Samsung Galaxy Fold's details about the hinge, performance, UI revealed

tech2 News StaffMar 28, 2019 07:24:36 IST

After years of waiting, about a week before the Mobile World Congress 2019, Samsung finally made the Galaxy Fold — its first ever foldable smartphone — official.

However, ever since the South Korean tech giant announced the foldable phone, it has been very stingy about sharing any details about the phone, except that it will hit the shelves in April this year.

But with Huawei previewing the Mate X, this little detail about the Galaxy Fold feels too less. But thanks to leaks and benchmark listings, last week we did hear about the probable specification of the foldable phone.

The Samsung Galaxy Fold. Image: Samsung

Now, a person has got his hands on the Galaxy Fold early and has revealed some tidbits about the phone in a long Twitter thread.

EU Samsung Galaxy Fold definitely has the Snapdragon 855, says someone who got one early. They can't show pictures/videos, but are taking questions. Got any?

— Mishaal Rahman (@MishaalRahman) March 26, 2019

Now, this tweet thread reiterates that the device doesn’t actually fold completely flat. It’s more like a binder in that it leaves a tiny gap between the two display sides when closed.

Q: Does it fold completely or is it like a binder?

A: More like a binder, it leaves a small gap.

— Mishaal Rahman (@MishaalRahman) March 26, 2019

But what about that gap that the fold leaves behind? Does it leave a crease? Does it look weird?

He says it's noticeable but not too bad. You can feel it under the finger, but it's hard to notice it with the screen on and more than 70% brightness.

— Mishaal Rahman (@MishaalRahman) March 26, 2019

Also, earlier the Galaxy Fold was reported with an open/close delay, wherein the device took a while to adjust its UI when it was switched from full screen to foldable screen. Weeks before the scheduled launch, the issue seems to be still there.

Q: Have they fixed the open/close delay?

A: No that's awful, especially with Chrome. Chrome wouldn't re-render pages to full screen when switching sometimes. So you would have a webpage rendered in the small area and it would take a few seconds before re-rendering to full screen

— Mishaal Rahman (@MishaalRahman) March 26, 2019

Further, he reveals that the Galaxy Fold's external display is pretty much like your regular smartphone's, it can run games, you can watch videos. Additionally, the smartphone will also let you set separate home screen setups for both displays.

Q: Can the small screen run games normally? Or any app for that matter.

A: Yeah, runs them just fine.

— Mishaal Rahman (@MishaalRahman) March 26, 2019

Q: Does it allow for separate home screen setups?

A: It does allow separate home screens. Actually, that messed me up the first time. I set my home screen to a seal and only the inner screen changed. Later I figured that I have to change the small screen wallpaper separately.

— Mishaal Rahman (@MishaalRahman) March 26, 2019

As for performance, the person had to say good things about the battery and overall performance of the device, except he found a few glitches in the UI.

Q: How are the general performance and battery life so far?

A: Battery life has been great, but I've only used it inside the apartment so far. Performance is comparable to S10+ Exynos, but has a few weird software quirks which make it look bad. It might be a bit faster tbh.

— Mishaal Rahman (@MishaalRahman) March 26, 2019

It merits mentioning here that the Galaxy Fold will use the Snapdragon 855 and not an Exynos chip as Samsung has already confirmed it has a 7 nm processor. The production model of the Galaxy Fold runs One UI 1.2.

While that's the extent of what has been revealed, for now, we should soon get more official details on the device. Samsung is believed to officially release the Galaxy Fold on 26 April in the United States, with the pre-orders for the device in Europe starting the same day. By 3 May, 15 more countries will see the device release in their markets.