At its Unpacked event in San Francisco, Samsung unveiled a new type of device, the bendable Galaxy Fold phone.
It rushed through a quick video of the device, showed a few demos of one of the phones being used to check Google Maps and multitask with a few other apps, and then spent the majority of its presentation yesterday (Feb. 20) talking about the new Galaxy S10 phones that will be available in the next few weeks.
Samsung said the Fold would be available April 26. That’s only about eight weeks away. It also launched a 5G version of its new S10 phone, but didn’t commit to a specific date for its release. Unlike the Fold, it did show off the S10 5G to journalists. There were no demos of the Fold available, nor was the device anywhere to be seen after it was taken off stage after the presentation.
This has led many to wonder whether there are some issues with the Fold that are still being worked out. As The Verge noticed, the literal fold in the Fold phone appears to leave a crease in the middle of the display, which presumably isn’t something that users who are going to be paying nearly $2,000 will want to see. Others like Mashable have suggested that the software needed to display content on the unfolded display is perhaps still being finalized.
So is the Galaxy Fold actually ready? Here’s what Samsung Electronics’ senior vice president for marketing, Justin Denison, told Quartz after yesterday’s event:
Well, you saw a demo, and the world world saw a demo that was an actual device, actual software, no cables or wires involved in that. The device is very close—we’re gonna deliver it when it’s ready. We’re preparing for launch, we talked about April 26th being the launch date, and that’s coming up sooner than we think. That’s why we decided to talk about it now, and make sure consumers knew it was coming.
Denison added that there likely won’t be any more information shared at Mobile World Congress, one of the world’s largest trade shows for the mobile industry, which kicks off next week in Barcelona.