Samsung hasn’t had the best of luck with certain tech. Not long ago, its top-load washing-machines turned into guillotines with regular usage — glass lids parting company with the slightest vibration.

And there was the Note 7 smartphone, which had a tendency to spontaneously and spectacularly burst into flame.

And now, with the release — and retraction within a few short days — of Samsung’s latest folding phone, I feel that it doesn’t bode well for Samsung, but it also indicates the looming end of an era: smartphones have Jumped the Shark.

But it folds!

And it fails.

Quickly.

Go ahead. Go Google samsung fold fail. I’ll wait. Here, I’ll do it for you:

It’s also amazingly expensive. If you think a top of the line smartphone is pricey at US$1,100, that folding Samsung monstrosity is twice the cost.

Oh, and it flounders — it’s not waterproof.

I’m starting to suspect that Samsung’s business model — once thought to be a cost-savings process not expending resources on engineering, QA, or Product-testing teams — instead relies on consumers to buy their quickly-conceived products so they can try them out and find faults and failures.

That means that you’re not only going to buy a shoddy product, but you’re also going to do the testing and provide marketing feedback for them!

It’s a win/win from Samsung’s perspective. But a fail/fail for the longer-term. That feedback part that will be detrimental to them in the long-term.