Samsung Galaxy Fold - First foldable screen smartphone from Samsung

This will be ace in a few generations. Defo the proper innovation that's needed now and not the constant camera sales spiel and flogging that happens now. Will be hilariously funny to see Apple's version in a few years time, not to mention the cost.
 
I was playing with one of these a few days ago, it feels so mechanical, really pretty cool not at all flimsy.

Couldn't tell you if there was much use for a square screen of that size but pretty cool! You can see the revised plastic hinge caps and whatnot.
 
The major downside of these things is still the screen is plastic and will scratch with normal use, after 2 years it will look rubbish. I don’t know about you but I’m just not ready to go back to a plastic screen. They were rubbish Back in the day for that reason, they are still going to be rubbish now. I doubt it’s even a 2 on the hardness scale unlike glass smartphone screens with are 6/7. Zac will no doubt confirm shortly.

I’m also fairly sure you wouldn’t be able to put any kind of screen protector on it.
 
I couldn't justify spending that much money on such a gimmick. Besides, I'd always be distracted by the whopping great crease along the middle of the screen, which Samsung (and others) tend to hide with careful lighting in their videos. Maybe when the screen tech. has evolved to the point where we have something with the hardness of glass but is able to be folded without leaving a crease I'd consider it, but until then...
 
The major downside of these things is still the screen is plastic and will scratch with normal use, after 2 years it will look rubbish. I don’t know about you but I’m just not ready to go back to a plastic screen. They were rubbish Back in the day for that reason, they are still going to be rubbish now. I doubt it’s even a 2 on the hardness scale unlike glass smartphone screens with are 6/7. Zac will no doubt confirm shortly.

I’m also fairly sure you wouldn’t be able to put any kind of screen protector on it.

You only have to look at an iPhone screen for it to scratch, so not exactly that new a problem. Sick of having to have screen protectors / cases on these increasingly fragile devices. The glass on the original iPhone and especially the Apple Watch were leagues harder to scratch than today’s phones.

Can only imagine they’ve traded scratch resistance for less brittleness / better optical transmission.
 
The glass on smartphones is all pretty much the same these days. It’s all around a 6.5 hardness regardless of brand, it will scratch if something of the same or greater hardness rubs up against it.

The difference is between glass and plastic is that if something with a 6.5 hardness rubs up on a glass screen it might leave a mark, but if it rubs on a plastic screen it will take a gouge out of it. A steel knife is around 5 so wouldnt scratch glass. Your fingernail is around a hardness of 2, that’s how low down the pecking order we are talking.
 
The glass on smartphones is all pretty much the same these days. It’s all around a 6.5 hardness regardless of brand, it will scratch if something of the same or greater hardness rubs up against it.

The difference is between glass and plastic is that if something with a 6.5 hardness rubs up on a glass screen it might leave a mark, but if it rubs on a plastic screen it will take a gouge out of it. A steel knife is around 5 so wouldnt scratch glass. Your fingernail is around a hardness of 2, that’s how low down the pecking order we are talking.

And to make screens more shatter resistant they need to be softer, but that also makes them more scratchable.
 
Last edited:
And to make screens more shatter resistant they need to be softer, but that also makes them more scratchable.

Not necessarily, you can make the phone screen harder and more shatter resistant. It's not all about the glass, but also how you laminate it, package it and bond it to the OLED/LED panel. Phones are generally more shatter resistant than they were 10 years ago.

The but that's also completely irrelevant, its plastic because you can't can't 'fold' (bend) tempered glass.
 
Phones are generally more shatter resistant than they were 10 years ago..
I agree as I have 2 phones here that only just cracked the screen and didn't shatter them
(S7 edge & Note 8)

Picture showing the crack in the bottom corner of my old Note 8
HLmn3mw.jpg
 
Last edited:
Damn scratches with just a finger nail, thats not ideal given every finger has one. Where the two halves of the phone come together is just going to get destroyed by pocket grit and dust.

It’s interesting how he broke the screen accidentally. I wonder how it would do against drops.
 
I don't entirely get the form factor. The large screen when unfolded seems very useful, but the two halves when folded together seem too think to comfortably carry around in a pocket.
 
In its early form, doesn't make much sense and more of a tech novelty. However, when they manage to make a more durable screen, dust proof the phone and get the thickness of the sides down, this may just offer an interesting alternative to the mainstream slate design.
 
They also suggest using a light touch as the Fold may react poorly to clumsy fingering

:eek:

https://pcper.com/2019/09/file-thes...old-er/?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=twitter


Surprises me that Samsung are still going to launch this as it seems not a lot of testing has went into it. The version they were going to release was basically shown to be useless within minutes of reviewers getting their hands on it (somehow internal testing missed all these flaws??), so they made some changes and came back with something barely marginally better.

Just seems like a product they're putting out purely so they can say "we had a foldable phone before Apple". A phone has to have some level of durability to it, this hasn't. A passing fart could probably damage the screen, and the hinges are just going to be traps for dust regardless of the covers they added. A few years down the line they could be feasible but right now this is just an incredibly fragile vanity project for people with too much money.
 
Last edited:
Back
Top Bottom