Anchor: Samsung Electronics has decided to delay the release of the Galaxy Fold, the world's first foldable smartphone, following pre-release reviews regarding its defective displays.  
Choi You Sun reports.

Report: Samsung Electronics said on Tuesday that it will delay the release of the Galaxy Fold smartphone in the U.S. in order to evaluate problems reported in the device's folding screen and related mechanisms. 

The South Korean tech giant, which originally planned to start selling the Fold on Friday, said it will announce a new release date in the coming weeks.

It is expected that the Galaxy Fold's May third European release date and mid-May release in South Korea will also be postponed.

Earlier, the company pushed back showcase events that were set for Tuesday and Wednesday in Hong Kong and Shanghai. 

The announcement comes after a number of U.S. media outlets that received the one-thousand-980-dollar Galaxy Fold for review reported defects in the product, especially in its display.

The Verge, an American technology news network, said last Wednesday that the phone appears to have a defective hinge with a "small bulge" which is causing the screen to "slightly distort," while Bloomberg said the unit it received "completely broke" after only two days.

Samsung responded that the problems may have occurred because the user removed a protective film on the screen, but CNBC, which didn't remove the protective layer, said the screen on its unit also failed to work properly.

Despite the postponement, Samsung is still expected to keep its status as "first mover" in the global foldable smartphone market as it will most likely release the Fold by June at the latest, ahead of Huawei's release of its Mate X phone in July. 

Samsung's decision to delay the Fold's release has been positively assessed by market watchers as it is an apparent move to prevent a repeat of the Galaxy Note 7 debacle in 2016, when the stylus smartphone caught fire due to battery problems. 
Choi You Sun, KBS World Radio News.