Samsung's folding phone breaks for reviewers
bbc.com
bbc.com
Not a "first edition" product like the first iPhone, but a rushed, half baked product, released without consideration of sales but just for being the first in the market for this niche.
Given this assumption, why would you give it to reviewers at all ? Remember "Vertu" ? They were the Ferrari of phones during the Blackberry era and were _shit_. I got my hands on them as a kid and was astonished how bad they were compared to my dad's cheap simple Blackberry. There's a reason why they were not reviewed widely, or positively by a large margin.
Why not just do the same thing? Don't be daft and give it to the hands of reviewers who have twitter on their fingertips and will tell everyone about every single flaw about your device, when you know your device has flaws.
Give it to the CEOs/Sports personalities, and let them flash it around for a few days/events, and cover up the flaws in the second edition. If it breaks on their hands, they certainly won't care to advertise that fact, they'll just get another phone.
If they actually thought they had finished this product, well... SSNLF is going to notice a strong presence of gravity for the next few days.
>There's a reason why they were not reviewed widely
Coincidentally, Ferrari also play dishonest games with reviewers: https://jalopnik.com/how-ferrari-spins-5760248
> Ferrari also play dishonest
https://jalopnik.com/ferrari-admits-to-knowingly-allowing-de...
There is a surprising amount of variability between 'identical' cars.
A Ferrari is meant to be ostentatious _and_ a great car (not withstanding pratcicality or cost).
Absolutely not. Ferraris are renowned for being shop queens/needing absurdly frequent servicing, which probably needs to be done at an official dealership. Also, often you need to remove the motor to do basic service (the car is designed for this).
eg see discussions in this thread: https://www.reddit.com/r/Justrolledintotheshop/comments/ba3r...
Maybe a better example would have been Leica or something, which at least are very nicely engineered cameras and can run for more than a few months without a dealer service.
The frequent servicing doesn't bother them.
"Better" is a subjective term. A sport sedan is better than a Ferrari if what you need is a sport sedan. A different sportscar may be better than a Ferrari if what you want is something that requires less maintenance (or so I hear, I know nothing about sportscars.)
I never understood this. If you're going to make a ridiculously expensive phone by taking an existing model and covering it in gold and diamonds, then why not start out with a high-end model ? It's not going to have any significant impact on the price anyway.
Could have the guts of a Nokia tracfone, wouldn't matter. The guts aren't the important part.
I got a rare pre-production version of the matrix nokia phone, to test our WAP sites. Our model would shoot the auto-slider cover on every time we pressed the release button. The cover would fly so well we ended up incorporating the phone into the nerf office wars.
I can't even rationalise why anybody wants a folding screen.
This seems like a gimmick searching for a market, not an answer to demand. And if this was the lowest hanging fruit for R&D to develop the next generation of phones, I think we're finally facing real stagnation in the phone market. Screen pixel density exceeds eyesight. Battery density limits are as far as known science can push them. Storage is beyond what we can reasonably use. 4G is fast enough. They've made every size of phone between a stamp and a tablet. There's nothing left to do. Phones are as dead as the PC.
What's next?
I jest, but my best hope for a stagnant market is competition on merits that we really want, and less so for the whizz-bang features that attract attention without improving our lives.
I've got a used Nexus 6P with a dying battery. I don't know of any improvements in newer phones I need (except security updates!) but I'm torn whether I want to learn how to replace the battery and risk damage, or shell out some bucks for a local repair shop to do it.
Let new phones come out that are "as good as" the current phones, but reintroduce features we had to "give up" to get them this good. Batteries, useful I/O ports, comfortable shapes to fit our faces...
As for battery replacement, I had a university electronics lab at my disposal. I used a heatgun to heat the top and bottom panels on the back. It wasn't the easiest but the guides online are thorough. One thing I would recommend is letting the phone cool in a bag with some silica gel packets before sticking the back glass panel on. I had some moisture develop inside the camera lens which led to some water spots. It didn't ruin the camera but picture quality degraded a little bit.
I'm guessing it makes the design of the phone circuitry easier? You don't have to make the case removable?
The idea that it forces you to buy a new phone never seemed like a good reason to me.
There are design tradeoffs to make the batteries user-replaceable. E.g., the batteries are going to need a casing and socket that make them OK for users to handle and replace. The phone's going to need additional casing pieces, latches, and seals, etc. The phone's going to be a little bigger, heavier and more expensive. Maybe not a great tradeoff for something needed once every 2-3 years.
I just looked up and Apple is charging $50-$70 to replace your battery, depending on the model. So ~$25-$45 more expensive than a cheap DIY kit from amazon. Considering the various risks of DIY, that's really not that bad to do once every 2-3 years, IMO.
