Some of Samsung's new Galaxy Fold folding phones are already breaking - Page 1
Forum section: electronics / general

author: Homer J Simpson
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: April 18, 2019, 02:33:33 am
content: https://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/2019/04/17/samsung-foldable-phone-some-galaxy-fold-devices-already-breaking/3502769002/

author: amyk
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: April 18, 2019, 03:20:50 am
content: I knew it:https://www.eevblog.com/forum/chat/foldable-phones-are-all-the-rage!-marketing-wank-or-practical/msg2227515/#msg2227515Looks like their lifetime calculations were off by an order of magnitude or two...If they wanted to make something actually last and be foldable, they would just reduce the bezel as thin as possible and have two separate screens, one on each half. No fatigue, no brittleness to worry about, same double-the-area of two screens.

author: bitseeker
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: April 18, 2019, 05:19:59 am
content: "Samsung promises the screen can withstand being opened and closed 200,000 times, or 100 times a day for five years." — USA TodayThey promise that, but the warranty probably doesn't. Hmm...Even more perplexing is that if it fails so quickly, why would Samsung give them to the press? Just a glutton for punishment? Leveraging bad news for a publicity boost? Who's in charge of this circus?

author: tooki
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: April 19, 2019, 12:26:19 am
content: I bet that the folding durability test jig opened and closed it ideally, always at clean angles, in a controlled environment of a lab. In reality, people will open unevenly, and perhaps more importantly, the phone will be shoved in pockets in between, possibly causing stresses along other axes, resulting in creasing. (Plus the reports of debris getting inside, which is kind of “duh” for a cellphone.)

author: PartialDischarge
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: April 19, 2019, 12:47:17 am
content: $2000 for a phone with preinstalled google spy software and others. Great

author: Electro Detective
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: April 19, 2019, 12:54:05 am
content: Quote from: MasterTech on April 19, 2019, 12:47:17 amNo shortage of wood ducks with credit cards out there to buy these,especially if 'first' to own one (show offs)Marketing teams see them coming...

author: coppice
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: April 19, 2019, 01:40:50 am
content: Quote from: bitseeker on April 18, 2019, 05:19:59 amThere is video of the 200k folding operations being exercised by robots. Robots making every fold a consistent operation, in nice clean lab conditions. Not the best mimic of real life use, I would say.

author: james_s
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: April 19, 2019, 04:54:36 am
content: Is anybody actually surprised by this? It's a useless gimmick, doomed to fail from the start.

author: Gyro
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: April 19, 2019, 09:17:09 pm
content: One of the BBC's reporters had one break too...https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-47970788Edit: Err, sorry. Had it taken away from them before it could!

author: TerraHertz
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: April 20, 2019, 01:22:12 am
content: Oils and solvents in cosmetics, play havoc with plastics.For eg the cables of earbuds, that go stiff and crack from contact with skin and cosmetic oils.I know someone (female) whose remote controls (TV, etc) invariably died very quickly.Diagnosis: she frequently would eat oily chips while watching TV. The oil on her fingers transferred to the silicone buttons, then diffused through the material and made the little conductive pads inside become non-conductive.Solution: wrap all the remotes in a couple of layers of glad-wrap.What's the bet that the Galaxy folding screen material lasts OK if chemically pristine, but cracks very rapidly with solvents diffusing into the surface.

author: Rerouter
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: April 20, 2019, 04:50:00 am
content: There are also follow ups the the thin peelable plastic film on the screen is a protective cover that should not be removed, while there was no documentation provided to the reviewers to that effect.

author: Cyberdragon
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: April 21, 2019, 06:11:45 am
content: QuoteQuoteEver heard of permanant bonding SamSUNK? It should not be easily removable.Even then it won't last long and start blistering and peeling like the covering of touch buttoms on an old appliance.Still, that's not even the problem. The screen is just crap and can't take any strain.

author: Homer J Simpson
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: April 22, 2019, 10:30:01 pm
content: launch delayed

author: Towger
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: April 23, 2019, 07:24:09 am
content: 20 minutes of talking with very little content. Should have know from the baseball cap...

author: Psi
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: April 23, 2019, 08:13:06 am
content: i'm totally ok with this, let others pay $2k to learn the lessons and perfect the technology.Then i will upgrade my LG G3 (2014) to a nice 11" roll out phone for $700 in a few yearsSomething the size of a phone but that rolls out to a 11" touch display is the holy grail.

author: Rerouter
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: April 23, 2019, 08:42:19 am
content: The issue with the roll outs psi, is having enough structure that you can touch it and it doesnt flap in the breeze,LG G6 here, Its getting harder to find phones that have anything that even beats my old Samsung S5 in terms of features that are not just wank factor.

