Samsung Announces Galaxy Fold, a $1,980 Foldable Phone
By Janko Roettgers
LOS ANGELES (Variety.com) – Samsung officially announced its new foldable phone, dubbed the Galaxy Fold, at its Unpacked press event in San Francisco Wednesday morning. The device features two screens that unfold to a tablet-sized slate. “We are giving you a device that doesn’t just define a new category, it defies categories,” said senior vice president of product marketing Justin Denison.
The phone features a 4.6-inch display when folded up, and unfolds to a 7.3-inch screen. It comes with 12GB of RAM, 512GB of on-board storage, and a total of six cameras.
The phone is capable of running up to three apps at the same time, and Samsung worked with a number of app developers, including WhatsApp and YouTube, to optimize app experiences for the new screen size — something that Samsung calls “app continuity.” On stage, the company demonstrated the use of the YouTube app, WhatsApp, and a web browser on the same screen.
The fold will be available in four different colors. It will ship in LTE and 5G versions, and sell for $1,980 and up, depending on configuration. It will begin shipping on April 26. Denison tried to gloss over the hefty price by framing the Fold as a premium phone Wednesday, but the audience was clearly taken aback by the price tag, letting out audible sighs.
Samsung first announced at its developer conference in November that it would launch such a device in 2019, which coincided with an announcement from Google promising Android support for foldable phones — guaranteeing that we will see this kind of form factor from other manufacturers as well.
On Wednesday, Samsung mobile president DJ Koh said the Fold proved wrong the critics who said there was no space for innovation left in the mobile industry. “Get ready for the dawn of a new mobile era,” he said. “The future is about to begin.”
In addition to the Galaxy Fold, Samsung also used the Unpacked event to announce its new flagship phones, the Galaxy S10 and the Galaxy S10+.
More to come…