> Maybe not a great tradeoff for something needed once every 2-3 years.
The use case for a replaceable battery is for emergency situations, not just when the original stops holding a charge. I would much rather go back to that time when I could discreetly slip in a replacement than have to use a phone attached to a giant brick with a flimsy USB cable.
Consumers are the ones who have insisted — with their wallets — that they prefer phones without user-swappable batteries.
Option 1:
- has a removable battery, headphone jack and/or stereo speakers
- security / OS updates stop in 6 months (or never happen or are years behind)
- camera is OK
- getting kind of slow
- proprietary version of Android with bloatware
Option 2:
- no removable battery, headphone jack or stereo speakers
- security / OS updates for 2-3 years
- camera is better in low light
- it's fast right now
It's like evolution, except there aren't enough options and the timeline is too short and bad features are too coupled with good features.
Companies have switched to non-replaceable batteries because it's good for their bottom line. It's definitely market forces that are in play, but not the ones in the textbooks where consumers hold all the cards.
The case for user-replaceable batteries isn't just to be able to replace them when they wear out. It's also to be able to carry a spare or two for when you want to use the device for an extended period of time. (No, external power banks don't really address this use case).
Can you elaborate on why not? For me they address it far better than swapping out the internal battery, since you don't have to interrupt that extended use by powering down the phone to make the switch. They're also way easier to recharge simultaneously, without needing a bank of dummy phones.
But I get what you’re saying otherwise.
I plug my phone into a usb-c charger for 10 minutes and I've got 2~3 hours of charge.
If I really need to be away for a long period, a portable battery pack works just fine (still only needs to be plugged in for a few minutes to get me hours of charge).
I don't really have problems with my battery dying during normal use. I DO have problems with gradually reduced battery life as the battery degrades.
Because it reduces the cost of production.
1. There is an industry drive to make phones thinner, and one way to do that is to minimize the casing that a battery requires.
2. Waterproofing is a desirable feature, which is much harder to do when you have an accessible battery, especially in conjunction with 1.
3. Very few customers ever replace their battery.
4. Phones held together with adhesive and made from glass/metal feel and look better than plastic that snaps together. When marketing a premium product it has to look and feel premium.
I don't think you can safely have replaceable batteries without first making sure the devices' software are user serviceable. Completely flip the development model to something much more like a Linux distribution and get the onus on updating away from the people plugging bits of electronic-Lego together.
Only if it doesn't break of course.
Just slap on a VR headset.
However I remember comments like this one about the original iPad in the first place... because I was thinking the same thing at the time. So if you still don't get the appeal of tablets, then a folding phone also won't appeal to you.
Really? My dream phone doesn't exist yet. I want a phone that is reliable, that lasts more than a few days on a single charge. I want one with two USB connections. I want one with a proper headphone jack, and a speaker that is loud enough to hear properly while driving (without a mount). For these features I am willing to trade size/weight. This phone doesn't exist yet. Until it does there remains room for improvement.
I'm well aware that the dream phone may never exist. That doesn't mean I don't want it.
I fixed it by replacing the head unit with one that supports Bluetooth and CarPlay. An easy DIY project or you can pay a small fee to have it done for you by an installer.
I don't know if it is possible for the phone to provide this, but it is on my want list.
Two USB sockets is like two SIMs. It sounds crazy to most people who’ve never had them, but for a lot of other people they are / would be amazingly useful.
why aren't these people connecting to their car? if they care enough to drive and hold a phone up, it seems likely they know about bluetooth.
Sometimes you forget to charge your phone. No problem! Battery's good until you get to a charger sometime the following day.
Also, an oversized battery / efficient chip means I can power-use my phone for a full day without worrying about battery.
And finally, because as your battery loses capacity over time, your phone drifts back to one-day charge, not sub-day charge.
I, too, loved my Droid Turbo. When I first got it, I remember driving from San Diego to the north edge of the Los Angeles metro area over about four hours using Waze. 4 hours of screen and GPS time and it only used about 40% of the battery. But after 3 years, 1 hour of Waze would consume 25% of the battery. The battery would barely last me a day, and if I was somewhere where I wanted to take a decent number of pictures, it wouldn't last more than a couple hours. I bought a replacement battery, but even though the battery was new, it was built years ago and was still slightly degraded.
I ended up buying a Pixel 3. The battery is only 3,000 mAh IIRC, but it's quite efficient. I usually finish my day with about 30-50% of the battery left depending on my usage. Of course, it'll be a different story in 2-3 years.
I went for the Pixel 2XL, for the battery and for the software updates. Can plug in my phone for an hour here and there at random times, and no longer leave it plugged in at night. I can go out or visit family with battery at 50% and not worry about my phone dying.
