(gentle music)
- Uh, hang on a minute.
We need to make this
Galaxy Fold review video
a little differently.
See, I have a lot to say about this $1,980
folding phone tablet thing because I think
there are a lot of
interesting possibilities,
and it is legitimately
amazing to have a screen
that can fold nearly in half.
But then we started to review this phone,
and then, you may have heard about it.
So as you can see, the screen
on our Galaxy Fold is broken.
I've got a line here and a line here,
and here's what happened.
Right about here under
the screen last night
I noticed that I could feel a little bump
under the screen when
it was completely open.
And when it wasn't completely open
I didn't feel the bump at all.
And last night it wasn't
causing any problems.
It was flexing the
screen out a little bit.
I called it like a bulge.
But when I woke up this morning,
opened the phone up, it
had caused apparently
a little bit more damage, and
so it's ruined the screen.
Yeah, so there are two
different issues here.
The first is that on
the front of the screen
there's this thing that looks like
a removable screen protector,
but it is not removable.
Instead it's this layer that's applied
with some serious adhesive,
and it's basically
part of the screen.
If you try to pull it
off, which to be clear
seems like a totally
reasonable thing to do
given how it looks, you
will end up wrecking
the hell out of this phone.
But that's not what happened to me.
As near as I can tell something got stuck
in between the screen and the hinge
on my first review unit.
I still don't know what it was,
but I do know that it broke the screen.
So, Samsung replaced my unit,
and it gave a statement about the issue.
It said, quote, "We will
thoroughly inspect these units."
In other words, there's no answers yet.
Which means, you can't trust this phone.
I don't trust this phone.
But Samsung also said that
it is full steam ahead
for the launch of this
phone on April 26th.
So, what are the heck are
we supposed to do now?
Well, we're gonna review the Galaxy Fold,
but we're going to do it
as if it were a device
that doesn't seem to have this critical
fundamental design flaw
that could break the screen.
(gentle music)
This is the Galaxy Fold.
Before everything went to hell
and the first phone broke,
here was my conclusion about this thing.
I have never used a premium device
with this many problems
that I love this much.
Screen breaking aside, and
to be clear you should not
set it aside, there are
still a bunch of problems
with this phone.
The screen and the
protector thing are plastic
which means it picks up
dings really, really easily.
The front screen is too
small to really use.
Android still isn't as good as
it should be in tablet mode.
I could really go on and on,
but then I open it up
and I start using it,
and I really like it.
It's way nicer just having a big screen
and I really like this almost exactly
four by three aspect ratio.
This main screen is 7.3 inches,
which is just a little bit
smaller than an iPad Mini,
but it's got way smaller
bezels than an iPad Mini,
which means that it's super easy to hold.
And again, like having this
much screen real estate
on your phone is great.
If you go into the system and
set the zoom level to small,
you end up getting three columns in email,
and you get tabs in your browser.
Playing games is really
fun on this big screen too,
and I have to say that
this is my favorite device
for reading Kindle books,
including the actual Kindle itself.
This is just the right
size, and if you want,
you can rotate it sideways
and get two columns of text.
Surprisingly, when I'm just using it
and not looking for screen problems,
I don't really notice the
crease between the two sides.
Now, don't get me wrong,
it is definitely there.
You can definitely feel it.
But, it's a little bit easier to ignore
than you might expect.
Now, the notch on the top of the screen,
well that's a little bit harder to ignore
because most video apps
get cut off by that notch,
and you have to set the whole system
to hide the notch mode in
order to get rid of that,
and that's super annoying.
Also annoying, the refresh rate.
Okay, so screens need to have controllers
and usually they're at the
top or maybe the bottom
of the phone, so when you
scroll you don't notice
that there's actually a subtle difference
in scroll speed from
the top to the bottom.
Unless you're really looking for it.
But, because this thing folds in half
it has to put its screen controller
over somewhere else on
the right-hand side.
So, when you scroll, you
get this jelly effect
where one side scrolls
faster than the other side.
It's the sort of thing
that you don't notice,
and then you notice it,
and then you can just
never unsee it.
Look, all these problems are real,
and they are not acceptable
on any smartphone,
and definitely not a premium one
that costs, again, two thousand dollars.
But, when you're actually using it,
you do kind of forget
about all those problems
because it's just a great little tablet.
The colors on the screen are vivid,
and they're also bright,
and the whole thing
does feel pretty good to
use when it's opened up.
All right, let's talk about some classic
phone spec stuff now.
It has a Snapdragon 855 processor,
and 12 gigs of RAM, so it's very fast.
