Samsung Galaxy Fold pre-orders to resume from October 11: Details here

After selling all 1,600 luxury "Galaxy Fold" smartphones in flat 30 minutes during the first pre-booking on October 4, the South Korean giant on Monday said it will open second round of pre-booking for its Rs 1.65 lakh device on October 11.

Consumers can log onto Samsung's official online store at 12 pm on October 11 to purchase the "Galaxy Fold".

They have to pay the entire amount upfront like the last time.

"Galaxy Fold" with 12GB of RAM and 512GB internal storage is also available offline in 35 cities across select 315 outlets, including the iconic Samsung Opera House in Bengaluru.

Each device comes with Galaxy Buds in the box and "Aramid Fiber" case made of fibre that has high capacity to withstand pressure.

The customers will get devices delivered to them through a concierge on October 20, along with a dedicated expert on call 24x7.

In its standard form, the device gives you a 4.6-inch screen experience for normal day-to-day task but as you unfold it -- the cross-screen functionalities go seamless on a bigger, immersive 7.3-inch form factor as the plastic OLED (P-OLED) display can bend like a book.

Samsung has fixed Galaxy Fold, but it's not yet ready for most: Here's why

Samsung Electronic Co.’s Galaxy Fold is no longer a $1,980 (Rs 1,64,999) brick. Six months after launching a device with a strange screen protector and a tendency to crack, the South Korean-technology giant is back with a much-improved product. It’s still not ready for most consumers, though.

The screen protector is now under a plastic rim so it’s essentially impossible to remove. That should prevent the cracks that doomed the original Fold. There are also new caps at the top and bottom of the hinge to stop debris getting into the display. With the previous model, dust and other gunk sometimes caused the screen to bubble up and break. The hinge – the mechanism that lets users open and shut the phone – also seems slightly stronger.

The inner screen opens up to become a tablet about 7 inches in size. There’s also a 4-inch outer screen that is mostly used for quickly replying to messages, and handling phone calls. The external screen works well for dialing numbers and accepting calls, but it’s too cramped for most other tasks.

The larger screen inside, however, is compelling. Being able to have a tablet-sized screen in your pocket makes the Galaxy Fold one of the best smartphones for watching video. It’s an excellent YouTube machine. You can also pin multiple apps on the screen at once, so it’s easy to watch video, text and browse the web at the same time.

The operating system lets you slice up the screen in inventive and useful ways. One app can take up the whole of the left side of the screen, while another app takes up the top right area, with a third filling in the remaining bottom right of the display. You can also add several small “pop up view” apps that float around the screen, although this starts getting confusing and messy with more than three or four apps.

There are still drawbacks with the folding display, though. In very bright environments, it’s harder to see. And the crease that runs down the center of the screen shows up when you’re viewing something dark. And one issue from the first model remains: The screen can pick up dents from fingernails. Over several months or a year of use, that’s likely to bother customers. Samsung has said this is an inherent characteristic of its foldable phone design and offers a $149.99 screen replacement within the first year.

The Fold is not water or dust resistant, practical features that most high-end smartphones offer these days. And if it’s near a magnet, the screen sometimes switches off. The box is loaded up with warnings, such as being careful with the screen.

Rather than a polished device for the masses, the Fold seems to be a showcase for Samsung’s vision of the future of mobile computing. More of a “beta” test product, not a blockbuster. The company is already working on future versions of the Fold that will hopefully be cheaper, sturdier and have a much better external screen.

Samsung Galaxy Fold's success hinges on competitors and not sales

With Samsung Electronics Co finally launching its troubled Galaxy Fold, success for the $1,980 luxury handset may be measured not in how many it ships, but how many competitors decide to develop their own.

Pre-release enthusiasm for the device turned to exasperation in April when review units were found to have a severe defect related to the folding screen design. That made reviewers, analysts and investors rightfully skeptical about whether Samsung had gone too far and fallen off the bleeding edge of technology innovation. Three years earlier, the South Korean giant had grappled with exploding batteries in the Galaxy Note 7, ultimately discontinuing the device after a botched recall.

Management handled the setback much better this time, making the pragmatic decision to delay release of the Fold pending a redesign. Now that it’s available, the spotlight will once again be on the screen to see whether the design can hold up to daily wear and tear.

Joining the crowds scrutinizing every millimeter of the screen and its hinge will be executives at Huawei Technologies Co., Oppo, Vivo, Xiaomi Corp. and even Apple Inc. While all are rivals to Samsung in smartphones, they’re also potential customers for its displays.

Samsung’s virtual lock on organic light-emitting diode (OLED) technology over the past few years helped that division post an impressive run of operating profits as leading names, including Apple, clamored to get their hands on these brighter, lower-power displays. That star has since faded. The global smartphone industry is now in a funk, and Samsung isn’t alone in wanting to offer something fresh and exciting to juice sales.

That makes the Fold a product of two divisions at Samsung. The smartphone unit naturally wants an awesome design that sets tongues wagging, while the display division wants to be able to show prospective clients what it can do. In this regard, the Fold is like a concept car for smartphones, as I observed in February. It’s intended to showcase the company’s technological brilliance rather than drive sales.

If the display division can pull it off, foldable technology will be seen as an engineering marvel. Bloomberg’s Sohee Kim and Mark Gurman wrote on Thursday that while a crease is still visible in the middle of the folded device, it’s not obtrusive. Other features, such as transition from closed to open, work well. The wider reception among media seems to follow a similar tone.

For the consumer-facing smartphone division, the challenge will be overcoming prolonged upgrade apathy among handset users. At the same time, the business can ill-afford another product defect that would cost money and damage the brand.