Google's fast charging also seems to be more variable and "smart" than motorola's, and doesn't seem to overheat my phone as much
Stuck in an airport overnight?
Long term local power outage?
There are nice things about long lasting batteries.
To anyone who complains that they won't be happy until the perfect device exists that meets all their needs and nothing they don't and doesn't need adapters or dongles to do it: I still use serial cables at least once a month. Do you hear me complaining that I can't find a laptop that includes a serial port? No. Because I recognize that my need is niche and adapters exist to fulfill that need. It doesn't need to be baked into a mass-market device. I'm an adult and can solve my own problems with readily-available tools.
I think the point of frustration is that phones used to address most or all of these needs, and now they don't. So it can clearly be done.
Same with two USB connections. Maybe one existed, but it wasn't a big seller so it was discontinued. Headphone jacks still exist, but phones without them aren't really selling worse so who knows what the future holds.
You know what sells? Mass market phones that meet everyone's needs and accessories that meet everyone's desires. Want longer battery life? Get any off-the-shelf mass market phone and pair it with a portable battery pack. Done. Want louder speakers? Get any off-the-shelf mass market phone and pair it with a Bluetooth speaker. Want a serial port? Buy any mass-market off-the-shelf laptop and a serial port adapter.
Because the next stop after "I demand a phone with loud speakers, multi-day battery life, and a headphone jack" is "no, that one is too expensive" or "no that one is running the wrong OS" or "no that one doesn't have a big enough screen" or "no that one charges with the wrong cable". The next stop is the millions of reasons to not buy exactly what you asked for. People here demand every product be exactly perfectly tailored to their own desires and no one else's and get offended when a device fits their needs but misses one or two of their desires, but also get offended when a product is released that fits someone else's needs and desires because it doesn't perfectly fit their own needs and desires.
"It can clearly be done" so why aren't you using a Moto G7 Power with its massive battery? Because this reason and that reason and the other reason because there is no way to make a device that satisfies every one of your desires. So why are you pretending that there aren't accessories available to satisfy every one of your desires... unless one of your desires is to just endlessly complain about modern technology?
Yes, but as of late, those don't exist. At least, none that meet many of my needs.
> why aren't you using a Moto G7 Power with its massive battery?
The battery is an important issue, but not the most important to me. I could compromise on battery life for devices that met my other needs.
I've also decided to bail on commercial smartphones entirely and build my own. I could no longer find a commercial smartphone that was an acceptable compromise for me, and I'm also very much looking forward to no longer having to deal with the Android OS.
I've gone to bed several times with less than 10% battery left, woke up with 2-3% left in the morning, realised the battery is dying and put it charging during breakfast. Back to at least 80-90% when I'm leaving and thus good for another three days.
In my mind still is one of the top 5 smartphones available, even if it hasn't refreshed in a few years.
Isn’t there some sort of analytics you could add to your app to learn the screen size of your users?
I forgot about the hellscape we're living in where this is a thing.
I do see advantages for those other uses. Also, copying data between USB drives seems handy too!
Look atbhow thick it is when folded. At that size, a normal screen, with a huge battery and a sliding hardware keyboard would much better. For me, it would be an instant buy.
Not sure how accurate this graph is:
http://gs.statcounter.com/platform-market-share/desktop-mobi...
but it seems like tablet use is dwarfed by both desktop and mobile (not sure where laptops fit into the scheme of things) by a factor of 10.
But now it's 2019 and the line between tablets and laptops is blurred. However, I still don't want or need one. It's too big to fit in any pocket and too small to use as your main productivity screen. And only marginally better for watching movies than a flagship phone (which in itself is not a high bar, compared to watching a movie on a big screen TV)
My toilet has a cistern, u bend, and all the features of a toilet of 100 years ago. Never the less toilets are far from dead.
What you are describing is a mature product, not a dead product.
It's actually surprising the amount of new tech in a regular toilet - even compared to 20 years ago. And that's not a complex automated toilet, just a standard UK crapper.
Close coupled cisterns have been around for over a century.
The ball cock redesign is a result of the dual flush arrangement (I thought?). But yes that is a change.
Having never come across a soft close lid on a toilet I can't agree they're anything close to standard, I'm sure they exist though. (I'm British also btw, so our experience should somewhat match)
So that's one change mandated by law?
You raise a good point about Japanese toilets though.
That's interesting, high cisterns (with a chain!) were still common, when I was younger (80s) these were replaced by low cisterns with a pipe between. In the last 2 decades in the UK these have been replaced by close-coupled systems IME.
Re weight, firing is costly, you can improve the shape to reduce the mass of clay which reduces firing costs considerably. I've taken out 50 yr old toilets and fitted new ones.
