it's been three weeks since I picked up this the final redesigned galaxy fold and I have to tell you I've had one thing lodged in the back of my head the entire time I've been using this it's a kind of low-level anxiety that somewhere somehow at some point I will do something and break it that hasn't happened yet and I'm honestly a bit surprised I mean the narrative around the galaxy fold has been this is an overly fragile phone and if you look at it the wrong way you're probably gonna break it to help really get a feel for what this redesign is done for the phone I've done my best to not baby this thing which is hard when you're working with a $2,000 phone I'm taking the kid gloves off and in day-to-day use this thing is held up surprisingly well but just because it's more durable doesn't mean anyone should finally rush out and go buy this thing at the end of the day still just an expensive experiment let's take a closer look.
We ran a full galaxy fold review back in April when this thing was supposedly very close to launching and I still stand by everything I said when it comes to software and overall usability so to get a full sense of what the galaxy fold is really capable of I strongly suggest you read that review or watch that video before you watch this one I should also point out that even though this phone has been through a lot since spring I still can't help but love it in a way it just offers a new take on the stuff that I tend to do most frequently but the ability to do these things on a small screen or a big screen as needed feels just as powerful now as it did back then it is for my money the best eReader i've ever used because who doesn't want to start reading on the subway on a nice 7.3 inch screen and then just sort of continue reading on this smaller display when someone squeezes in next to you I'm very anxious so I want to take up as little space as possible and that's the perfect year the screen is also great for video if you're okay with the crease and don't mind this sort of side-mounted knotch but I don't think it's that big a deal I will also say that I spend a lot of time playing video games on my phone and this provides what I think is the best DS emulation experience ever the thing about this big screen though is that it really is designed to help you get more done Samsung's multi-window is designed to let you run up to three apps on this display and if you're clever and get a couple floating windows in there you can have up to five apps running at the same time should you do that absolutely not but I can see certain situations where you're just having one of those days and you have to do a thousand things at once where you could feasibly make the argument that this is valuable having said all that the Galaxy fold software still needs polish it still feels very experimental in some ways apps that you'd use very frequently like Instagram for example just don't display correctly on this bigger screen especially if you're looking at someone's Instagram stories it's also really hard to tell which apps work well in multi window mode and which don't so expect a lot of trial and error as you get used to the galaxy fold that's not necessarily a bad thing but I don't know this is a $2,000 phone you shouldn't have to do as much trial and error I don't think that's unfair for more on all that again I think you should check out our original review but we have to talk about how much more durable this thing is Samsung has made a handful of obvious practical changes that go a long way in making this feel more like a phone that's worth two thousand dollars the original Galaxy fold for example had these three little gaps at the top and the bottom of the display that stuff could very easily get into Samsung has capped that now with little bits of plastic and what appear to be adhesive to just sort of seal things off even more thoroughly it seems to work but I can also see a little bit of a gap where the adhesive seems to be coming up off of the display so is it possible something could get in through there yes I don't know that that's necessarily a huge concern but with a phone like this that just intrinsically has more points of failure than a regular phone every little crevice every little potential flaw is I think worth pointing out speaking of stuff getting inside the phone samsung is also redesigned the hinge if you take a look there's basically no noticeable gap between the hinge and the two sides of the phone it's a pretty stark contrast to what we had before a design that for all the world look like if you had some cheeto crumbs or pocket schmutz going on you'd be concerned that stuff would get inside that shouldn't be the case this time and the hinge improvements extend beyond there as well too when the screen is open it actually feels surprisingly sturdy when everything is locked into place which I definitely could not say about the original Galaxy fold one of my favorite shots from our original review video was me sort of doing this and it's just harder to do now it still happens obviously but by and large the screen just wants to stay locked in place way more than the original ever did on top of that this big internal screen just fuels a lot less spongy than it used to which frankly goes a long way in making it feel like you're using a phone that's worth 2,000 bucks there are of course just some intrinsic issues here that some people can live with and some people just take the screen for example there is no matter how you look at it a pretty noticeable crease down the middle it's maybe not quite as noticeable as on the earlier model that we tested in April but it's still there and it can be a little distracting since your eyes just sort of always notice it this 7.3 inch internal screen is not covered in glass making it far more fragile than probably any other smartphone screen you've ever used yes it feels sturdier and the plastic layer that used to sort of just sit on top of the screen is now been pushed to under the bezel so you can't lift it up and destroy your phone in the process that's all undeniably good stuff but.
What happens when you drop this thing facedown on a sidewalk if there's I don't know a pebble on the ground rising up from the surface and bypassing that bezel that is 100% the kind of thing that the fold cannot deal with and it's not the only thing either there are some damaged galaxy folds out there and while the damage might not be as dramatic as what we saw earlier this year it's still something to keep in mind our colleagues over at TechCrunch just closed and open the phone one day to find a dark dead spot right in the middle of the screen you've probably seen CNET's video in which they've opened and closed the phone over a hundred thousand times that fold screen eventually died well before the two hundred thousand folds that samsung itself had sort of projected these things would be able to handle and I get it that's not exactly a fair comparison no one is sitting there doing this all of the time although you're in a gadget here so maybe you will the point is it kind of seems like even Samsung doesn't know if and when these screens will give out it's a matter of happenstance and really that's what stays with me the most I am no longer concerned that the Galaxy fold is just going to die on me immediately it's not going to happen and hasn't happened with either of the phones I've tested so far it's more durable than most people would have you believe but do I believe that this will fail at some point yeah I think it's inevitable I've never used a device like this one that so acutely reminds me of its own mortality and that takes a lot of getting used to I don't know that I can recommend it just because of that if you buy one of these things sure you might have a great time multitasking and playing games and watching video but on some level back there in your head somewhere you'll always be concerned that the next day or the next day or the next day will be the folds last so at the end of it all after testing two galaxy folds should anyone actually go and buy one of these things you know the answer to that no of course not what I said in our original review is that the Galaxy fold is an expensive experiment and that's still true if you buy this phone you are still giving a company two thousand dollars to be their guinea pig if that's you and that's really what you want then more power to you we do need people like you out there beta testing the future for the rest of you who just want something that works who wants something that will help you live life on your terms not make you meet it halfway any other phone is probably the way to go I know it's been a little hard on this thing but it's only really because I wanted to love it so much and on some level I still do every reason I laid out earlier from sweet multitasking to gaming to reading to watching videos it all works better here than on other devices the thing to really keep in mind though is that even after all of Samsung's work repairing and redesigning and fixing all of those little issues this phone is still just an essential first step towards really figuring out what a foldable can and should do for more news on the Galaxy fold and really everything else going out there in tech land be sure to keep watching and gadget.