Samsung Electronics on Wednesday unveiled two foldable smartphones as it continues to bet on devices with bending screens, a budding market that has yet to fully take off because of high prices.
The clamshell-designed Galaxy Z Flip 5 and Galaxy Z Fold 5, a larger device that opens and folds like a book, will be available for pre-orders starting July 26 in certain markets including the United States and South Korea.
Built with 6.7-inch and 7.6-inch main screens, the phones have bigger displays than Samsung’s previous folding devices and are equipped with more advanced cameras, providing crisper visuals and more features for work, text and video chats, movies and games, the company said. Designed to be compact and easy to carry, the Flip 5 is also built with a 3.4-inch cover screen that allows it to be used folded in half.
The star of the show in Samsung’s new folding phone portfolio is its new Galaxy Z Flip 5.
The Flip 5 is a clamshell-style folding handset that, when shut, takes a square shape that fits more comfortably into your pocket. Flip it open, and it becomes a regular, rectangular smartphone.
The Z Flip 5’s inner screen is unchanged — it’s a 6.7-inch 1080p OLED panel with a refresh rate up to 120Hz. The outer screen is a 720p OLED with a standard 60Hz refresh rate. Samsung is rebranding this screen as the “Flex Display,” and it covers most of the phone’s front panel, excluding the two large camera cutouts. That’s a different approach than Motorola took with the Razr Plus — its front screen flows around the cameras and thus measures slightly bigger at 3.6 inches.
The new “teardrop”-style hinge on the Z Flip and Fold solves one of the series’ persistent problems: rather than leaving a gap near the hinge when folded, the two sides of the phone now close flat. Samsung also says the new hinge is more durable and that its double-rail design can better handle an impact from a drop.
The Flip 5 is rated IPX8, like its predecessor, and is protected against full water immersion — up to 1.5 meters for up to 30 minutes. The Razr Plus claims some dust resistance with an IP52 rating but is merely splash-resistant. Samsung doesn’t claim any official level of dust resistance but does include some measures designed to minimize the risk of dust intrusion. In either case, dust is very bad news for a folding phone, so it’s best to be careful with a folding phone around sand or dust, IP rating or not.
Like the Razr Plus, the Z Flip 5 populates its cover screen with small-screen-friendly widgets but also lets you run full apps if you want. Samsung supports running full apps, too, but puts this feature in its Good Lock app so you’ll have to go looking for it if that’s something you want. But you don’t have to be that adventurous to take advantage of the new cover screen: it offers a full-size keyboard so you can respond to texts, whereas you could only send a few prewritten responses on the Flip 4.
Other specs remain unchanged: there’s a 3,700mAh battery, 25W wired and 15W wireless charging, and 8GB of RAM. There’s still a 12-megapixel f/1.8 main rear camera with optical image stabilization — with improved lens coatings this year to reduce flare — plus a 12-megapixel ultrawide and a 10-megapixel selfie camera on the inner display.
Samsung, a South Korean technology giant that’s also a major producer of computer memory chips, has been the longest provider of folding phones, releasing its first devices in 2019.
The company announced the new phones at a lavish product event in South Korea’s capital, Seoul, choosing one of the markets where folding phones are closer to being mainstream products than novelties.
There’s optimism in the industry that the global market for foldable phones is beginning to grow at a faster pace with other vendors like Google, Motorola and Huawei now providing competition to Samsung.
According to Counterpoint, a technology market research firm, global shipments of foldable phones will approach 19 million units in 2023, which would mark a 45% increase from 2022, mainly fueled by rising consumer demands in China.
The shipments may exceed 100 million units by 2027, Counterpoint said in a report released Wednesday, although that projection was based on a presumption that Apple would eventually release a foldable iPhone, sometime around 2025. Apple, which closely competes with Samsung for the top spot in global smartphone shipments, has yet to confirm any plans for foldable devices.
