Samsung's wildly ambitious $2,000 folding phone is a disaster for the smartphone giant — here's what happened

Samsung is the first major smartphone maker to launch a foldable smartphone, the Samsung Galaxy Fold.The ambitious $2,000 device was first shown off as a prototype in late 2018, and detailed in early 2019. But when reviewers got the Galaxy Fold in April, several broke.And now, Samsung is pushing back the release date of the device just days before launch, and pre-orders are being automatically cancelled.Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.In a single week, Samsung's ambitious $2,000 foldable smartphone went from being a fascinating, awe-inspiring gadget of the future to a disaster.The Galaxy Fold, which was meant to be the first phone ever with a foldable touchscreen, had been teased, unveiled and distributed to select tech reviewers in a carefully orchestrated rollout over the past six months. But once in the hands of reviewers, the phone's foldable screen — and all its mystique — cracked and crumbled. Soon after, Samsung acknowledged the inevitable and announced that the Galaxy Fold would be delayed for at least several weeks as the company tries to fix the phone's problems.So, what happened to Samsung's Galaxy Fold？ Here's the whole story: