19 hours Ago By [email protected] (Jamie Richards)
has officially announced the Galaxy Z Fold Special Edition, which is thinner and lighter than the while sporting larger displays and an improved camera system. The Z Fold Special Edition also comes with 16GB of RAM to support a “‘Galaxy AI’ experience optimized for foldables” and the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 for Galaxy chipset. We’ve yet to hear about how much storage the unit ships with.
The Galaxy Z Fold Special Edition will only be available in South Korea when it launches on October 25, and the sole Black Shadow color option will cost 2,789,600 won (or roughly $2,000 / £1,550 / AU$3,000). Leaks have pointed to a , but the remains unconfirmed. There are currently no signs of a wider global release.
The official announcement includes comments from Sung-Taek Lim, executive vice president of Samsung Korea, who called the Galaxy Z Fold Special Edition a “gesture of gratitude to domestic consumers who are leading the foldable market”. We hope the upgrades given to the Z Fold Special Edition will make their way to the next globally released Z Fold phone – but the Z Fold 6 was just released back in August, so we might be waiting a while to find out. With that in mind, here’s a rundown of the major upgrades coming to the Z Fold Special Edition.
Larger, wider displays The Galaxy Z Fold Special Edition has a 6.5-inch outer display and 8-inch inner display, as compared to the 6.3-inch outer and 7.
6-inch inner displays of the Galaxy Z Fold 6. These enlargements bring Samsung back in line with its competitors, as the Z Fold 6 didn't quite catch up to rival phones like the and when it comes to display size. And with an aspect ratio of 21:9, the outer display on the Special Edition is proportionally wider than the skinny 22:9 cover screen of the Z Fold 6.
The Galaxy Z Fold Special Edition marks the first increase in inner display size since the Z Fold 2 released in 2020, and boasts the same almost-square 20:18 aspect ratio as the inner display on the Z Fold 6. A properly flagship camera The Samsung Galaxy Z Fold Special Edition may mark a turning point for the Z Fold series by finally offering a comparable photography experience to Samsung’s flagship slab phones. The Z Fold Special Edition comes equipped with a 200MP main wide camera, the same resolution as the main camera on the .
This is a major step up from the 50MP main camera affixed to the Z Fold 6; at least on paper. Our found its 50MP camera to be a frustrating oversight. So we’re glad to see steps towards parity with Samsung’s other ultra-premium phone and hope to see the same steps taken with the next global Z Fold release.
Thinner and lighter Though the race to produce thinner slab phones has been over for years, in the foldable world it’s just heating up. The Samsung Galaxy Z Fold Special Edition boasts a folded thickness of 10.6mm, shaving off an impressive 1.
5mm as compared to the Z Fold 6. At 236g, it’s also 3g lighter than the Z Fold 6 – a modest improvement, but still a welcome boost for one handed use. This means the Z Fold Special Edition is both thinner and lighter than most other flagship folding phones, slimmer than both the OnePlus Open or Pixel 9 Pro Fold but still beaten by the .
We’d like to see Samsung keep the same competitive spirit when it comes to the design of the next global Z Fold phone, too. As mentioned, we aren’t likely to see a global release for the Samsung Galaxy Z Fold Special Edition, but we’d otherwise have expected to see this new phone land a spot on our lists of the and . And as ever, for the latest updates be sure to check in with our .
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