The Verge, Ars Technica, Tom’s Hardware, and Reddit, that’s a powerful combination of nerdy phone enthusiasts to mess with. That’s what seems to be happening with the Google Pixel Fold, which is being reported as having screen problems, just a day or two after being used.
The information is anecdotal, based on comments and articles from individuals who have a Pixel Fold, but it seems to have stirred up the internet. In Google’s reply to The Verge, it doesn’t seem as if the company is that worried; Google is either saying you can fix it yourself once the company has finished supplying iFixit with DIY screen repair kits or asking users to reach out to its support if they have issues.
The problems with the screens range from cracked displays, unexpected scratches, dropped pixels, and a pink of line of death (reported by a Reddit user and in the news). Almost everything seems to suggest that the fragility of OLED displays and foldability combined leads to very little tolerance for faults or debris around the displays.
Foldable phones are new enough, and expensive enough, to create a lot of anxiety among users so any hint of a problem is going to be magnified by the commentary online where everything is either up or down. The biggest challenge for foldable phones may be that lack of a middle ground for the emerging form factor, and a stream of PR nightmares every time a screen doesn’t work.
