After iFixit published its revealing Galaxy Fold teardown, which labeled the device as "alarmingly fragile," Samsung sent a request to have it pulled online.
The reason the South Korean brand is doing this is unclear, and presumably, it isn't willing to say why, leaving everything to speculation.
Samsung Risks The Streisand Effect
The company didn't directly send the request to iFixit to have the Galaxy Fold teardown taken down. Instead, it contacted the person who supplied the device to the repair outfit, who then removed the publication in good faith.
"We were provided our Galaxy Fold unit by a trusted partner. Samsung has requested, through that partner, that iFixit remove its teardown. We are under no obligation to remove our analysis, legal or otherwise. But out of respect for this partner, whom we consider an ally in making devices more repairable, we are choosing to withdraw our story until we can purchase a Galaxy Fold at retail," iFixit said.
Now the Galaxy Fold breaking in the hands of reviewers has been making the rounds online. That is to say, the device has been a hot topic of late. The recent teardown possibly could've gone under the radar of some users, but any chance of that happening is potentially close to nil now that Samsung is risking the Streisand effect.
Exploring The Possibilities
As The Verge speculates, Samsung could be revamping the Galaxy Fold and its design, and it simply doesn't want a teardown of one of its devices that's not going to be commercially available in the wild.
The news outlet also says that the smartphone maker could just be enforcing a contract where iFixit's partner isn't allowed to share the device. It's not a stretch to believe that threats with legal repercussions were thrown around either.
In addition, there's a chance that the teardown was just too telling, revealing numerous avoidable flaws and the like, particularly the lack of an ingress protection that let debris to get inside the foldable phone and damage it.
Whatever it is, Samsung wants the teardown to be out of the public's eye.
Teardown Is Still Online
For those who missed it, the Galaxy Fold teardown is still available online, thanks to the Internet Archive. However, as Android Police points out, iFixit could eventually request to have it pulled as well to further honor Samsung's request to its partner. At any rate, it's still up at the time of this writing.
Galaxy Fold's Roller-Coaster Ride
For the uninitiated, the whole mess started when some of the Galaxy Fold review units Samsung seeded to tech journalists and influencers broke after a few days of use.
Apparently, the device had a polymer coating that looks like a normal plastic screen protector, and if it were peeled off, the screen would stop working properly. That was the case in the majority of the reports, but there were at least two that were different, one of which showed that the device developed a bulge on the crease.
Samsung then postponed Galaxy Fold launch events in China, and this led to pushing back the shipping date in United States. Next, the company recalled the devices for investigation. To make matters weird, AT&T announced a June 13 release date for the foldable phone.
After all that, iFixit then uploaded the teardown in question, and it has now removed it at Samsung's request.
