The redesigned folding phone will launch in South Korea on Friday, as IFA kicks off in Berlin.
Samsung Galaxy Fold is set to relaunch in Korea within a week according to a new report from Yonhap News Agency; September 6 to be precise. Surprisingly, this is the same date as the opening day of the IFA 2019 trade show in Berlin.
Although at this stage it’s unclear if IFA will provide the platform for Samsung to show off the updated Galaxy Fold. Initially, we were led to believe that the Galaxy Fold would launch in late September, but Samsung appears to be brash in dragging that rumored release forward.
Many can take this to be a power-play to counter Huawei’s own foldable Mate X, which is also expected to launch imminently. But without a doubt, several question marks are there over the Chinese-made foldable as Huawei tackles Android bans and it’s own QC.
The Galaxy Fold was unveiled at MWC 2019 in Barcelona back in February and the company had planned to launch the new model as its first foldable phone on April 26 with a price tag of $1,980. The original schedule was missed and the company delayed the launch.
It has been one erratic ride for the Galaxy Fold launch and relaunch. From manufacturing defects being pointed out by reviewers to slips, hold-ups, and now a redesign, it has definitely been difficult for Samsung to get the Fold to market.
However, Samsung Display Vice President Kim Seong-Cheol recently confirmed that the Galaxy Fold’s problems have been fixed and it is ready to hit the market soon.
As reported by Yonhap News, the Fold will be available in small batches, with an initial shipment of just 20,000 to 30,000 units being made available in South Korea. The price will be set at $1,980, which works out at approximately Kes.200,000/-.
Considering that the Galaxy Fold handset is priced at nearly $2000 which is not an amount most people are willing to pay or is not accessible to a larger segment of the population, there is more news.
As Samsung is getting ready to roll out its much-awaited foldable smartphone Galaxy Fold on September 6, a new report suggests that a cheaper Galaxy Fold device which will retail at $1,000 is in the works.
The Korean tech-giant is planning to use a cheaper design for bringing down its price with just 256GB of internal storage, half of what the current Galaxy Fold offers at 512GB, SamMobile reported on Friday.
“The new Galaxy Fold that’s currently being developed bears model number SM-F700F. We’re told that it will come with 256GB of internal storage, half of what the Galaxy Fold features. Little else is known about this device right now,” the publication wrote.
Specification wise, the Galaxy Fold features a 7.3-inch primary flexible AMOLED display and a secondary 4.6-inch screen. The premium smartphone comes backed by a 7nm Qualcomm Snapdragon 855 octa-core SoC, paired with 12GB of RAM and 512GB storage.
It packs a 16-megapixel + 12-megapixel + 12-megapixel triple rear camera setup while sporting a 10-megapixel camera on the front for selfies.
In the meantime, Huawei’s foldable smartphone Mate X has suffered another delay. The Chinese tech giant recently said that there was “no possibility” of the phone meeting its September launch date. The company, therefore, has announced that Mate X would go on sale only by the end of 2019.