Samsung’s Galaxy Fold Hits the US on September 27th

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• patel21 - Tuesday, September 24, 2019 - link

  Well they have all the publicity done for them, now lets see how well the high end customers think of this fiasco,ahem, ahem phone

• Old_Fogie_Late_Bloomer - Tuesday, September 24, 2019 - link

  I guess we'll know pretty soon if Samsung was right to double down, or whether they should have <ahem> folded.

• cfenton - Tuesday, September 24, 2019 - link

  Are they offering a decent warranty now, or is it still one year? With how bad the previous launch went and the super high price, I'd hope they have enough confidence in their product to warranty it for at least three years.

• quiksilvr - Tuesday, September 24, 2019 - link

  Still only one year and you still have to pay $150 for accidental damage replacement of the screen. I am glad they are pushing the envelope with what you can do with a phone however early adopters are definitely taking the hit.

• PeachNCream - Tuesday, September 24, 2019 - link

  It seems like a very high price premium to pay for an enlarged screen. A cheap 5 inch phone can be had for ~$10-20 as a refurb from TracFone and a Walmart run can net you a 7 inch tablet for about $50. Adding in gas, shipping, and effort and you're still under $100 USD for a slightly more cumbersome, yet more durable and more flexible solution (leave the large screen at home when not required) at a savings of around $1880. Samsung will have to iterate on the design and reduce costs by a considerable amount to really sell the idea to the mainstream if the company's long term goal is to sell a folding handset to the masses - that is assuming there isn't still a durability or longevity problem that early adopters may yet discover as they use these handsets.

• extide - Tuesday, September 24, 2019 - link

  I get what you're trying to do but comparing flagship class hardware to absolute bottom of the barrel bargain bin stuff is seriously disingenuous. You won't get remotely the same experience, even not taking the screen into account. I mean, yeah, there is a huge price premium, but compare it to something else with flagship class hardware like a Note 10 and you can still demonstrate the huge price increase but at least have a better baseline.

• PeachNCream - Tuesday, September 24, 2019 - link

  This is what the word disingenuous means:
  
  https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/disinge...
  
  I'm not attempting to obscure any facts about my comment and as someone that has spent lots of time using both top end phones issued by work and ultra budget cheap phones as personal handsets, I can safely say the difference between $1K and $10 in daily usage is not anywhere close to 100x better or even twice as good. There's a minor difference in app startup times and sometimes I get quicker page loads on the Galaxy with sites that have heavy javascript where the difference between its CPU and the little quad in my Rebel 3 is especially notable. Photo quality is probably the only aspect where I'd unquestionably pass at least a 2x advantage to the Galaxy and if it were my money on the hook, I'd opt to shove the difference in cost into my mutual find and I'd buy a refurb LG Rebel 3 again or I'd splurge and spend maybe $25 on a refurb Rebel 4, but there's really nothing dishonest about the math I just used because, to the contrary, the experience is indeed much more than remotely similar.

• trivik12 - Tuesday, September 24, 2019 - link

  you dont have to use this. Those cheap screens are horrible with washed out color and really bad hardware. No comparison to premium phones or tablets like iPad Pro or Galaxy Tab S6

• PeachNCream - Tuesday, September 24, 2019 - link

  Are there any other adjectives you'd like to throw in there to exaggerate the differences or was the kitchen sink enough to justify the price to yourself so you need not question your own judgement?

• Farfolomew - Wednesday, September 25, 2019 - link

  I agree mostly with your opinion, on that flagship phones are ridiculously inflated in costs. I mean, when you can buy these phones used a couple years later for nearly a 10th of their original MSRP, that’s some serious initial price fixing.
  
  But twitch that said, if I can get a two or three-year-old flagship level phone for $200 or a midstream one for $100, I’m going to jump on that much more than a bottom-of-the-barrel $10 Cricket phone.
  
  Those ultra cheap phones can text, browse, do pretty much all the essentials, sure. But some of the essentials they do very poorly, like map navigation and photos. And for those, I’d gladly pay $100 vs $10 for the massive CPU/GPU performance increase.
  
  In regards to the overpriced current phones, largely I think it’s due to the US’s payment plan way of buying phones. Look at all the major phone companies and they still claim you can ‘Get a free iPhone XR!’ but fail to also say ‘When you pay $70/mo for the rest of your life!’.
  
  I’m still struggling to understand the shift that happened 3 or 4 years ago when the phone companies switched from locked in contracts to no contracts. Its all BS, there’s still a contract to pay off and own the damn phone if you want to walk away from them with it. Nothing at all changed, it’s a joke