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At Samsung’s Unpacked event today, the company announced its foldable smartphone, the Galaxy Fold. This comes after first debuting a foldable smartphone at its Developer Conference last fall. Though that was more of a foldable display, and not an entire smartphone. The Galaxy Fold is a foldable smartphone that will expand to a 7.3-inch display.
The Samsung Galaxy Fold is using the company’s new Infinity Flex display. It’s a 7.3-inch display that runs at a resolution of 2152×1536. While the smaller front display is a 4.6-inch panel with a resolution of 1960×840. With the Galaxy Fold, Samsung had to build a pretty sturdy chassis for the Galaxy Fold, allowing users to open and close the device hundreds of thousands of times. The hinging mechanism, which Samsung is not going into great detail about just yet, but the company says that it makes the Galaxy Fold act like a book, making it more natural to open and close it.
Other specs for the Galaxy Fold include a 7nm processor, with 12GB of RAM and 512GB of storage. Putting it right in line with the specs of the 5G version of the Galaxy S10, also being announced today.
Samsung built two batteries into the Galaxy Fold, one on each side of the device. Its engineers built the device so that it can take juice from both batteries and power the device all at once. It’s a larger 4380mAh capacity battery, but it’s tough to say whether it will get you through the full day, since foldable smartphones are very new.
There is also six cameras built-in, on the Galaxy Fold. With three on the back, two on the inside and one on the front. So no matter which way you are holding the Galaxy Fold, you’ll be able to get that shot.
Samsung did a few demos showing off the software on the Galaxy Fold, which obviously needed some fine-tuning from the One UI you’d find on the Galaxy Note9. With the Galaxy Fold, you’re going to be able to open the phone up and use that 7.3-inch display, with the app moving from the outside display to the inside display rather seamlessly. Samsung has also worked with partners like YouTube and Netflix to make sure that their apps can take full advantage of the Galaxy Fold’s larger and rather unconventional 7.3-inch display.
Multi-window was made popular by Samsung, so it’s no surprise that it available on the Galaxy Fold. Instead of just using two apps side-by-side, the Galaxy Fold is able to use three apps. Allowing you to watch YouTube, browse the web and message people through WhatsApp all at the same time. WhatsApp and Microsoft Office are both optimized for the Galaxy Fold and this new three-app multi-window. Samsung is likely working with others to get their apps optimized as well.
Unsurprisingly, the Galaxy Fold is a rather thick smartphone. Seeing as this is essentially two phones. And given the fact that you do need a pretty good hinge to make sure this phone doesn’t fall apart, it does make lots of sense. That may change when the second and third-generations of the Galaxy Fold come out though.
The Galaxy Fold will be available on April 26, and it will start at $1980. And in four colors: cosmos black, space silver, martian green, and astro blue. It will be available in a 4G LTE model as well as a 5G model. Samsung did mention that the 5G model availability will depend on your region.
