from the You-got-to-know-when-to-hold-'em,-Know-when-to-fold-'em,-Know-when-to-walk-away... dept.
Samsung finally showed off its new foldable smartphone, the $1,980 Galaxy Fold
Samsung on Wednesday announced more details about its foldable smartphone, called the Galaxy Fold. At Samsung's Unpacked event, we finally saw what the Galaxy Fold will look like, having only seen the device in the shadows when the company announced its existence in November.
The device will use a "7nm" processor and include 12 GB of RAM and 512 GB of internal storage. Oddly enough, there is no microSD slot or headphone jack despite the device's size. Galaxy Fold will include six cameras.
See also: The Galaxy Fold makes no sense as a consumer device yet
With the Galaxy Fold, you spend big to get access to the beta test. The glimpses I got, brief though they were, during Samsung's live presentation of the Fold in London gave me reason to be wary. First and foremost, the inner display of the device never seems to fold out to be perfectly flat. Light reflections glinting off its surface in the presenter's hand exposed a slight ridge in the middle, a spine where the hinge resides and disturbs the flat plane. The left and right wings of the opened Galaxy Fold also reflected light at different angles. I know from my experience with the Royole Flexpai, the first foldable phone, just how hard it is to combine folding and flatness in one device. Judgment should be reserved until we've had a chance to hold one in our hands, but my first impression is that the Fold doesn't always have a perfect, undisturbed 7.3-inch tablet surface. It's a compromise.
Galaxy Fold will amaze you. Here's why you won't buy one
Also at Reuters, Bloomberg, and Wccftech.
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Reviewers are breaking Samsung's Galaxy Fold smartphone after just a day or two of use. Some have accidentally removed a protective film that Samsung warned should not be removed, but others, including CNBC and The Verge, have seen the devices break after normal use:
The phone has only been given to gadget reviewers, but some of the screens appear to be disconnecting and permanently flashing on or off.
The Verge's Dieter Bohn posted earlier on Wednesday that his phone appears to have a defective hinge with a "small bulge" that he can feel that's causing the screen to "slightly distort." Bloomberg's Mark Gurman says his "review unit is completely broken just two days in," but noted he accidentally removed a protective film on the screen.
YouTube tech reviewer Marques Brownlee also removed the film and experienced a broken display. A Samsung spokesperson had warned on Wednesday not to remove the protective layer.
However, CNBC didn't remove that layer, and our screen is now also failing to work properly. When opened, the left side of the flexible display, which makes up a large 7.3-inch screen, flickers consistently.
Previously: Samsung Announces the Galaxy Fold, a Phone-Tablet Hybrid Device
A Bunch of Mobile World Congress 2019 Stories
Pablo Escobar's brother launches a $349 folding phone
If you like the idea of owning a folding phone but find the $1,500+ price tags too rich, check out the Escobar Fold 1—a $349 foldable device that comes from the brother of deceased drug kingpin Pablo Escobar, really. Roberto Escobar, who already released a flamethrower this year inspired by Elon Musk's Not a Flamethrower, has now turned his attention to the folding smartphone market.
[...] While Samsung's Galaxy Fold was delayed for months due to its technical issues, Escobar says his device is much more durable. "My phone cannot break, because I did not have to make a glass screen like Samsung," he said. "Our screen is made of a special type of plastic, and we still have the best resolution. Our special plastic is very difficult to break." Escobar also lauded the phone's security features, saying that it is extremely secure, unlike Samsung and Apple devices that are "100% open to all governments in the world."
[...] [As] Gizmodo notes, the most telling aspect is that the phone is obviously a rebranded Royole FlexPai that even uses the same marketing graphics and specs.
See also: Samsung Galaxy Fold 2 to cost no more than $1,000, adopt a clamshell design
Samsung's clamshell foldable could be actually affordable
Related: Royole Beats Samsung and Others in Race to Create the First Foldable Smartphone
Samsung Announces the Galaxy Fold, a Phone-Tablet Hybrid Device
You're Folding It Wrong: Tech Reviewers Break Samsung Galaxy Fold after Just Days of Use
Samsung Announces The Galaxy Z Flip: Foldable Phone With Glass
Today Samsung announced the new Galaxy S20, S20+ and S20 Ultra, but the regular flagship phones weren't the only devices announce today as we've also seen the unveiling of the new Galaxy Z Flip. The new Z Flip is Samsung's second foldable phone to market after Galaxy Fold, but takes a new approach in terms of design as it comes in a new clamshell design with only a single primary screen.
