Samsung's foldable smartphone branded the 'Galaxy Fold' debuted back in April. Within days of being in the hands of a number of key tech reviewers, it suddenly blew up in their face after a number of serious screen problems came to light. Samsung cancelled its scheduled launch.

At the end of September Samsung finally 'fixed' the problems with the screens, though Samsung included a number of extraordinary warnings about their product in the Galaxy Fold's packaging about the fragility of the display. Not exactly a vote of confidence.

Even Engadget, a usual fan of Samsung products, reviewed the final product on October 14 in a report titled "The Samsung Galaxy Fold, again: Hard to love, even harder to hate." Under their byline Chris Velazco wrote "As much as I like using it, I just can't trust it." That statement reflects the underlining sentiment most in the market now have about the Galaxy Fold, if not all foldable phones in general like Huawei's Mate X that isn't even in the market yet.    

Samsung's disaster killed the wow-factor about foldable phones almost overnight. The industry overall now seems to be shifting toward foldable notebooks and/or dual display foldable devices. Good examples are Microsoft's Surface Neo, a dual display folding Surface Tablet and the Surface Duo, a new foldable smartphone coming to market in Q4 2020.  

Samsung, according to a new Korean report, will likely stick with it use of transparent PI (polyimide) as the cover glass material for an update to the Galaxy Fold sometime next year.

However, Samsung is preparing to release a second foldable smartphone design in 2020 that could be considered the reinvention of the classic flip phone/clamshell style of yesteryear that they've been patenting for years now (01, 02 and 03) with one set of patent figures shown below.

It's a safer foldable smartphone design to make and a way to build some basic confidence in future foldable devices.

Knowing that they blew it at a time when they needed to show leadership in the market, Samsung is trying to change the story and announce that their second smartphone design will use an ultra thin glass (UTG) material as the cover window material, according to a news report from S. Korea today.

Samsung Display has started producing foldable displays for clamshell design while DOWOO INSYS that supplies UTG has started the production of initial supply.

UTG is a thinner cover glass that goes through additional tempered process. Each UTG manufacturers uses its own method and does not make its knowhow on its core technology public.

UTG material that will be used by Samsung is based on DOWOO INSYS’ method and SCHOTT AG’s glass. Samsung Electronics and Samsung Display had tested UTG materials from many domestic and foreign companies and they have ultimately decided to apply DOWOO INSYS’ method to SCHOTT AG’s glass for foldable phones.

Samsung Electronics is using Corning’s Gorilla Glass as the cover glass material for its traditional smartphones. However, it is inevitable that the dynamics within the cover glass market will change in the future as SCHOTT and DOWOO INSYS have entered the market due to the release of foldable Smartphone.

Current glass suppliers such as Corning, Asahi, and NEG have developed foldable glass materials and are preparing to enter the market.

It is expected that Samsung Electronics’ next foldable Smartphone will be folded at the center where there is a horizontal fold. Because it is expected to be longer but has a narrower screen than Galaxy Fold, it focuses on portability rather than large screen. It is likely that the size of its display will be 6.7 inches.

Although Samsung has decided on a design that is completely different from that of Galaxy Fold for its next foldable Smartphone, it has yet to decide on the release date.

“Although Samsung is applying UTG material to clamshell design for the first time, there's only a slight chance of it replacing Samsung's transparent PI material for the next generation of the Galaxy Fold that will be introduced in the second half of next year.” said a different representative for the industry.

"Although UTG is excellent when it comes to aesthetic impression, it will take some time for UTG to be used on larger Smartphones as it is more fragile than transparent PI and has high production cost with not enough production capability and yield rate."

Back in March, Patently Apple posted a report titled "Corning wants in on the Folding Smartphone Race and is only a Few Years out from delivering a Folding Glass Breakthrough."

Until there's true foldable glass or new composition material that we can count on to make foldable phones durable for the real world, larger foldable designs will likely use dual displays like those that Wintel are working on now.

Reverting back to the flip phone may attract some users, but it's not what the mass market wants to be sure. And who really wants to be a guinea pig for another Samsung market experiment anyways? Any hands?

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