Samsung Galaxy Fold's screen failures have finally been fixed, report says
The Fold has been on hold since Samsung aborted its scheduled April 26 launch.
Editor's Note: On July 24, Samsung announced that it will sell an improved Galaxy Fold in September 2019.
Samsung's Galaxy Fold was meant to be the first foldable phone to hit the market. But screen-destroying design flaws caused the $1,980 phone to be delayed for two months and counting, as the phone was meant to launch on April 26. But now the South Korean electronics giant has completed its redesign of the Galaxy Fold, reports Bloomberg.
No release date has been set, a source told Bloomberg, but Samsung is on the cusp of being able to manufacture market-ready Galaxy Fold phones .
The initial designed was plagued by screen failures when reviewers discovered that peeling off a protective film, which looked identical to a screen protector, caused display failures. (CNET's unit was unaffected.) Samsung's new Fold will feature a protective film that wraps around the screen, making it far more difficult to remove.
On Monday, Samsung mobile chief DJ Koh admitted on Monday that he rushed the $1,980 Galaxy Fold to market before the foldable phone was fully ready.
"It was embarrassing. I pushed it through before it was ready," Koh said during a meeting with journalists including The Independent in Seoul. "I do admit I missed something on the foldable phone, but we are in the process of recovery."
Though Samsung will soon begin the manufacturing process, Bloomberg's source noted that we shouldn't expect to see the new-and-improved Fold at Samsung Unpacked on Aug. 7, where the company will unveil its next Galaxy Note phone.
This is not the first time that Samsung has admitted it made a mistake for an issue affecting one of its phones. Most recently, Samsung apologized for the Galaxy Note 7, which the company voluntarily recalled in 2016, twice, after reports that the phone's battery overheated and caught fire. As a result of investigations into the Note 7's design and manufacturing processes, Samsung announced a more secure battery protocol.