A new foldable or two may be out, but if you own an older foldable, your screen could be at risk of breaking from mere use. And that screen protector it comes with could be the culprit.
In almost twenty years of reviewing phones, I’ve never so much as cracked a mobile screen. It’s a bit of an honour I wear proudly, but tell that to the Galaxy Fold 3 I had been setting up for my kids to watch on a trip.
It’s an old phone, but it would serve nicely to be a compact and portable tablet. Or it would have if the screen hadn’t broken from something that may as well be a manufacturing fault.
The phone had seen use over the years, but not a lot — the joy of being a phone reviewer frittering to and fro from phone to phone regularly — and so given its age and arrival back in 2021, figured it would be suitable for the kids now that it was a bit of an antique. Everything was fine as I reset the hardware and put it back to work again, but I noticed the screen protector had a bit of bubbling.
“That should be fine,” I said to myself. “I’ll get it replaced shortly.”
A pre-installed screen protector you need
I called up Samsung to find out where and how much a screen protector would cost for the Fold 3, an important fact because screen protectors on foldables can’t be replaced by their owner. Foldable phone screen protectors come pre-installed because they’re a vital part to holding the screen in and not breaking.
Every foldable phone even comes with a big note either on the phone or when you start it up (and usually both): don’t take off the screen protector, because doing so will void your warranty. It’s a critical part of the foldable design, so removing it could possibly break the screen.
Of course, the manufacturers don’t tell you that leaving it on over a period of time can also break your screen. Oof.
My plan was to venture out to Sydney’s Samsung repair team at Olympic Park and pay the $25-30 the following week. Those plans didn’t get to fruition, because the bubbling became a break very quickly.
The screen protector saw bubbles on Friday. I thought nothing of it.
Opening the inside-screen on Saturday, half the display didn’t work. It took minutes to work out why: the screen had broken in the middle where the foldable crease was. The bubbling had essentially split the display.
By Sunday, the bubbling had managed to grow, expanding and breaking more of the screen.
In short, the screen protector that had come pre-installed and that I wasn’t supposed to remove had broken my phone.
“Oof,” I said with a squeamish look. A few expletives might have popped out of my mouth, as well.
A manufacturing fault out of warranty
Four years on from a phone launch is clearly out of warranty, particularly when most warranties are lucky to last a year or two.
Screen repairs are typically an extra cost, but there are instances where they will do them for free. However, four years is a reasonable amount of phone ownership, but it’s not out of kilter for many phone owners.
Much to the disappointment of phone makers — who would clearly love it if we all upgraded every year — most phone owners upgrade only when they need to. Phones are expensive, and you typically only change when your old one is broken or you want a new camera.
A phone breaking often comes from an accident, such as a drop breaking the camera or screen or something else. That’s fine and is to be expected.
A phone breaking from a screen protector you’re not supposed to remove? That’s a new one for this reviewer.
The warranty would therefore prove a problem, because at four years, the Fold 3 was clearly out of time.
However, the ACCC, Australia’s consumer watchdog, has some interesting comments about warranties versus consumer guaranties, noting in 2024 that “even if a voluntary warranty, manufacturer’s warranty, or extended warranty has expired, you may still be able to use your consumer guarantee rights under the Australian Consumer Law, which don’t have a specific expiry date”.
At the time, ACCC Deputy Chair Catriona Lowe said:
“Consumer guarantees apply for a period of time that is considered reasonable having regard to the nature of the products or services, including the price paid. This might be longer than the period of any warranty provided by a retailer or manufacturer.”
Speaking to the ACCC recently, it largely confirmed this, without getting into specific details about specific products:
“Under the Australian Consumer Law consumers receive automatic rights, called consumer guarantees, when they purchase goods. This includes, that products are fit for purpose, are of acceptable quality (which means being safe, durable and free from defects), and match their description,” said a spokesperson for the ACCC in a statement to Pickr.
“Consumer guarantees are automatic and can’t be taken away. Warranties are extra promises that a business can choose to make on top of the consumer guarantees,” they said. “Warranties can’t replace, change or take away a consumer’s basic rights. These basic rights can last longer than a business’s warranty.”
Is a screen a basic right in a phone?
It can probably be argued that using the large screen inside a phone-tablet hybrid is a basic right of the phone, since that device’s point is to have both a large internal screen and a slightly smaller one on the outside.
However, the question remained whether the phone’s internal screen was at fault from the screen protector each company installs and tells you not to remove.
Remember that you’re not supposed to take off that screen protector. Doing so voids your warranty, and even after the warranty expires, you still get the vibe that removing the screen protector isn’t what you should be doing.
So with a screen protector clearly holding the foldable screen in place, is it a manufacturer’s fault that leads to the internal screen breaking? Is the foldable screen a basic right of owning a foldable phone, and should each manufacturer guarantee that this doesn’t break even after warranty due its own screen protector being in place?
None of the phone manufacturers we contacted answered this question directly, but Motorola did say that while foldable durability has improved, consumers should have confidence in them.