author: Mr. Scram
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: April 23, 2019, 08:54:56 am
content: Quote from: Towger on April 23, 2019, 07:24:09 amThat's about 95% of the media landscape.

author: GlennSprigg
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: April 23, 2019, 10:23:38 am
content: I'm waiting for afoldable 'Abacas', that doesn't loose Bead-Position,to put on my Decaffeinated Coffee-Table

author: james_s
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: April 23, 2019, 04:21:00 pm
content: Quote from: Psi on April 23, 2019, 08:13:06 amNot for me. My holy grail is a ~4.5" phone with an OLED screen, physical home button, powerful CPU, plenty of RAM and storage and a minimum of marketing gimmicks. A notch out of the screen is a non-starter, bezel-less is undesirable since I need something to hold onto, I'm annoyed by the market trend of HUGE phones that are awkward to hold and don't fit well in my pocket. I'd like to have options to compete with my iPhone SE but there really isn't much that fits that criteria, the few compact smartphones tend to be low end.

author: tooki
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: April 24, 2019, 09:25:53 am
content: Quote from: james_s on April 23, 2019, 04:21:00 pmYep. This trend towards larger and larger phones is maddening. If I wanted to schlep an iPad everywhere, I'd just schlep my iPad...

author: KL27x
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: April 24, 2019, 09:33:47 am
content: Samsung did some kind of testing. I am gonna take a guess.Samsung handed out a limited number of prototypes for internal testing. They got passed around to various testers, and the units survived the use/abuse of several sets of hands and pockets. But these units are the survivors. They survived for various reasons, but perhaps one of them is that they happened to have been "broken in," properly. Perhaps they had gone through the robot folding machine for a few thousand spin cycles, even.There's enough play in the hinge that humans folding the phone produces different strains, and the break-in is not consistent. The laminated screens takes a set (or a number of sets) out of alignment, producing a variety of delamination failures.Samsung focuses on the number of fold cycles. So of course a brand new phone will last longer than a used phone.... nope. If the phone has been carefully/precisely folded a few hundred times, it perhaps will now take a lot more abuse before failure than a brand new phone that is so handled.There is also perhaps a time variable. The initial prototypes were potentially handled right away, relatively soon after manufacture. Then they made a bunch that sat in a box for weeks before the break in began, and the adhesives and polymers had already set in a way that interfered with a proper break in.This kind of thing, I bet it requires some sort of proper break in, and furthermore it may need to be performed within a certain time frame after the screen is manufactured.

author: tooki
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: April 24, 2019, 09:40:59 am
content: Dave went into this in his latest video. Just as I speculated in an earlier comment above, Samsung used robotic jigs. But clearly those didn't simulate the imperfect forces experienced in real use.

author: KL27x
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: April 24, 2019, 09:52:16 am
content: ^Thanks. I watched the video and I did not see where he made any of these speculations. To me it appears Dave assumed that Samsung relied on robot testing and they did insufficient human testing. I even referenced the robot folder... I speculated that human testing may have been done on phones that had already been through the robot spin cycle.I'm speculating that human testing was done, but that the phones survived human handling because those phones had been properly broken in. E.g., if the phone is properly broken in, it perhaps is reliable enough to be a viable product with no further changes.Potential mistake on Samsung:"This phone has been folded 1000 times by a robot. And now look how much abuse it can take from a human. It lasts an average of X more cycles. If we give the human a brand new phone it will last X + 1000 cycles."But the reality is that the brand new phone will only last an average of 0.1*X, because human handling doesn't give the phone a very good chance of receiving a proper initial break-in.Also, see my point about time-frame after screen manufacture.

author: SparkyFX
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: April 24, 2019, 11:07:28 am
content: Quote from: GlennSprigg on April 23, 2019, 10:23:38 amBacking the beads up with a foam does not make the memory nonvolatile? Friction standing in the way of processing speed?

author: vtwin@cox.net
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: April 24, 2019, 08:31:06 pm
content: A phone with a roll-out screen along the same lines as that shows in the sci-fi series Earth: Final Conflict would be interesting to use.

author: TerraHertz
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: April 26, 2019, 12:12:14 am
content: This obsession with 'screens' is just a passing phase. I'm waiting for communication devices with wifi links to a visual cortex implant.But seriously, the only 'phone improvement' I care about, would be for the service providers to offer a prepaid phone account in which they don't steal your credit balance after some small interval of time. Since I very rarely use the thing.

author: Rerouter
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: April 26, 2019, 01:12:05 am
content: Terrahertz, the other fun thing with prepaid in Australia, if you buy a data block for 12 months, and a few months in they decide to change that plan option to 6 or 3! months, well you end up shafted, had this happen to me by 5 different providers multiple times,