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To fold, or not to fold.

mikedt said:
Did Samsung not actually test the things properly, before letting reviewers have them, and them all breaking?

A PR disaster IMO.
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Yes, they are working on some bugs, but things like this happen. I feel like they will get act together before release. But we'll see. Plus, the made a profit the year their phones were *blowing up* so I think they'll be fine :)
 
i think it is a disaster of sorts. it did put the phone in the front of some people's mind....maybe not in a good way. I agree that samsung will be fine. i am waiting for version 2.0 before i am willing to spend my money on it.
 
The speed with which a significant fraction of devices failed when put in the field does raise questions about their testing and what actually drives their schedules. Obviously we've no inside knowledge, but the first two thoughts that come to mind are that the testing was inadequate and that the schedule was driven by management or marketing priorities rather than the readiness of the product.

I think the first is unarguable: whatever tests Samsung did were clearly inadequate. Whether this is because they just didn't do any real world testing (just used it in the lab in controlled conditions), or because there was a difference between test samples and mass-produced models (they wouldn't be the first to have made that mistake) we cannot know, but there's no avoiding the fact that a significant fraction failed quickly. There had to be something badly wrong with their testing to miss that.

The second is harder to know, but is a common factor in these stories and Samsung have form with being a hierarchical, top-down, command-driven organisation, so I'd not be surprised if that had been a factor in poor decision making.

In any event yes, this is an embarrassment rather than a disaster. This is a showcase device, not a mass-market product that was intended to provide a significant chunk of the year's sales, and the failure isn't endangering anyone. So it's not as significant as the Note 7 failure.
 
Well it's got us all talking about Samsung, so mission accomplished I suppose. And it seems that any publicity is good with a company this size. Even their exploding phones didn't make a dent in profits, so a turkey folding phone probably isn't going to hurt them either.
 
Personally if they want me to buy one of their devices the 2 best ways would be:

1) to put a modern SoC in their flagship tablet and develop the Linux on Dex project further (a tablet I would switch between Android and Linux and run both properly would be a good selling point, but my impression is that it is a bit limited at present).

2) sell the s855 S10e in the UK rather than the Exynos model (the Qualcomm SoCs have been consistently better for years now and also allow you to use a GCam port rather than having to use Samsung's image processing, which still has some of their traditional flaws. But most people don't know and using their own SoCs is more profitable for Samsung, so that's obviously not going to happen).

And the fact that it's the s10e I mentioned there, rather than any of their other devices, tells you how far I am from being the market for their first generation folder (which costs almost twice as much as an s10e + a Tab S4 combined, while not being as good a phone as the s10e or a tablet as the S4, so would not make sense to me even if it were flawless).
 
lunatic59 said:
That is the question.

Would a folding phone be of any interest to anyone? I'm at a loss to see the appeal, other than it's new and has some geek cred.
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Well, I personally am not interested with that Samsung. I prefer to use the compact S10e. I don't see why I would need a fold-able phone, though.
 
Never thought it will ever happen after Note 7

Rest in peace Galaxy Fold

😕😣😌😒😔
 
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