The much awaited Samsung Galaxy Fold, the first smartphone with a foldable screen set to enter the mass market, has been delayed. The Korean company has decided to postpone its April 26 launch in order to tackle production problems that led to some demo units to break while journalist were reviewing them. 


The issue is related specifically to the foldable screen, the centerpiece of the device, and seems to be the result of a poor design choice. To protect the screen’s easily scratchable surface Samsung covered the display with another layer of protective plastic, which in turn is extremely easy to peel off. The problem? The company didn’t issue any explicit warning about it inside the product box. The removal of the plastic outer layer, which is easy to be confused with the removable protective peel that covers the screen of any new smartphone, leaves the actual fragile screen unprotected and undermines the structural integrity of the display itself.

The peeling off of the protective layer was not the only issue with the $2000 device: some units had a completely defective screen, with one half of the display going blank just after a couple of days of bending. That’s definitely too fast, considering Samsung had assured the Galaxy Fold could withstand to be folded up to at least 200.000 times. 

Samsung hasn’t announced a new release date just yet but according to an official statement on the matter it will do so in the next few weeks. Folding lit-up oled screens seems to be still pretty hard, in the end. Samsung might have rushed its offer to the market in order to compensate for poor financial results in the last quarter, and also to anticipate Chinese competitor Huawei, whose Mate X foldable 5G smartphone is still expected to hit the market sometime in July.