It has 512 gigs of storage,
and it also has a 4,380 milliamp battery.
And that means that
I'm getting screen time
in like the seven or eight hour range.
This thing just lasts all day.
It also has wireless charging,
and you can charge other
devices on the back of it
like the Galaxy Buds.
There are, six, six cameras,
and I'm not gonna spend
too much time on them
because they're basically the same
as what you get on the Galaxy S10+.
There's one regular, one wide,
and one telephoto on the back.
One regular on the front,
and then one regular
and one depth sensing one on the inside.
And, they're all very good,
but that does mean
they're not quite as good
as what you'll get on
Pixel 3 or a P30 Pro.
Now, it's not waterproof
at all unfortunately.
But, overall the build
quality felt pretty good.
The hinge originally felt really solid.
You know what?
Well, let's just call
durability and build quality
a big question mark right now, okay?
Yeah.
There's no headphone jack, and
the button layout is weird.
The fingerprint sensor is super fast
and it's on the side,
but instead of doubling
as a power button, it
doubles as the Bixby button,
which, why?
Is this some dark pattern to trick me
into using Bixby more?
I don't know, but I can tell
you that Bixby is still Bixby.
As for the rest of the software,
it's actually better than I expected.
But, I didn't expect a lot because Android
has never been great on tablets.
The big new feature here is the thing
called app continuity,
and what it means is
if you have an app open on
the tiny screen on the front,
when you open it up, it'll be right there
on the big screen, fully
and properly resized.
It's based on this work
that Google is doing
to make Android apps resizable
for Chromebooks and tablets.
But, not all apps support it yet,
so sometimes when you do it you get an app
that's got black bars
on either side of it,
and you have to relaunch
the app to resize it.
Resizable apps also let Samsung
do its multitasking tricks on this thing.
So, you can swipe over from the right
and select a second app
to open in split screen.
Then you can do it again
to open a third app
underneath that one on the right.
And then you can do crazy Samsung stuff,
like open popover
windows like real windows
and move them around, and resize them,
and it's all just kind of a lot.
And, it's okay, but it's no where near
as elegant as how
multitasking works on an iPad.
Like, for example, you
lose your window layouts
all the time.
If you just close and open this thing
your multi-window layouts are just gone.
Maybe all this will get
better with Android Q
later this year, but that's not right now.
Okay, but this isn't really just a tablet.
It's also a phone, so let's talk about
what it's like in phone mode.
Just as a physical object, it's weird,
like a big phone remote or something.
It's super thick, and it's super heavy,
and there's just no way
you're gonna get this
to fit comfortably in your pants pocket.
Plus, friends, the screen
on the front of this thing
is just too small.
Technically it's 4.6 inches,
but that's a diagonal measurement,
and so it feels way smaller than that
because it's so narrow.
You can barely type on this thing.
What I ended up doing is basically
treating it like a glorified
super powered lock screen.
And, maybe that's the point.
It has a totally different
home screen layout
than the main screen, so
I ended up just putting
the stuff on it that I use in my commute,
and that's Google Maps,
holedown, and Spotify.
So all that's the annoying
part of this screen,
but once again there was
this weird possibility
that I could not only get used to that
but almost learn to like it.
Here's what I mean.
Think about this thing
that happens all the time
with your phone.
You pull it out to check something quick
but then all of a sudden
a half hour has gone by
while you were scrolling
Instagram or whatever.
It's a real problem, but it's a problem
I didn't really have with the Galaxy Fold
because when I was just
using the tiny screen
I wanted to get something done
and put it away really fast
because the tiny screen's not that good.
But then, when I unfolded it and used it
I was really using it.
I had to hold it in two hands.
It became an active thing
that I chose to be doing.
It required some intentionality.
Phones, they fit in our in-between times,
when you're just waiting in line
or you have a minute to glance at it.
But then it fills up that minute
and then it sort of just
fills up everything.
The Galaxy Fold though is too big
to fit in those in-between times.
So I ended up feeling better about
how I was using this
phone than I usually do
when I use a regular phone.
Is that worth $2,000?
Is it worth all of the first generation
problems that you run into here?
Is it worth the risk of buying a phone
whose screen might be so fragile
that it could break at any minute
if a piece of debris gets
stuck between it and the hinge?
Nope, nope, and super nope.
But it is worth thinking about.
And even though I'm gonna
be sending this thing back
and definitely not spending the two grand,
I'm gonna keep thinking about it.
Because, you know what?
There is something really new here.
Something different.
I just wish it wasn't also, well, broken.