[...] What makes the Z Flip extremely impressive though is its display. It's not the first flexible display out there, and it's relatively average with a 2636 x 1080 resolution. What makes it special, is that this is the very first display on the market that has an ultra-thin glass cover on it – yes, it's a foldable glass screen. The implications here are huge when compared to a plastic foldable screen, and the glass should be significantly more scratch resistant than plastic alternatives, making this a much more viable option when it comes to long-term durability of the phone.
Samsung's hinge mechanism was designed in such as way that it minimises dust ingress into the gears of the system. What's also special is that the phone clicks in at different angles such as 120°, instead of being freely flexible at any angle.
The phone is $1380/1480€.
Corning is making the smaller, outward-facing secondary display, but the origin of the "Ultra Thin Glass" is not yet known:
Besides the Snapdragon 855+, we have a 6.7-inch OLED display with a resolution of 2636x1080. Instead of the delicate plastic of the Galaxy Fold, the Z Flip is rumored to be covered by an "Ultra Thin Glass." We know companies are working on flexible glass for these folding smartphone displays. The industry leader is Corning, the maker of the "Gorilla Glass" cover that adorns nearly every high-end smartphone, but Corning's bendable glass solution is not on the market yet. One report out of Germany is that Samsung's partner is Schott, a German glass producer.
Also at VentureBeat.
Related: Samsung Announces the Galaxy Fold, a Phone-Tablet Hybrid Device
Corning Working on Flexible Glass for Devices
You're Folding It Wrong: Tech Reviewers Break Samsung Galaxy Fold after Just Days of Use
Samsung Galaxy Fold Delayed Indefinitely Following Reports of Broken Displays
(Score: 2) by RandomFactor on Friday February 22 2019, @02:18AM (5 children)
I get the urge for a whizzy new phone, i see the ever increasing price and decide the battery issues on my old phone are livable.
В «Правде» нет известий, в «Известиях» нет правды
(Score: 2) by takyon on Friday February 22 2019, @02:32AM (1 child)
$2,000 now, $200 two years later from some Chinese company. Hopefully with less bending issues.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by PartTimeZombie on Friday February 22 2019, @02:46AM
Yes. I would quite like something like this, so I will buy one in 6 or 8 years time, when they work properly and the manufacturers have figured out what works and what doesn't.
Also when it's a quarter the price.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Friday February 22 2019, @03:36AM
Count your blessings that your old phone only has battery issues, they're coming up with all sorts of ways to make consumer electronics self-destruct in the 2 year timeframe.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by stormwyrm on Friday February 22 2019, @10:16AM (1 child)
I'm still using the Nexus 6p that I bought almost four years ago. I lucked out in that when the battery issues became intolerable a year and a half ago (barely half the rated charge that it once had according to Accubattery), Huawei's service centre here still had one last replacement 6p battery in their stocks that they put in my phone for a total cost of about $20 to me. A year elapsed while running on rooted stock Google firmware, until it seemed that my phone's battery life was gradually getting worse and worse with every "update" Google rolled out. I can't prove it definitively, but I got the feeling that Google was putting in more and more battery sucking stuff with every such update, in a bid to get me buy a new phone. Either that or I had a lot of battery-sucking apps in there... Waking up two mornings in a row to a phone drained dead with no easy way to figure out what was causing it was the last straw. So I flashed LIneageOS on it and battery life seems to have improved to tolerable levels again. I've never experienced an overnight full drain since.
I've been looking at today's crop of flagship phones and am singularly unimpressed by them, given that I have to shell out something in the range of $500 to $1000 to get most of them and they aren't such a substantial improvement over the 6p. I was sorely tempted by the OnePlus 6T but eventually decided against it (why would I pay $600 to downgrade the screen resolution [gsmarena.com]?). I had a hard enough time finding a good tablet to replace the Nexus 7 I'd been using since 2013 (eventually replaced with a Xiaomi Mi Pad 4, see my journal [soylentnews.org]).
