This time last year I had just become the proud new owner of a folding phone - the Samsung Galaxy Flip3.

For the uninitiated, this is a handset about the size of an average smartphone, which folds in half.

I told everybody who would listen that it was the phone I'd been waiting for since the Motorola Razr clam shell of 2004 - finally I'd have a device that would fit in my pocket again.

Thirteen months later, the dream is over. A couple of days ago the "fold" line suddenly got dramatically larger and turned silver, the lower half of the screen went green, the top half became unresponsive, and then an ominous black cloud began to spread around the screen.

It is now what you might call an ex-phone.

I'm not the only one - there are dozens of people online sharing similar tales of woe. One recent contributor on Reddit wrote that their brand new device broke within five hours.

Success hinges on durability

Folding phones were unveiled to great fanfare in 2019. There was much industry speculation that this would be the device that would revitalise a stagnating smartphone industry, create a new buzz around handsets once again and persuade people to upgrade, as figures suggested they were holding on to their phones for longer, unenthused by homogenous black rectangles.

Huawei and Samsung led the foldable charge and remain the market leaders. Other rivals are mainly in the Chinese market - budget brands such as Oppo, Xiaomi and Vivo. Apple remains notably absent from the scene.

I remember sitting in a structure the size of an aircraft hangar in Barcelona that year, with audible gasps as Huawei showed off its version, the Mate X - with a launch price of about £2,000.