Galaxy Fold unveiled: the good, the bad and the Samsung

UPDATE. The journey of Samsung Galaxy Fold didn't start in the most easy way. The first samples revealed the device to be trickiest than expected, and the official launch was delayed. The first foldable smartphone was meant to hit the shelves at the end of the first quarter of 2019. It arrives at the end of the year, ready to be packed as a very luxurious Christmas present. But it's here, at last. Here's the original article about its launch, back in February.

It’s not magic as your first smartphone. But still magic. And less controversial than ten years ago, when a touch screen with no physical button, for example, wasn’t for everybody. Samsung has launched its first foldable smartphone. Its name is simply “Galaxy Fold”. From a user point of view, it’s not a revolution, but a radical evolution - a mutation of the species, a darwinian leap forward of the phenotype that everybody knows as “smartphone”. Basically, it’s a retro-looking 4,7” display huge smartphone with ugly bezels (why, Samsung, why!) that will easily fit in large pockets. When the user wants to “enlarge” its experience, the phone folds up like a book and every open activity seamlessly continues on the bigger, 7.3” flexible AMOLED display, the “Infinity Flex Display”. That can be a music video on YouTube, navigation through Google Maps, or maybe you just need to text someone without pausing the last episode of Sex Education on Netflix. The Galaxy Fold is a smartphone that pops up and becomes a tablet with multitasking capability of 3 contemporary apps on screen.

The Galaxy Fold will be available from April in 4 different colors, Space Silver, Cosmos Black, Martian Green, and Astro Blue, at a cost of $1980. The incredibly high price tag is justified not only by the novelty of this long-expected innovative smartphone but also by the overload of tech specs that this device comes with: 6 cameras, 2 internal batteries, a next-generation AP chipset and a gigantic slice of RAM, 12GB, that will guarantee, Samsung declares, “PC-like performance”, plus 512GB of internal storage. “Samsung Fold answers skeptics that say that everything possible has been done”, declared DJ Koh, president and Ceo of of mobile department at Samsung, launching the device in San Francisco.

The design of the Galaxy Fold represents a huge break from the past. New materials and new construction processes were invented to make this device possible, al declared DJ Koh. For example, the hinge that links the two internal displays and makes all the foldable process possible, it’s something radically new, never seen on any device before, achieved with a series of interlocking gears, totally conceived in the smartphone’s case. It’s the glory and the most delicate part of the Samsung Fold, the first consumer device of a completely new category. Only further tests and reviews will tell us if this is the masterpiece that was expected from the Korean brand to crown its lead in the smartphone market or the kind of innovation that will require more time to be refined and find its state-of-the-art condition.