Take a peek inside the Galaxy Fold

[mongeese]

Why it matters: As the first (usable) folding phone, the Samsung Galaxy Fold had a lot of ground to cover. A backyard teardown has revealed some of the incredible things the engineering team was able to achieve but also sheds light on the difficulties they face and what challenges they might overcome next.

Photos of the teardown were published on Chinese social site Weibo, but they’ve since been taken down (possibly at the request of Samsung). While the teardown-er didn’t go into much detail about the process, they say that the main screen is easy to remove and soft, “like rubber,” while the little screen is much more challenging and shattered. However, it’s unclear if the large screen actually worked when the phone was put back together.

The hinge is certainly a point of interest. It’s reinforced at three points with five watch-like components that are arranged incredibly precisely. Traversing the bend are two display ribbons labeled “L” and “R” indicating that the left and right halves of the display receive different input signals. This helps to explain the delay between the left and right halves that some reviewers have noticed.

Based on this teardown, the path forward seems clear. For starters, the batteries are tiny and take up much less room than in a normal phone. That should be fixed pretty easily. Similarly, it looks like there’s no reason for the notch to be so large, other than the awkward position of the cameras. Hopefully, they can be moved closer to the corner.

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https://www.techspot.com/news/79743-take-peek-inside-galaxy-fold.html

 

[Uncle Al]

Yep, looks like I'll be waiting for the 4th or 5th generation and a considerable price decrease before I go this route .......

 

[yRaz]

Yep, looks like I'll be waiting for the 4th or 5th generation and a considerable price decrease before I go this route .......

Early adopters of new technology always pay a premium, why is this such a difficult concept for so many people?

 

[amghwk]

I was never interested in this thing. Maybe all phones will embrace some form of "folding" in the future, but for now, it remains a prototype.

Even when most tech sites were very excited in announcing this new "tech", I was like... meh.. what?....

While the corporates are busy finding any ways to make people spend more with something new, the humans are also seem eager to follow the carrot dangling in front of them.

Humans will never learn.

 

[johnehoffman]

A folding phone is a very complicated and fragile design.

Future generations of folding phones will no doubt improve, but folding phones will always be more expensive and much more subject to failure than non-folding phones. I strongly doubt that folding phones will ever be more than a niche product for those who favor novelty over functionality and cost-effectiveness.

Phone makers want people to buy new phones every 2 years, if not more frequently, despite the fact that the useful technological advances are too incremental to justify the expense of trading up that frequently. The manufacturers are trying to force people to buy new phones more frequently by making the phones more fragile (e.g., with unreasonably fragile displays that wrap around the edges, non-user replaceable batteries so as to increase maintenance costs older phones, and useless new gimmicks (e.g., folding phones, phones that try to hide the controls, etc.), all in order to sell new phones to people who already have perfectly adequate phones.

 

[Hexic]

I was never interested in this thing. Maybe all phones will embrace some form of "folding" in the future, but for now, it remains a prototype.

Even when most tech sites were very excited in announcing this new "tech", I was like... meh.. what?....

While the corporates are busy finding any ways to make people spend more with something new, the humans are also seem eager to follow the carrot dangling in front of them.

Humans will never learn.

I think that’s why it’s called “Research & Development”. There are always going to be rough prototypes (or imperfect first launches) for new products, no matter the industry.

The entire point being to test out a new concept that may be beneficial for users further down the line. It’s not an issue of “we don’t learn”, it’s quite the opposite. It’s humans learning and applying new and unused concepts.

 

[PEnnn]

People really think this ludicrous phone will get cheaper eventually because it's the first generation??

Do smart phones cost less now than when they first came out?? My first IPhone cost me $500, now it's about $1000, same example applies to Androids as well!!

So, keep on dreaming.

 

[kapital98]

People really think this ludicrous phone will get cheaper eventually because it's the first generation??

Do smart phones cost less now than when they first came out?? My first IPhone cost me $500, now it's about $1000, same example applies to Androids as well!!

So, keep on dreaming.

1) Take into account inflation.

2) The computational power of a modern iphone is exponentially superior to the original iphone (or even cutting edge desktop computers for that matter).

The technology will continue to advance. I'm not certain this is a good way to go but it's an interesting take on phones and much better than if the phone makers continued to make tiny advances (being a mature industry) while proclaiming it's a revolutionary product.

 

[amghwk]

It's the age of pre-orders. People started pre-ordering even before the products are out. And they started supporting this new marketing ploy. If this is not dumb, I don't know what is.

 

[Evernessince]

I don't personally think folding phones will be the next big revolution. I'm of the opinion that AR will completely replace the need for phones with non-intrusive ear pieces that project the screen onto your eyes like Intel's AR prototype. Never having to look at a screen again, having your notes with you everywhere, placing calls, navigation assistance right in front of you, labeling your surrounding, the possibilities are endless. We aren't there yet as the actual headset needs to be small and somewhat powerful. It also needs 24 hour battery life.

Folding phones might be a nice feature for those who want a larger phone in a small form factor but they don't open up completely new possibilities like AR does.

 

[Steveb8189]

People really think this ludicrous phone will get cheaper eventually because it's the first generation??

Do smart phones cost less now than when they first came out?? My first IPhone cost me $500, now it's about $1000, same example applies to Androids as well!!

So, keep on dreaming.

1) Take into account inflation.

2) The computational power of a modern iphone is exponentially superior to the original iphone (or even cutting edge desktop computers for that matter).

The technology will continue to advance. I'm not certain this is a good way to go but it's an interesting take on phones and much better than if the phone makers continued to make tiny advances (being a mature industry) while proclaiming it's a revolutionary product.

http://digg.com/2018/iphone-prices

With the exception of the plus and OLED models the iPhone prices have risen about 10% - 15% in real terms since they were first launched.

The problem is that people expect things to get cheaper over time because production costs should decrease over time - this isn't the case with the phone industry due to the rapid rate of change. Increased competition from China has also meant considerable additional expenditure on R&D to keep up.