robjn

Depending on how the contract is written, the quality issues may make the minimum order requirements void.

Basically, if the manufacturer can’t meet specified quality the buyer may not be obligated to buy anything at all. This would effectively make minimum order requirements void.

Unless we can actually study the terms of the contract, there is no way we can know what is going on.

The fact is that Samsung invested big on OLED with Android hopes that did not materialize.

They predicted that all the cheap Androids would rush to adopt OLED. They believed that once Apple started to use OLED everyone else would have to copy them. That simply didn’t happen. Samsung wasted billions building production capacity that was never used.

Whether Apple met their contractual obligations or not, the big problem for Samsung is that they made a massive error in predicting the wider market. 

You write: For a start, the resolution of 1,792 by 828 pixels is a lot lower than the Super Retina versions in the XS and Max. This also brings the pixel density down to 326 pixels per inch versus the 458ppi of the other two variants, which may seem disappointing.

You can’t fairly compare pixel resolution between the two technologies. The OLED is pentile which means the resolution only applies to the green color and those green sub-pixels share very, very low resolution red and blue sub-pixels.

In fact, the lower resolution LCD display on the XR has MORE sub-pixels per inch (978) than the Super Retina Displays on the XS and XS Max. (916)

The XR has taken heat for not having a high resolution display. Yet these are the facts:

XR has 4,451,328 sub pixels

XS has 4,111,968

This is because the OLEDs are pentile and define pixels differently. 

Each pixel on the XR can independently display any color. That’s not true for the XS.

XR shows same number of points as the XS MAX in a smaller package.

Although the XS has strong advantages over the XR, including true OLED blacks, HDR, optical zoom, higher pixel density, thinner, lighter, narrower bezels, etc - there are some good reasons for considering the XR.

Compared to XS, XR has
As much as 25% longer battery life.
Colors.
A 128GB option (if you need more than 64GB but don’t need 256GB this option makes the XR $350 cheaper!)
A bigger display that shows a little more content.
Symmetrical speaker grills and antenna lines.