All the recent commercial fittings (ie in businesses, or in domestic settings done by plumbers) I've seen have been soft close & removeable. There's still a bug IMO, they need some sort of arrangement to make them lift quickly but lower slowly, or soft close only at the extremes of travel (soft close drawers have it, so I guess it'll come; probably a price issue).
The toilet cistern ball cock has changed twice AFAIK, once to accommodate the dual flush (central column), and again to alter the hinging to improve the pressure applied at the valve and reduce leaks.
What were we talking about again ...
I'd much rather carry a single device that can do it all, but a 7.3 inch screen isn't going to get me there. I'm more interested in the Huawei Mate X, that has an 8-inch screen when unfolded.
watches, wireless earbuds.
I know it's the first version, but looking at unbox therapy and their review. I kept on seeing the fold. [0]
If you look at reviews of the Huawei Mate X like this one [1]. Sure it's a preview version and a bit shiny, but looks much better than what Samsung has released.
IMHO Huawei has built a better foldable phone. Seems samsung has rushed this out to be the first vendor to release this type of phone, a shame really.
It may make less sense if the bended part of the screen isn’t as strong as conventional flat screens.
There’s a bit of a catch-22 there: you either fold the screen to the inside to give it some more protection, or you fold it to the outside to have a screen on the outside and increase the bending radius.
I don’t know enough of the technology to say what’s the better choice, but it seems it isn’t a trivial decision to make. If it were, the two companies would have made the same choice.
Protecting the screen from damage is an exercise left up to the reader.
I only speculate, but I think since it's just vapor deposited material, OLED screens with solid backings are quite robust.
Samsung on the other hand limited their YT exposure to demos where Samsung staff handled the phone.
We definitely have people trained that electronics come with a protective film over them. I mean, we clearly don't have everyone trained, but... :-)
Let's not push blame on to the user. If the screen protection is so vital that the screen will fail within a day without it, then the problem is that the screen protection is removable and to easy to remove.
No, it's like taking the plastic covering off the screen when you remove your new phone from the packaging. Everyone is used to doing that with new phones. If this is not one of those temporary plastic covers then it should not look like one.
It should be significantly more difficult to remove with bare fingers.
https://twitter.com/robotodd/status/1118585937712250880?s=21
Also, you'd think that there'd be a "DO NOT REMOVE THIS" warning on the packaging.
It always struck me as extremely strange to effectively ruin a product only to be able to throw it away in somewhat better condition.
If you try to remove it, you'll break the screen. See Marques Brownlee's pictures:
Note: the flex cables are not bad per se as they are also used in cubesats for instance.
Early flip phones used high spec slip rings instead of flex cables. It's a shame that the industry making those high spec micro slip rings went away with flip phone era.
Only when phones reached the point of being a disposable commodity, they switched to less reliable direct cabling.
Phone innovation is indeed dead -for the customer, that's ok, but for the vendors it's a nightmare.
I don't know much about Royole, but Huawei's foldable comes from BOE and BOE is many years behind Samsung both in mobile OLED and foldable. BOE is accused of copying/stealing Samsung display tech.
I still want a compact flagship phone.
It's going to be a phone with a huge, heavy battery, or a weak laptop with very short battery life. Running a limited phone OS or a heavy laptop OS. You'll have to open your phone to use it, and close your laptop to take a phonecall unless you also have a headset and are close.
This is as gimmicky as anything, possibly pending the arrival of magical graphene technology.
It is a gimmick, albeit a more useful one - have tablet and phone in 1 device. The thing is, tablets for most folks are not that great thing that everybody though they would be.
I don't see many people these days using tablets, most folks went back to phones which can do exactly the same stuff. For reading books kindle et al are much better (and cheap) product. People upgrade phones more often, and who wants to use sluggish oldish tablet compared to blazing fast phone that is always in the pocket.
You think we're going to nail folding screens any time soon?
I'm on the Android side and their phone app is deliciously garbage, nothing is right, nothing. And nobody cares. I miss my motorola v50 every time I have to make a call.
As for your iPhone 7 Phone app, that's clearly an anomaly local to your device. Not normal. Reinstall your software.
This seems a red flag, when devices involving mechanical innovation the reviewers should insist on long term review & shouldn't term anything less as a review.
Huawei on the other hand gave the Mate X to YT'ers for them to shoot 5-10 minute videos examining the phone and fold mechanism from every conceivable angle.
Movies wouldn’t look as good, sure. But what else? Surely this entire product line can’t be driven by movie watching... can it?
At least they don't explode...
The units reviewers have may be early versions with that extra film. That would explain why Mark Gurman wrote ”It appeared removable in the left corner“.
Now if they actually managed to get all things right in the first iteration, now that would be a huge engineering achievement. They will get there, but give them 2-3 generations