South Korea’s Samsung Electronics and Huawei Technologies’ are both expected to release foldable smartphones next month. But as the specific dates have yet to be set, it looks like the world will have to wait a bit longer to see who’s going to be the first to mass produce the devices.
Samsung recently said it would be releasing its Galaxy Fold in September, five months after its initially anticipated launch in April that was put on hold due to technological glitches.
Industry sources believe the date is set at Sept. 18 for the phone sporting a display that will fold inwards as expected. Inwardly-folding phones involve a more sophisticated technique than the out-folding method where the screen folds outwards.
When folded, the Galaxy Fold’s display will measure 4.6 inches, and 7.3 inches when unfolded. The thickness will measure at 15.5mm at the thinnest part when folded, and 17mm at the thickest. When unfolded, it will measure 7.5mm including the frame, and 6.9mm excluding. The device will weigh 263g.
A total of six cameras have been installed. In the rear is a triple cameras of 16MP and 12MP. When unfolded, there’s a dual camera, and a single camera when folded.
The price tag is estimated at between 2.3 million and 2.5 million won ($2,074) for the 5G version launched in South Korea. Back in April, the price set by the US network companies for the 4G Galaxy Fold was $1,980 (around 2.24 million won).
Huawei’s upcoming foldable phone is the Mate X, which will fold outwards. The launch date was pushed back after Washington put it on its Entity List that made it uncertain whether the new phone could run on Google’s Android Operating System.
The Mate X display measures 6.4 inches and 6.6 inches each. When unfolded, it measures 8 inches wide. When unfolded, it measures 5.4mm, and 11mm when folded.
Compared to the Galaxy Fold, the display is wider and thinner, but it’s a bit heavier at 295g. On the rear there are triple cameras XX of 40 million, 16 million and 8 million pixels. The price is likely to be around 2,299 euros (around 3.02 million won).
From the US, Motorola is scheduled to set launch the foldable version of its feature phone RAZR. Market experts say the phone will be in a “clamshell” design that folds in half like a clamshell to measure 6.5 inches when unfolded.
Foreign media forecasts are putting the price at $1,500 (around 1.78 million won). The RAZR is one of Motorola’s best-selling phones that sold approximately 130 million handsets worldwide in 2004.
These phones aren’t the first foldable phones to be launched. The first generation of such devices goes back to China’s Royole that launched the world’s first foldable phone, the FlexPai in November 2018, which adopted the out-folding method.
The phone measured 4 inches when folded, and 7.8 inches when unfolded. It was 15.2mm thick, and weighed 320g. It had dual cameras and were priced at 1.5 million won. But the production volume was too small, and quality was low to have had any real impact.
The Elec is South Korea’s No.1 tech news platform.