The Fold

In 2019, Samsung announced a solution to a problem nobody was having. The Galaxy Fold was a foldable phone that cost two thousand euros and was supposed to replace both your phone and your tablet, or solve some internal conflict about which one to carry. The logic was that if you were the kind of person who couldn’t decide between the two, here was the answer: just get both at once, but make it fold.

The thing was impressive technically. The first Dynamic AMOLED display that could actually bend without shattering. Enough processing power to run three apps at once. Premium materials, premium price. Samsung had thought of everything except whether anyone actually wanted this. The hinge was a weak point. The gap in the middle when folded was constant. When it was a phone, it was awkwardly big. When it was a tablet, it was weirdly narrow. Every form factor was a compromise.

What struck me at the time, and still strikes me now, was the sheer confidence of it. Samsung had built enough successful phones and tablets that it apparently felt empowered to invent new categories of desire, new problems that didn’t exist until Samsung decided they did. The Fold wasn’t solving a real problem expensively—it was creating an imaginary problem at an impossible price. It was pure tech-industry faith: if we build it, they will come. If we fold it, they will understand why they needed it folded.

I never got one. Didn’t know anyone who did. Years later, foldables exist because Samsung insisted on them existing, and they’re better now, but that first one was basically a very expensive prototype being sold to early adopters who wanted to own the future before it made sense.