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Samsung Galaxy Fold – Uuugggggg…

UPDATE: Samsung has effectively forced our friends at ifixit to pull their teardown! Talk about cover-up arseholes! Hey Samsung, I posted a critical blog here as well, cash me outside, how ’bout dat“??

I hope the Spacing Guild comes down hard on Samsung for this crap; I’m certain any Guild Navigator worth their Spice would toss the Samsung Galaxy Fold down the nearest Sandworms massive gullet. I mean, look at this crap!

Samsung Galaxy Fold headline

And this wasn’t an isolated case… it was a much too large number of phones that were sent to reviewers! If it were one, two… but no, plenty, and for plenty of different reasons. Screens breaking after a day of use, films being pulled off and breaking the screen, stuff getting under the screen and breaking it. How can such a huge company, with what I would hope are massive QA teams allow this product out the door? You’d think that after the Galaxy Note 7 literally exploding everywhere, they would have at least made some effort not to repeat history. You know, since corporations are virtually “people” now, I’m pretty sure Samsung has a serious learning disability.

Samsung Galaxy Fold – Issues From The Start

When I heard rumour Samsung was going to unveil a folding phone, I was actually looking forward to it! First out of the gate specs where impressive, not 1, but 2 screens, 6 bloody cameras, starting at 512GB of storage and 12GB RAM. My initial reaction during the unveiling was, “That is admittedly pretty cool!”, but then the chinks in the armour quickly appeared. One big thing…

NO ONE GOT TO PHYSICALLY HOLD IT.

They had display units, and they were in curious mirrored cases that upon inspection seemed to be specifically set up to hide the fact that there was a clear crease in the middle of the phone.

Samsung Galaxy Fold not showing fold

But see it people did… in fact, it seemed hard NOT to see…

And some noticed Samsungs choice of promotional image of butterfly wings conveniently blacked out the middle… and people certainly dragged Apple through the mud for “hiding” the notch in promotional images… what could they have been hiding? Well, the truth came out once Samsung had the cajones to send units to reviewers. Some interesting points:

  • It was THICK, like 2 iPhone X on top of one another.
  • It didn’t actually close all the way, the hinge area didn’t meet up, leaving a gap for plenty of fun stuff to find it way in.
  • Samsung Galaxy Fold almost folds
  • Screen PPI was very low for a Samsung product.
  • Front screen was an incredibly odd display ratio, 21:9, very narrow with huge bezels.
  • FRONT SCREEN IS NOT CENTRED ON THE DEVICE OMG
  • Fold out screen was nearly 4:3 ratio and had a massive notch, in the upper right side, making for a very oddball look.
  • Front screen too small, inside screen not big enough.
  • Very visible crease along the fold that drives any sane person insane.
  • Full screen video(Ah-hem, sorry, full letterboxed screen because 4:3 videos don’t exist anymore) plays along crease.. with top left of video being notched out. (At least the iPhone X notch is CENTRED!
  • Such a poor image driver it has massive jelly scroll…one side scrolls faster then the other.
  • Complex hinge and gear system in world where we know moving parts = bad.
  • Built in screen protector looks like shipping film, removal of which result in instant destruction of screen.
  • ZERO IP rating, no liquid protection at all.
  • No expandable memory
  • ACTUAL OPEN HINGE THAT CRAP CAN GET INTO.
  • Samsung Galaxy Fold display gap

    7MM Gap – London Tube riders know what I mean.

  • CHRIST ITS $2,600 CAD… you can buy a 27″ iMac for that much!!

There are more things one can bitch about, but at that list price, there should be ZERO to bitch about. This was incredibly poorly implemented, and Samsung should be ashamed for shipped such concept crap as production.

Media Fawning

I’ve shown countless examples of Apple being raked over the coals by the tech media for even the slightest transgressions, so how did the media handle this one? By being as apologetic as humanly possible. The most insane one though was courtesy of Joana Stern of the Wall Street Journal. Days before she lambasted Apple for the fact dust and debris can interfere with the new butterfly keyboard, dressing up as a butterfly and proclaiming, “…should $1,200 MacBooks be breaking due to dust and debris!? Absolutely not!”. Her tepid response to the fact a $2,600 phone can be utterly destroyed by the same damn thing amounted to a parroting of Samsung PR. Tech media bias is complete bullshit and IT HAS TO STOP. Other media critics didn’t do much better.

Galaxy S10

It’s not all doom talk though, the Galaxy S10 was also introduced and does look like a nice solid Android phone. A cool (but slow) onscreen fingerprint sensor and full edge to edge screen are great. The trio of great back cameras including a wide-angle tested fantastically, and the power sharing wireless is a clone of Haweiewwie but lets you charge their new (lackluster) AirPods clone.

Samsung continue to incrementally improve on the Galaxy, but still falls short of Apple in several key areas… but for an Android, it’s pretty damn good.

Samsung Galaxy 10

The best way to mask the punch-out camer!

To bad they did follow through with the same care and attention on the $2,600 Fold.

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Ryszard (Rick) Gold, From Calgary, Alberta, Canada has over 20 years of experience working with Apple products in a technical capacity. Passionate about technology in general, his natural troubleshooting abilities, curiosity and appreciation of good design lead him into working exclusively with Apple Computer products.
Ryszard Gold
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