iFixit Galaxy Fold teardown shows the improvements Samsung made
As expected, quite a few things have changed.
Samsung's updated Galaxy Fold is more durable than its first iteration.
After its first teardown was taken down at Samsung's request, iFixit is back with a new look at Samsung's updated Galaxy Fold .
In the new teardown, the disassembly experts have taken apart Samsung's updated Fold to see just what changes were made to the updated version of the phone-tablet hybrid. As expected, considering all the issues that popped up during the first iteration of the Fold, there were plenty of updates.
As iFixit notes, "Samsung quietly made all the fixes we suggested in our original teardown. They closed some gaps, reinforced the folding display, and hid the edges of that screen protection layer that everyone found so catastrophically tempting to peel off."
Samsung's disassembled Galaxy Fold.
The group found the device "easy-ish to tear down compared with other Samsung phones -- but that's a low bar, and the Fold's extra fragility leaves us worried about its long-term lastability." In a CNET test last week the Fold fell well short of Samsung's stated claim of 200,000 folds before breaking.
Although the changes Samsung made improve the device's resistance to dust and protect the screen, iFixit raised the logical question of "why these seemingly obvious durability safeguards weren't part of the Fold's design in the first place."
As for repairing the device? It's still very much not a do-it-yourself job, with the group giving the Fold a 2 out of 10 on its repairability scale, with 10 being the easiest to repair.