Why Huawei's Folding Phone May Also Be Delayed (Or Even Cancelled)
The timing of Samsung’s inevitable (see here) delay of retail availability of the Galaxy Fold will be short-lived as while the Huawei’s Mate X has a better design, this choice is likely to have come at the cost of extreme fragility. Samsung has delayed retail availability but for how long will depend on what happens when the phone-wrecking press gets its hands on the Mate X.
Samsung and Huawei made very different design choices for their folding phones with Samsung putting the folding screen on the inside and Huawei putting it on the outside. When one considers the pros and cons of either choice, it is clear that putting the screen on the outside is the by far the better design option (with one huge caveat). This is because:
First, One screen: With the screen on the outside and folding it back on itself means that only one screen is needed for the entire device. This makes the device thinner and lighter as well as allows simpler software design as there is no need to integrate a second screen into the user experience.
Second, ergonomics: Using one screen results in a sleeker device and a much better user experience when closed. By contrast, the Galaxy Fold has a second oddly shaped, ugly looking (huge bezels) screen on the outside that is very difficult to use. In using one screen, the Mate X ensures a bezel-free user experience whether the device is open or closed.
Consequently, it is obvious that Huawei’s is the right choice so why did Samsung not go down this route? Samsung must have chosen this route because a folding screen has to be made with plastic which, combined with the addition of moving parts, makes it extremely fragile.
The Mohs scale measures the hardness of materials (scratchability) and molecularly hardened glass scratches at level 6 with deeper grooves at level 7. Plastic, by contrast, scratches at a level 3 meaning that the screen of a foldable phone could end up being 3-5x more scratchable than a regular smartphone. By having it on the inside of the device, it has a much greater degree of protection when it is not being used.
Unfortunately, it appears that this is not enough as these screens are also far more fragile in general making the choice of having the screen on the outside extremely risky. Samsung will have considered this design choice and rejected it explicitly for this reason. When it comes to making and understanding smartphone screens, Samsung is the undisputed global leader and so it is entirely correct to have rejected this design choice.
Hence, when the Mate X arrives in the hands of reviewers, it will suffer as badly, if not worse than the Galaxy Fold.
If Huawei is smart, it will pull the launch now and have a close look at what it can do to make the Mate X, a viable product. This is an opportunity for Huawei to further put pressure on Samsung which looks set to have a very difficult year. However, there is no reason to own anything related to the selling of smartphones (except Qualcomm) this year.
Richard Windsor is the owner and operator of independent research company Radio Free Mobile. RFM covers all aspects of the digital ecosystem with a mission; 'to entertain as well as inform'.
Source: https://www.forbes.com
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