How Samsung squandered its lead with the Galaxy Z Fold Series
Or, how the folding phone could be the companies Xerox moment
In late 2019, Samsung shook up the mobile landscape by releasing a folding phone. The idea that you could have a device on the go that could unfold from a standard phone to a very usable tablet was mindblowing. For an industry that had lumbered from year to year with incremental upgrades, a better camera here, a better battery there, this was a much-needed shake-up. How would this fare, in the long run? Would a fully-functional folding device change the mobile landscape forever?
As we pass the Z Fold 4 and await the Z Fold 5, it’s becoming clear that the answer to this question is a hard no. It’s cool what Samsung has done in this space, especially as they have moved the foldable forward so much as a concept, but a combination of focussing on the wrong things, software oddities, and missed innovations really make it seem like they’re all folded out.
Full disclosure — I have owned two separate Galaxy Z Fold 3’s. Both suffered hardware failures within a year of owning them (the first was about nine months, the second only six months). Both phones spent their entire existence in cases and were next to me on my office desk for 90% of their lives. With both devices, the devices stopped working…
