Galaxy Fold: the real problem with the fold of the screen, the notch and the air knife

There would not be a Galaxy Fold without the screen. Unlike other phones, where screens are a matter of camera quality and battery life, Samsung has designed the phone as a whole taking into account that the screen folds in half. The dangers of designing a collapsible phone consume all the oxygen in the room, after five evaluation units of the first Galaxy Fold production experienced major problems. This is important, but the Fold screen is also on a working model like mine.

Before the Galaxy Fold screens began to break, it was the plastic fold in the center of the fold that caused the most hassle. How much did it really look? Would it get worse over time? Creasegate has threatened to destroy the Fold and his ilk before folding phones really begin.

We also remember the notch. The thick thumb-shaped cut sheltering two front cameras and two sensors inspired the sneers when Samsung unveiled for the first time the Fold prototype at the end of February. The audience regretted that it looks cheap and that it bothers.

People have also talked about the air gap, the small free space loop located at the end of the fold hinge, wider than the one where the sides of the screen get close.

Having used the Fold every day for more than a week, I wanted to answer three of your biggest concerns and share what they really are. Let's start with the fold.

The fold is not as bad as it looks

As soon as you open the phone, you will notice the fold. He dives a little and catches the light. I mostly noticed it on white or black screens, but when you're in something – a movie, an article, a game – the fold becomes much less obvious. It's partly because you stop focusing on it, and partly because it's less noticeable that pixels are turning on and changing.

You can also feel the crease, or more precisely the hinge underneath, when you place your finger on the screen. Feel that his presence is not the same as the fold that disturbs or distracts me from what I do. This has never happened, but I do not rule out the possibility that this can be a drag on some specific scenarios.

Just remember that it is there that the fold folds. I do not know how you would have a seamless foldable phone, at least not with the material we have now. Can you imagine a piece of glass folding in half and unfolding? I can not

Other folding models such as Huawei Mate X, which places the foldable screen outside the device, poses the opposite problem – not a "fold" but a bulge. I compare this to the skin around your knee or elbow. A foldable screen is a seal.

Folds and bulges are neither elegant nor luxurious, but they are inevitable at this stage. The only solution to this problem I could foresee is a futuristic material that reorganizes the molecules when you open and close the device.

The air blade is tied to the fold

Another thing that the fold does not do well is close perfectly flat. There is an air gap at the end closest to the hinge and that is because … the plastic screen does not stack completely on it -even. Maybe it really makes plastic break.

I did not find that this gap made the fold too difficult to fit in my pocket or purse. It's hardly a big enough space to insert a credit card. When I put one, then another, they stayed in place, but mostly because the magnetic edges of the Fold kept it. I would not be able to slip into a pen. A hairpin, perhaps, but do not do that – you would not want to scratch the plastic screen.

Huawei boasts that its Mate X is flat because of its superior "Falcon" hinge, but there is also intelligent engineering. The Mate X has a swoop on the side and "asymmetrical" screen lengths. This also allows you to hold the phone, but the solution is to place the battery, cameras, and other hard electronic components in a stationary part. Nevertheless, this could very well be a good solution. We will see when we spend more than 5 minutes with this foldable phone.

OK, the notch is a problem

Unlike other screen problems, I actually think that Samsung could have designed around the notch. It is thick, bulbous and takes up more space than necessary because it contains only two camera lenses and two sensors (stacked). Keep the Fold in the light and you will see a lot of dead space on the right.

When watching videos and playing games, the nick goes down to the screen. You will not lose a scene or a crucial moment, because the activity takes place in the center of the screen and not on the edges, but it is not necessary that the notch is also great.

The logic seems to be that Samsung wanted to focus the cameras on the fold without having to fold the sensors on top of each other. I suspect that Samsung has extended the notch right up to the right edge, because it seemed less annoying than cutting it off and leaving you with a non-centered island.

Again, Huawei bypasses this on the Mate X by placing all the cameras in a stack on a part of the Mate X that does not move.

If you do not like notch, Samsung has the good grace of letting you darken it in the settings menu. This creates a thicker bar at the top of the screen. When you launch some apps, including YouTube, the screen is aligned with the black notch while leaving thick bars along the top and bottom (because the app can not resize entirely in the dimensions of the fold). This somehow cuts the full screen experience, which is a strong point of Fold in the first place.

The best thing to keep in mind is that this first wave of foldable phones lays the foundation for a new kind of device, which will be a lot more complicated than the phone in your pocket today. hui.

The Fold may be defective even if it works well, but Samsung and others can learn from fold errors to create the foldable phone that you really want.