Samsung’s successor to the Galaxy Fold could be available with less storage at a cheaper price, according to a new report from SamMobile. The cheaper model will reportedly have 256GB of internal storage and will be offered alongside a 512GB model. In contrast, the original Galaxy Fold was only available with 512GB of storage for an eye-watering $1,980.
Reports that Samsung was working on a Fold successor first came out in March when Bloomberg published a report that said the company was developing two new foldable display phones. One of those devices turned out to be the recently released Galaxy Z Flip. The other hasn’t been announced yet. What’s more, Bloomberg said it would fold around the outside like Huawei’s Mate X.
While the original Galaxy Fold featured a fairly chunky notch on its main display, its successor could feature a much smaller hole-punch notch or may even ditch it entirely with an under-display camera, according to Max Weinbach over at XDA-Developers. Under-display camera prototypes of questionable quality have been shown off by Xiaomi and Oppo, but the technology is yet to make it into a high-profile consumer device. The next Fold may also adopt the same camera array as the S20 Plus, which includes a 64-megapixel telephoto camera, according to Weinbach’s most recent assessment.
What’s important to point out here is none of those specs align with a desire to make a more affordable phone. If Samsung wanted to make the Fold more accessible, there wouldn’t be rumors of the company using ceramic and stainless steel to make the phone’s casing; exotic materials are one of the fastest ways to drive up the cost of a device. Technologies like an under the display camera would also increase the cost of the phone. Samsung may have changed course after those initial rumors came out, but at this point, it seems too early to say anything definitive about the phone.
Notably, we’ve also not heard how Samsung plans to make the Fold 2 more durable than its predecessor. As you may recall, the Galaxy Fold missed its initial launch when some of the pre-release units Samsung provided to publications for review started to break down after only a couple of days of use.
It’s unclear when Samsung might be ready to announce its next foldable device, especially now that the pandemic has thrown the world’s manufacturing and supply chains into disarray. However, reports generally seem to agree that we might see the new device announced somewhere between Q2 and Q3 this year. With Samsung’s Note announcement traditionally taking place in August.
