Samsung’s Galaxy Fold has a new release date
It looks like the long running Galaxy Fold saga may finally be reaching its conclusion. Samsung has announced that the long awaited foldable phone will finally go on sale in Korea tomorrow, with “select countries including France, Germany, Singapore, UK, US and more” following.
How quickly will they follow? Samsung didn’t specify, but in a separate press release aimed at the US market, the firm said that the Galaxy Fold would be available “in the coming weeks.” To me, that suggests within the next month or two.
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The Samsung Galaxy Fold has had quite an adventure even getting to this stage. Samsung had first experimented with folding devices back in 2011 before finally unveiling the Galaxy Fold late last year at the Samsung Developer Conference. “Users now have the best of both worlds: a compact smartphone that unfolds to reveal a larger immersive display for multitasking and viewing content,” the company said optimistically, but there was trouble ahead.
When the device finally emerged with a £1799 price tag, some were definitely put off. But not as many as would be by the first review units which were breaking all over the place. While it was clear that some of the breakages were reviewers’ fault, as they removed something that looked like a screen protector, this wasn’t true in every case, and Samsung quickly delayed the launch while it investigated.
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Three months later, Samsung finished its second round of research and development, highlighting five key areas where the Galaxy Fold had been improved to fix the issues reviewers had experienced. Samsung felt confident enough to confirm the device would be launching “from September in select markets”, which brings us up to date.
Samsung says that the improvements have undergone “rigorous tests to validate the changes we made” which sounds reassuring… until you consider the fact that the original Galaxy Fold must have had years’ worth of rigorous tests which came undone with a handful of review units. Here’s hoping the new version doesn’t come equally unstuck when it goes on sale to a country with a population of 52 million tomorrow.
Will the Samsung Galaxy Fold turn into a big success story? Let us know your predictions on Twitter: @TrustedReviews.
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Editorial independence
Editorial independence means being able to give an unbiased verdict about a product or company, with the avoidance of conflicts of interest. To ensure this is possible, every member of the editorial staff follows a clear code of conduct.
Professional conduct
We also expect our journalists to follow clear ethical standards in their work. Our staff members must strive for honesty and accuracy in everything they do. We follow the IPSO Editors’ code of practice to underpin these standards.