If customer reviews are positive, then both divisions of Samsung will be able to claim victory. More broadly, it will show that the company can manage to both innovate and execute. It will also demonstrate that the company has learned the lessons of the Galaxy Note 7, having reacted promptly and appropriately on this occasion to avert what could have been a PR disaster.

The Galaxy Fold is only the start. Samsung is working on a new foldable that will collapse into a compact square, Bloomberg News reported earlier this week. That device will bring with it a further array of design, engineering and marketing challenges.

The real success of the handset, though, will be seen when competitors start to roll out their own foldable phones – using Samsung screens, of course.

Samsung still has time to correct Galaxy Fold before it hit the shelves

Just when the industry through innovation in the smartphone business had hit stagnation, Samsung wowed us with its first foldable device "Galaxy Fold," worth a whopping $2,000.

A super-premium phone that took almost a decade in the making and opens like a book when unfolded, shouted everything next-generation.

However, the expectations took a beating when reports of the Galaxy Fold issues surfaced.

The units given to international tech reviewers encountered display distortion and screen flickering issues, forcing the South Korean giant to postpone its launch in Hong Kong and Shanghai on April 23 and 24 respectively, and issue a recall of review units.

The big question lingers: Will the "Foldgate" make a dent in Samsung's image like the Galaxy Note 7 with exploding batteries did in 2016?

According to CyberMedia Research (CMR), the smartphone major has been mature and pragmatic enough by postponing its launch and sorting out all the issues before its general availiability.

"All said, for Samsung, there is no race for first past the post with its foldable smartphone. It is more imperative for the company to focus on not delivering a flawed product, but rather ensuring highest consumer experience when the device goes on sales," Prabhu Ram, Head, Industry Intelligence Group (IIG), CMR, told IANS.

Defending its devices just days before its roll-out, a Samsung spokesperson assured that the firm would "thoroughly inspect" the units.

According to market research firm Gartner, foldable phones would make up 5 per cent of high-end phones sales by 2023 with around 30 million units.

According to Faisal Kawoosa, Founder and Principal Analyst of market research firm techARC, from a technology-rich company like Samsung, "one would expect things out only after reliability of desired levels are achieved".

The Galaxy Fold is expected to be priced around Rs 1,40,790 in India.

"Nevertheless, the lab and real-world conditions play differently. I don't see it as a big issue as the product has not exchanged hands with consumers yet. They have time to correct this aberration," Kawoosa told IANS.

Some units of the Galaxy Fold, which became the first phone with a foldable OLED display, is encountering two primary issues: the foldable screen seems to have a layer of protective layer that is similar to a cheap screen film.

Several units reportedly failed after the layer was taken off.

Few other screens failed because the hinge exposed areas which allowed debris to get inside of the display, thus, damaging the unit.

"We expect that users will use a foldable phone as they do their regular smartphone, picking it up hundreds of times a day, unfolding it sporadically and typing on its plastic screen, which may scratch quickly depending on the way it folds," Roberta Cozza, Research Director at Gartner had earlier said.

However, according to market research firm techARC, this is primarily a material issue than a design.

"I think till the time it's a plastic-based screen, the chances of such mishaps remain high. I would certainly like to see a glass display, that too from credible makers like Corning, to have a reliable foldable screen," stressed Kawoosa.

Moreover, there's no denying that the second-generation of foldable devices would be better that the experimental and ambitious first generation iterations.

"The first generation of an innovation is always experimental, and which over successive iterations achieves perfection. Let's'face it. The Galaxy Fold was just a mistake in timing. It does not take away anything from its manufacturing capabilities," Ram noted.

$2000 Galaxy Fold's screen broke after few days of use for some reviewers

The problem seems to be related to the unit's screen either cracking or flickering, according to Twitter posts by technology journalists from Bloomberg, The Verge and CNBC who received the phone this week for review purposes. The Galaxy Fold officially goes on sale on April 26 in the United States.

Samsung Electronics Co Ltd did not respond to several requests for comment.

The South Korean company's Galaxy Fold resembles a conventional smartphone but opens like a book to reveal a second display the size of a small tablet at 7.3 inches (18.5 cm).

Although Galaxy Fold and Huawei's Mate X foldable phones are not expected to be big sellers, the new designs were hailed as framing the future of smartphones this year in a field that has seen few surprises since Apple Inc introduced the screen slab iPhone in 2007.

The problems with the new phone drew comparisons to Samsung's Galaxy Note 7 phone in 2016. Battery and design flaws in the Note 7 led to some units catching fire or exploding, forcing Samsung to recall and cancel sales of the phone. The recall wiped out nearly all of the profits in Samsung's mobile division in the third quarter of 2016.

Reviewers of the new Galaxy Fold said they did not know what the problem was and Samsung did not provide answers.

Bloomberg reporter Mark Gurman tweeted: "The screen on my Galaxy Fold review unit is completely broken and unusable just two days in. Hard to know if this is widespread or not."

According to Gurman's tweets, he removed a plastic layer on the screen that was not meant to be removed and the phone malfunctioned afterwards.

Dieter Bohn, executive editor of The Verge, said that a "small bulge" appeared on the crease of the phone screen, which appeared to be something pressing from underneath the screen. Bohn said Samsung replaced his test phone but did not offer a reason for the problem.

"It is very troubling," Bohn told Reuters, adding that he did not remove the plastic screen cover.

Steve Kovach, tech editor at CNBC.com tweeted a video of half of his phone's screen flickering after using it for just a day.