Samsung's Foldable Phones: Breaking Screens Before Breaking Hearts
KEY POINTS
- •Royole released the first commercial foldable phone, the FlexPai, in early 2019 but soon filed for bankruptcy.
- •Samsung launched its Galaxy Fold about a year later, but prototypes broke within days of reviews.
- •Samsung's troubled launch delayed competitors like Huawei from entering the foldable phone market smoothly.
Before Samsung turned phones into pretzels, Royole gallantly flopped with the 'charmingly awful' FlexPai back in 2019—a device as flexible in its durability as my willpower at a pastry shop. Samsung followed in 2020 with the Galaxy Fold, a smartphone designed to fold itself and promptly shatter review units within days, turning reviewers into tech hazmat teams. This cascading fiasco not only embarrassed Samsung but also pushed Huawei’s folding phone launch from a quiet maybe to a strategic stay-tuned. Meanwhile, Dominic Preston and The Verge duly chronicled each stuttering fold in painful detail, arriving every Sunday at 8 AM ET to remind us that foldables are a high-stakes gamble in screen breakage.
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(1 of 3)Royole folded first and immediately folded under. Samsung then made foldable phones you can break faster than your will to exercise. Turns out tech innovation sometimes means inventing new ways to watch your money snap in half.
If your phone’s main feature is folding on your face like a bad joke, congratulations, you own a foldable from 2019-2020 era.
Samsung bet big on foldable screens and lost harder than anyone at an introvert's karaoke night.
Source: Theverge | Published: 8/2/2026 | Author: Dominic Preston
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