“The lifecycle of a device is dependent on various usage factors. A quality foldable smartphone should deliver a competitive lifecycle to other devices on the market,” a spokesperson for Motorola told Pickr.
“The Motorola Razr 60, for example, has undergone rigorous cycle endurance testing, including drop, temperature and other stress-testing which are part of our standard design test validation process. It has also been designed to withstand up to 35% more folds than its previous generation, as certified by independent testing agency SGS,” they said.
“Foldable screen durability has come a long way, with the latest foldable smartphones featuring significant improvements in screen durability thanks to advancements in ultra thin glass, stronger hinges, better crease management, and tougher durability testing, making them more resilient than earlier models.”
Foldable technology is a work in progress
The bigger problem could be one where foldable technology becomes difficult for consumers, and also problematic for phone makers over time.
The technology is getting a lot better, and you only need to look at the lack of a crease in the recent Galaxy Fold 7 review to see how. We barely noticed it in our Moto Razr 60 review, and didn’t feel the need to comment on it at all. Foldable screens are clearly improving.
But these issues of screen failure after several years could be one of the reasons why Apple is taking so long to make its way to a foldable iPhone.
Owners of an iPhone tend to hold onto their devices for quite a long time, and with Apple updates able to last over five years for an iPhone owner, it’s clear you can hold onto a standard iPhone for longer than I held onto the Galaxy Fold 3 without it breaking.
“Consumers should have confidence in the long-term reliability of foldable phone screens,” said a spokesperson for Motorola, when asked if people should have faith in foldable phone screens lasting as long as conventional phone displays.
That’s a pretty clear answer, though one owners of the same phone have grappled with before. You only need a quick glance at Reddit to see the same problems I saw happening to other people over the years.
If you spent thousands of dollars on a phone a few years ago only to have the mandatory and supplied screen protector end up breaking the very screen you purchased, you would be understandably angry. That’s not the sort of breakage you expect, especially when it’s through no fault of your own.
But regardless of the answers we received, the implication almost always seemed to cite warranty as your own only recourse, as opposed to the ACCC’s note of “basic rights”.
Frustratingly, when we asked Samsung about these problems, we were met with silence. Specifically, the makers of commonly found foldable phones released in Australia — Motorola, Google, and Samsung — were all asked the same questions at the same time:
- How long should a foldable screen last before it breaks?
- Should people have faith in foldable phone screens lasting as long as conventional phone displays?
- What should people do if their foldable phone screen breaks through no fault of their own?
Motorola provided responses, while Google noted the use of materials in the Pixel 9 Pro Fold’s design and referred Pickr to its safety guide.
Samsung responded to none, at least by the time of publishing several weeks later. Which is disheartening, not just because a Samsung phone’s breakage provoked this story, but because Samsung is currently the leading provider of foldable phones in Australia, and much of the world.
It stands to reason that if anything, from its several-year history building and releasing foldable devices, Samsung should have some of the more well-researched observations on the long-term durability of foldable phones.
Your rights if your foldable screen breaks
If your foldable screen breaks through use while under warranty, you should be able to come back to the manufacturer for a free screen replacement.
But that probably won’t happen. You’ll probably need to pay for that new screen, or dump the phone and upgrade to something else.
Samsung’s Galaxy Z support page talks up “premier service” with the idea that it’s “designed to offer the best possible experience to our valued customers”, but then leads into the typical 24 month warranty for the screen protector, but only one year for the screen with a “discounted price”.
Confusingly, the premier service page hasn’t been updated in several generations of Samsung models, so only talks about the Fold 4, Flip 4, and the generation before it.
Premier service might be an older thing, so we went looking for a current warranty. When you find it, Samsung’s current warranty appears murky at times, noting that “unless stated otherwise, this Warranty does not extend to loss caused by normal wear and tear”, which could be applied to the screen being used and the protector buckling with use. However, it also notes the “Warranty does not cover any defects not notified to Samsung within the Warranty Period, however, you may also have statutory rights outside of the warranty period”.
Translating legalese is never easy, but Samsung appears to agree with the ACCC that you may still have rights to getting it repaired if you can prove the screen breaking is from a defect in the device.
Even if Samsung hasn’t come back to our request for commentary directly (and we nudged repeatedly), the warranty implies you still have rights to potential faults. Which leads us back to the beginning.
It’s all a bit of a dilemma, and one that can understandably leave customers frustrated.
If you are in this quandary and have found our journey because your screen has broken in much the same way — a fault from the screen protector — it’s likely you’re stuck trying to work out what to do.
There’s a good chance, tech support may not help, and with a foldable screen costing as much as $900 to replace, it’s possible you’re considering moving on. We wouldn’t blame you if you did.
However, you should definitely take the time to exercise your rights and call up your manufacturer. Have a conversation and find out whether they agree with the expectation that the screen should be replaced out of warranty, particularly if it was damaged by something the phone specifically tells you not to remove.
They may agree, or at the very least, may give you a discounted fee just to keep you happy. You are a customer after all, at least for now.
