WHAT WERE THEY THINKING?

The Worst Phone Case Ever Designed

The Fold 3 Flip Case finds a new low

It’s a Wednesday afternoon, and you’re at school. The teacher announces a new project, on a topic that you’re comfortable with. But then, they announce that it’s a “group project”. Depending on how studious you are, this is either the best thing ever or a complete tragedy. You’ll either wind up doing all the work on the project, spending the late nights with your hands covered in glu-stick trying to patch your shoddy diorama together, or you’ll happily coast as your teammates pick up the slack and try to do a good enough job so that you all get a passing grade for the topic at hand.

I feel like it’s a bit like that, for the newly released (and soon to be released — depending on where you are in the world) Galaxy Z Fold 3. Samsung has been iterating pretty hard on this concept, having released three Galaxy Folds in the last two years. They have had to answer a question, how can we make a folding phone with a gigantic inside screen appealing to the mass market? And to their credit, it’s made great strides since the original Fold. A complete overhaul of the phone means that it’s now waterproof, and even the way the phone sits when folded is now more aesthetically pleasing. People complain about the average cameras and battery life, but some of us just want a gigantic screen to write articles on, on the go. And in that respect, the Samsung engineering/design/whatever team have done an amazing job.

Unfortunately, in this group project, the accessory team has slept in and missed the bus, and instead of submitting a great case with great protection, have put forward a hand-written, scrunched up equivalent that looks like this:

You may look at this case and think it looks perfectly okay. You may even think it looks good. It answers one of the complaints that Fold 3 owners have, namely, there’s nowhere to stash the pen. Considering that this case houses the companies flagship foldable with another flagship feature (the S Pen), does the design get a highlight? No. The anti-microbial coating does. Why would they focus on a coating over the actual design of the product? Well, the design is bad. Here's why.

Ergonomics you’re sure to hate

It’s a little hard to demonstrate what’s wrong with this case because the Samsung site seems to be adamant about not showing what this actually looks like. The best photo of it can be seen here:

The inside photo also gives us some clues as to why this would be a painful case to own.

We can see that the right-hand side of the case grips the phone body, but it only grips the right-hand side of the phone body. The left side of the case has none of this grip, so when your phone is open, the front cover just flops around. On a device that is primarily supposed to be used when it’s open, it’s going to be doing this a lot. This is exacerbated by the fact that, when unfolded, the cover is wider than the phone.

9to5Google has a great video showing exactly why this is a problem. If you leave it alone, it gets in the road of your left hand. If you fold it over and keep it folded with your right hand, then it can decrease your grip on the device. The front cover that flops around when the phone is open is unforgivable by itself, but the fact that it is wider than the device when open is the absolute end for this case. What are you going to do, contort your left hand around this piece of material so you can actually use your phone? If there were trade-offs to be made, surely they should be made when the phone is closed, and not open, as most people would primarily be using this device when it’s open.

It protects…half your phone

Let's imagine that you figure out a way to hold this thing without spontaneously inducing Carpal Tunnel Syndrome or giving yourself hand cramps, and you’ve got it folded back on itself or are engaged in some kind of other impressive case origami. You’re enjoying some of the best cat videos on the inside screen when suddenly, your own cat becomes jealous and bats the phone out of your hand. The phone is now in freefall, from a height of about a meter, heading towards your tiled floor. And what’s protecting it?

That’s right —it’s that useless floppy front cover that isn’t attached to the front of your phone. Now I don’t have this phone yet, because it’s not released, but from watching the 9to5Google clip it definitely seems like there are no magnets, or anything locating the front flip cover to the phone itself. So if you drop this phone and it lands on the right-hand side of the case, or phone, you’re probably going to be okay. But if it lands on the left side, then you’re probably going to have a bad outcome. The front flip cover doesn’t ‘locate’ itself onto the front display, so if you’re using it open and you drop it then it’s not going to spring back into place. Instead, it’ll just happily let your fancy new phone smack into the ground and take none of the impacts. In particularly bad cases, this means that you could be up for a new screen, or best-case scenario, you could have dented the outside of your phone.

Even if you are careful to only ever drop your phone onto the right-hand side, on the side where the case is protective, then it’s probably going to bounce onto the left side of the phone before it's finished falling, right? All around, it’s just a plainly bad solution.

The community has had to find hacks to make it work

When measuring the anticipation for an upcoming product, there’s no better way to keep an eye on that particular product’s “subreddit”. Recently, Samsung even went so far as to use a comment that a user had posted /r/GalaxyFold to advertise their upcoming Fold 3. But, they might think twice about pulling from this page now for their advertising material considering the top two posts are people posting hacks on how they made their bad case functional.

Now, I’d hope the rubber band option is a joke, but the velcro option actually doesn’t seem so bad. But should you have to modify your $2500 product with a $120 case to make it marginally protect your phone more? The answer to that question is obviously no, and I honestly don't think anyone would debate that.

Somewhat predictably, it’s also being eviscerated on Samsung’s official site, where they sell the product. This is where the reviews are at for this case right now.

It’s Time for a Do-Over, Samsung

Samsung, the case is lousy. In fact, the design is so bad that it’s insulting to charge $120 for such a poor product. To make matters worse, I honestly believe that people who have this phone and case on preorder would not think that it would be such a terribly designed product, and are going to be very unimpressed when they finally receive it. Worse still, these are the obvious problems with this case. The reviews also cover problems that people have had when they had received it, such as the stitching coming loose, the pen not being securely held in the holder, or the front cover not staying in place.

In reality, it’s not unreasonable to expect better design from Samsung. This is the company that brought folding phones to the market in the first place, for crying out loud. Yet, somehow, the concept of having a protective case that also holds a pen is beyond them? And still, instead of having that protection, we get all the design chops of a $2 faux leather case from a dollar store? I’d expect to see the case somehow change in size depending on whether it is open or shut, while still housing the pen, and protecting the front. And before we say that’s impossible, Spigen worked out a way how to do this on the Fold 2. Slim it down, add a pen holder, and you’re done.

Personally, I would like to see Samsung credit everyone who bought this case or had it as part of their preorder bonus and give them the option of having one of the better cases. There’s nowhere for the S Pen, but at least you won’t have to work out what to do with that floppy front cover when the phone is open. There’s no way that people who received this case don’t become sick of it immediately and chuck it in a drawer to move to something else. Maybe by the time the Fold 4 comes out, we’ll finally have a decent first-party case.