayed launch of the Galaxy Fold, Huawei has also delayed its plans to launch the Mate X folding phone, in an effort to avoid a similar disaster.
Samsung with its Galaxy Fold wanted users to have the best of both worlds. It’s a compact device that unfolds to reveal Samsung’s largest-ever smartphone display. The Galaxy Fold brings together material, engineering and display innovations developed over eight years, following the debut of Samsung’s first flexible display prototype in 2011.
