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00:00Okay, so the Galaxy Fold. We're at the point now where Samsung has recalled all of the
00:08review units out there, and they're going to try to fix it and just relaunch this whole
00:11product in a little bit. Clearly there was something wrong with the Fold, at least the
00:15original devices, and they're going to do what they can to resolve this whole thing.
00:19But as I sat here thinking about the situation, I thought, how did we get here? Like, how
00:24did we get to the point where Samsung was putting out a device like this that felt so
00:28unrefined and so rushed out into the market? And I just thought about the sequence of events
00:34that basically put Samsung in this position where they were almost forced to do this.
00:40So in 2018, there were rumors, like a lot of rumors, that Samsung was going to put out
00:45the first folding phone. It was like, hey, you know, that's cool. That's the first new
00:49type of phone technology that a lot of people were interested in. But at the same time,
00:54there were rumors that a competitor, Huawei, was trying to do the exact same thing, but
00:58they were trying to beat Samsung to that title, that title of the world's first foldable phone.
01:03But then in late 2018, there was an accusation of theft. There were some South Korean prosecutors
01:08that were charging some executives for selling the technology of bendable OLED screens to
01:13a Chinese competitor. And one of those competitors that were purchasing this stolen technology
01:19was a company called BOE. They're one of the suppliers for Huawei's phones. In fact, they're
01:23making the bendable OLED screen for the upcoming foldable Huawei phone, the Mate X.
01:28So fast forward this whole thing to, I guess, 2019, February, where the Galaxy Fold is launched
01:34at the Samsung event. And no one had seen this phone prior to the event. It was pretty
01:37cool that they'd kept it secret. But it's 2019. Leaks are everywhere. We see phones
01:42like six, even eight months before they get announced. How did Samsung keep this phone
01:46under wraps this entire time? And it makes me think of one or maybe two possible scenarios.
01:51One possibility is that maybe very few people had access to this phone. Like maybe their
01:55test group was really small and they just wanted to keep it very contained, very secretive
01:59so that it wouldn't get leaked. The other possibility is that maybe this device just
02:03got off the manufacturing line. Like it's not fully tested, but they just want to show
02:06it out to the public so that they could be first. And then they would take that time
02:10after the event to sort things out and then kind of deal with the aftermath. But in either
02:14of those cases, there's not a lot of testing involved. And we've seen the results. We've
02:18seen these devices now. iFixit did a teardown of it. This is a very fragile device. It's
02:24kind of weird as to how easy it is for crap to get into the phone. Like up front, under
02:28the display, there's a little bit of a gap. Stuff can get in there. And then on the back,
02:32there's a gap that runs along the whole length of the hinge that stuff can get in. And once
02:35it's in there, it's very likely that it's going to stay in there. And that's what the
02:38cause of a lot of these problems are. I'm not talking about like the peeling of the
02:42protector. It's that when stuff gets into the phone, it busts the screen from the back.
02:47The hinge mechanism looks robust and the panels themselves are supposedly rated for
02:50like 200,000 folds. It's not the hardware. Like individually, all the parts are great.
02:55It's just that when you have moving parts like this and they're all combined, when there's
02:58one point of weakness, the thing will fail. And in this particular case, it's the fact
03:02that there's no ingress protection. There's just so many places that dirt and other particulate
03:06matter can get into the phone and break things. So this is where things get a little bit weird.
03:12When you look at the problem that this phone has, it's not like some obscure problem. Dust
03:16is a very real thing. It's everywhere. And if they had done some proper testing, and
03:19I'm not talking like super extensive testing, like actual testing of this device in real
03:24world scenarios, not just like folding the screen with machines, but actual testing in
03:27people's hands, they would have picked up on this. I mean, look at the number of review
03:31units out there that have had issues from stuff getting into the phone. It's clearly
03:34a pretty common occurrence. But the reason why this happened is because Samsung is Samsung.
03:39They're a company that feels pressure from the market, from the consumers to do things
03:43quickly. And sometimes they take shortcuts, and sometimes their shortcuts don't pan out.
03:48But other companies like Apple, for example, they don't feel that same kind of pressure,
03:52at least not to the same degree. Like AirPower, for example. They wanted to launch something
03:57and they tried for a while to make it work, and when it didn't work and they couldn't
04:00make it happen the way they wanted it to, they just axed the product. Obviously, that's
04:04just a charger, but Samsung really wanted to be first this time around. And honestly,
04:08I feel like they should have been first. They're one of the pioneers in OLED bendable technology
04:13and they deserved it. They deserved to be first. And when you have pressure like Huawei that was
04:18going to release a bendable phone of their own, like, think about how they feel. Do we really
04:23want that company, Huawei, to come out first and be like, hey, we have the world's first
04:27bendable phone? They wanted to be first. They took a couple shortcuts to get there. And that's
04:33where we are right now. We have a recall on a product. Now, there's a part of me that feels
04:39like, you know, Samsung, they shouldn't have done this. But there's a bigger part of me that just
04:43feels bad for them. They got backed into this corner. They got pushed into the situation where
04:47they had to rush it and try to be first. And now we're in a situation where it might look bad for
04:53the company. I mean, I think Samsung is doing the right thing to recall it and try to do what they
04:56can to fix it. But it also affects the public kind of perception of what folding technology is like.
05:02For any folding phone that comes out in the future, people will question its durability and
05:07reliability just because Samsung, a huge company, messed up on their launch. But that's what we
05:13have. And I genuinely hope that Samsung is able to resolve whatever issues they had with that
05:17phone, because playing with that phone is one of the coolest things I've been able to experience in
05:21quite a while in tech. Okay, hope you guys enjoyed this video. Thumbs if you liked it, subs if you
05:25loved it. See you guys next time.