Behold, the insides of Samsung's Galaxy Fold: The phone that tears down all on its own

Re: Two screens with an infinitesimally-precise and tiny mating junction

That has some advantages, but runs into the problem that the gap has to be really small to not be noticed when held close to the user's face. When this happens at greater distances, it's more doable, but for a phone, you'd hear a lot of complaining about the phone with a line down its screen. I think that pretty much any way you build this, it's going to have some major problems at first. Admittedly, they might have done a little more to avoid the problems they have.

Re: Two screens with an infinitesimally-precise and tiny mating junction

make the whole thing flexible and sealed-up

Well - a brief thought[1] occurs - in similar situations I've seen a corrugated gaiter used (made of silicone or somesuch) - the corrugation gives an element of stretchiness and the silicone makes the seal. It can be bonded to the display under the bezel on either side of the hinge (front and back of the phone) as well as in the area of the hinge itself.

It would probably be a nightmare to apply during production and (in some environments) might not have a really long lifespan (most flexible materials are quite affected by environmental factors like heat or chemicals) but it would do the job better than not having anything at all.

Samsung - if you use my idea I'll send you the bill. £20 million should do it quite nicely.

[1] Hey - I do have one every so often. Quality may go down as well as up and no warranty is given or implied.

Re: Two screens with an infinitesimally-precise and tiny mating junction

"Have the two sides come together with sharp hard points touching a very hard plate. Very tiny areas for grit, that would be crushed anyway."

You must have absolutely zero body hair. I had arm hairs pinched in a gap between the hard part of an airline seat armrest and the soft part. I would have thought the soft part was bonded onto the hard bit, but they were separate and appeared to be independently affixed to a structure underneath.

I once had the skin on my heal pinched between floorboards that flexed ever so slightly. Luckily it was only about 1 micron of the upper layer, but I've become very wary of any small gaps.

@Cavehomme_

Uh oh! You better not let the Samsung fanbois that inhabit these parts hear you say that!

Samsung and their $3 billion R&D budget can do no wrong in their eyes, despite the fact this whole embarrassing debacle could have been avoided through the use of a $500 afternoon focus group session comprising average Joes plucked off the street.

Quite - what a pile of utter bilge.

Design is simply horrible, execution worse.

Ugly, pointless, what do you want?

Something first, or something that actually does the job it says on the tin?

Nokia and Motorola did great foldables, albeit with only one screen - they MUST have done something right..

Re: "You're folding it incorrectly."

"If working in IT has taught me nothing else in the last 35 years it's that users will do the most unexpected things with the tech they're given."

True, but in this case, users peeling off that layer shouldn't have been unexpected at all. We all been trained over years to expect that we're going to be peeling a layer of plastic off of a new screen.

Re: "You're folding it incorrectly."

then again the sort of person who can afford a £2000 mobile phone probably doens't have pocket lint in their designer label clothes I suppose!

Don't be so bloody silly - I have a man to remove that for me!

/me wanders off, muttering about the proles...

Re: Folding is not the right way I think.

> I still think the rolling screen idea is far better for this type of phone.

Yup

> Like has been shown in various movies and would look more like a scroll

Tekwar tv series "PDA" springs to mind. That design even gives something to hold onto.

> - only issue with that is the touch screen bits.

The only real issue there is having sufficient rigidity to stop it flexing too much.

Re: iFixit have taken down their teardown at Samsung's request

"[...] hoping we'd all forget."

The strategy works for politicians.

Re: iFixit have taken down their teardown at Samsung's request

So, the iFixit report on the Galaxy Fold has been taken down?

Someone needs to tell Samsung that you can't push this stuff down the memory-hole anymore - there's this new thing called "the internet"...

https://web.archive.org/web/20190424094552/https://www.ifixit.com/Teardown/Samsung+Galaxy+Fold+Teardown/122600

Samsung can ask the Internet Archive to pull it's copy too, but by now I'm sure others have mirrored the teardown... I know I have ;-)