The folks at iFixit had recently published a teardown of the Galaxy Fold, which provides a clear glimpse of its internals. The teardown also highlighted several gaps which can cause potential problems to the display. Now it appears that iFixit has removed their teardown post due to a request by its partner.
If you try to access the Galaxy Fold teardown post, you’ll be redirected to an announcement notice. It appears that Samsung had requested for the post to be removed but it wasn’t requested directly to iFixit themselves.
According to iFixit, their Galaxy Fold unit was from a trusted partner which had gotten a unit from Samsung. iFixit clarified that they have no legal obligation to remove their post but out of respect for their partner, they decide to remove their teardown until they are able to purchase their own retail unit.
While the teardown appears to be negative, the request to remove the content certainly won’t help to reduce the amount of negativity on the product. After all, there are already several videos of the Galaxy Fold’s display having issues from the first wave of tech reviewers. Perhaps, Samsung is worried that the teardown had revealed too much of its folding mechanism to its competitors. With the delay, there’s now a risk of a competitor releasing a foldable device earlier into the market before Samsung.
The Galaxy Fold launch has been postponed indefinitely and Samsung says that they will announce a new launch date in the coming weeks. Originally, the foldable smartphone was scheduled to launch in Malaysia on 3rd May 2019.