Galaxy Fold Pre-Orders Cancelled, And No Release Is In Sight

Damien McFerran 10/05/2019 – 8:01am

"We cannot confirm the anticipated ship date yet"

Samsung's Galaxy Fold was supposed to be the phone that resurrected the ailing smartphone industry and took handset design in an exciting new direction; using the latest in folding screen technology, the Fold aimed to offer a massive, tablet-sized screen in your pocket. In short, everyone was hyped.

Then reports started to trickle in that the screen on the Fold is worryingly fragile; review units died after a few days and Samsung started work on finding a fix – which, it was thought, was close at hand. However, it seems that the Korean company is actually no closer to solving the Galaxy Fold problem, and we're now hearing that pre-orders for the £1,800 device are being cancelled automatically.

Samsung has issued a statement saying that it will bin all pre-orders for the Galaxy Fold in the US – where it had effectively sold out – at the end of this month unless buyers specifically say otherwise. According to the company, this is standard practice in the US when a pre-ordered item's release date becomes unclear. Pre-orders are yet to go live in Europe.

"We are making progress in enhancing the Galaxy Fold to make sure it measures up to the high standards we know you expect from us," Samsung said in an official statement. "This means that we cannot confirm the anticipated ship date yet. If we do not hear from you and we have not shipped by May 31st, your order will be cancelled automatically. If you do not want your order automatically cancelled on May 31st you may request that we keep your order and fulfil it later."

Samsung has sent an email to everyone who pre-ordered the Galaxy Fold with the option to select "Yes, I would like to keep my order" to avoid their pre-order being cancelled. Even when selecting this, buyers don't get a solid release date; given that Samsung is yet to confirm when it might be released, we'd anticipate a rather large wait.

With Huawei's Mate X on the way and rivals like Motorola and Xiaomi also working on folding phones, it seems that Samsung's window of opportunity is shrinking; however, it remains to be seen if other folding phones have teething troubles with the new technology.