iFixit Declares Samsung’s ‘Galaxy Fold’ Is Fragile AF

My initial reaction when I first read this headline was, “well no duh.” The Samsung Galaxy Fold has been enjoying a stellar bout of negative press lately and the hits just keep on coming. If you missed it, bloggers began freaking out about their respective Galaxy Fold units crapping out on them after a few hours of use. There were several units that seemed to break out of nowhere, while others were tied directly to the removal of a thin, protective plastic over the display. Now, after an extensive teardown by web-renowned DIYers iFixit, we have a new classification for the Galaxy Fold. iFixit says the phone is essentially Fragile AF.

In their extremely detailed tear down, iFixit breaks down the entire disassembly process, and their findings are more bad than good. For starters, the display itself is plastic instead of glass, this means less of a chance of the screen cracking, but even more of a chance of it picking up dings and dents. The hinge design on the Fold was given high praise, and is apparently the most durable part on the entire device. The interesting bit here though, is that they also noticed large gaps in the spacing on the hinge. Without any water or dust resistance, this could lead to something finding its way in and potentially damaging the display or ruining the hinge mechanism.

That last part is especially interesting because that could very well be what happened to Dieter Bohn from The Verge. His unit developed a bulge (yes, I giggled at that too), that eventually started killing off pixels in the display. It developed after a day of use and has since been replaced, but still caused an incredible amount of screen damage in a very short time.

Samsung has responded by delaying the launch of the Galaxy Fold. One has to assume that they are potentially looking at short term fixes so they don’t have to scrap the project indefinitely . I for one, will not be buying one because a phone that retails around $2,000 should never carry a “alarmingly fragile” rating from a site that quite literally sees the worst of the worst on the reg.