Numquam ponenda est pluralitas sine necessitate.
(Score: 2) by RandomFactor on Saturday February 23 2019, @02:45AM
Same phone, same time frame. Battery replaced once. Same general experience all around really.
I didn't get the overnight drain, but i always charge it overnight, it just insta-powers off randomly when the battery gets too low (30% at first, now it's more like 70 or 80% and i wind up just starting up the battery case charging it.)
Mine's still on android, but I've had it in a Zero Lemon battery case for years. it's getting pretty shot also, but still works well enough to keep it going.
I'm likely going to replace the case and the primary battery soon enough just to forestall the temptation to get something new.
LineageOS eh, Hmmm....
В «Правде» нет известий, в «Известиях» нет правды
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Friday February 22 2019, @03:31AM (5 children)
Can't believe it's not in the summary, to repeat: I read on another site that the announced price for the fold is $1980.
The car I drive to work in cost just a little more than $1980 to purchase, and unlike the last 3 cell phones in our house, our cars don't pack it in with a "throw me away, I'm not worth fixing" defect after 2 years or less. Not to mention the fact that a car is 2500+lbs of manufactured steel, plastic, glass and rubber, while the new fold phone certainly weighs less than a pound.
You can argue that the "intellectual property" that goes into making a phone is what you're paying for, but 99% of that is copied from last year's model.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Friday February 22 2019, @03:39AM
O.K. O.K. - it's right there in the top line of the summary, still worth repeating and ranting about.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by takyon on Friday February 22 2019, @04:08AM
It's not fair to compare your used car to a luxury smartphone.
Not flagship, luxury.
The Samsung Galaxy Fold isn’t for you [venturebeat.com]
The Galaxy Fold makes no sense as a consumer device yet [theverge.com]
A select group of people will essentially pay to have the privilege of being beta testers for this form factor. Samsung will apply the lessons they learn going forward, and this kind of device will work a lot better and be a lot cheaper in 2021+.
We can complain about the price, but the fact that foldable smartphones actually exist now means that we will see people begin to review, test, and adopt them. Maybe you'll be able to try one out at a Samsung store or something.
I like the concept. We can see some clear limitations with the imperfect flatness, and we can imagine that there could be more problems after folding it and unfolding it thousands of times. Most of the electronics inside the devices are not bendy, which is why it folds in the middle rather than being a big, floppy rectangle that could be cupped in your hands. But the idea of having a smartphone in your pocket and being able to significantly expand the screen size is a sound one, as long as it can fit in your pocket when folded (something that reviewers should be able to measure with a ruler).
One thing I wondered: what if you get a call in tablet mode? My take is that the software should pick up the call the instant you fold it. Or you could use speaker phone.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 22 2019, @07:14AM (1 child)
Can you make a phone call with your car? Connect to the internet? Put you put the car in your pocket? I have a banana that costs less than your car. The banana never has mechanical issues.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 22 2019, @10:53AM
I can answer all of your questions with "it depends on how high I am".
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 22 2019, @06:24PM
Running a chip fab to make those state of the art 7nm feature size electronics is not cheap. Neither is running a factory to assemble the circuit boards using those chips. Most of what you're paying for in such a device is not the "intellectual property" that goes into making it or even the cost of the raw materials (though they do constitute a not-insignificant fraction), but the expense needed to run the machinery used to make the components and assemble it into the finished product.
(Score: 2) by stormwyrm on Friday February 22 2019, @10:27AM (2 children)
It has more memory than my current laptop (only 4GB), about as much onboard storage (512 GB SSD), and possibly even more computing power (how does its processor compare to a 7th Gen Core i7?). Also costs twice the price, and it probably will be a lot of work to get it to run a real OS. Looks cool, but do not want, even if I had the money to spend.
Numquam ponenda est pluralitas sine necessitate.
(Score: 1) by isocelated on Friday February 22 2019, @11:50AM (1 child)
I can't think of any legitimate reason why anyone would need that much from a phone.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Friday February 22 2019, @02:45PM
Easy: You use it as a portable desktop, hooking it up to an external monitor and keyboard. The dream of Ubuntu Edge, for which the proposed 4 GB RAM was high at the time.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]