In November 2018, Samsung showcased the prototype of its first foldable smartphone. So at last, the company launched the foldable smartphone dubbed as Samsung Galaxy Fold at the Unpacked Event which was held in San Francisco yesterday. The Galaxy Fold is the mixture of two screens i.e. one is of 7.3-inch flexible display and the other is of 4.6-inch. Samsung targeted customers who are crazy about the latest technology and want it as soon as possible. The latest Galaxy Fold will be sold as a luxury smartphone. The foldable smartphone will go on sale from April 2019 across the world in selected markets. Samsung has not yet disclosed the markets in which the foldable smartphone will be available.
The new Infinity Flex Display is used in the Galaxy Fold to put a 7.3-inch screen so that the smartphone can easily be kept in your pocket. The company said that they had to work from the 1st level to manufacture the Galaxy Fold. They created new manufacturing processes, components and many things to make the smartphone in a working state.
To make the folding mechanism to move properly, the company gave the smartphone a hinge for the support that uses interlocking gears. And this hinge is not visible which gives the smartphone a stylish look.
The company said that the Galaxy Fold will go on sale from 26 April 2019 in selected countries across the world. The price sticker of the foldable phone is $1980 (approx Rs 1,41,300). It will be available in four colour options- Black, Blue, Green and Silver. The company also said that the Galaxy Fold will be sold in both connectivity options- 4G LTE and 5G variants.
The company has not yet revealed about the pre-orders and the markets it will be available in. If speculated, the foldable device will be made available in all the major markets.
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Under the hood, the smartphone carries the processor which has not been disclosed yet and is based on the 7nm manufacturing process. But as per the speculations, the processor might be Qualcomm Snapdragon 855 SoC. The Galaxy Fold sports two screens i.e. larger 7.3-inch Infinity Flex Dynamic AMOLED panel with a screen resolution of 1536 x 2152 pixels (4.2:3) and smaller 4.6-inch Super AMOLED panel with a screen resolution of 840 x 1960 pixels (21:9).
The foldable smartphone packs 12GB of RAM and 512 of internal storage (UFS 3.0) which cannot be expanded further. As, the market does not have a flexible market, so Samsung has fitted two batteries which are positioned on both the sides of the smartphone. The total capacity the smartphone get is 4,380mAh.
In terms of the optics, the foldable smartphone comes with six cameras in total- one front camera, two on the inside and three rear cameras. At the rear, the foldable smartphone comes with a 16-megapixel camera with an f/2.2 aperture, a 12-megapixel wide-angle camera with Dual Pixel AF, OIS, and variable f/1.5 to the f/2.4 aperture; and a 12-megapixel telephoto camera with PDAF, OIS, an f/2.4 aperture, and 2X optical zoom. At the front, the smartphone carries a 10-megapixel f/2.2 primary sensor and an 8-megapixel RGB depth camera with an f/1.9 aperture. The camera on the inside comes with a 10-megapixel selfie camera with an f/2.2 aperture. Samsung assuring the customer said that the user can click the snap whenever they want and any way they hold.
Samsung has worked hard equally on hardware and as well as software of the smartphone. The foldable smartphone runs on the latest Android Pie out of the box. It also has many software customisations so that the real estate can be used properly. In this foldable smartphone, the user can run three apps simultaneously on the larger screen and can also run App Continuity for easy transitions to larger screen from the smaller screen and inversely.
As per Samsung, the company worked with both Google and the developer community to make the Galaxy Fold run easily. To make apps like YouTube, WhatsApp, and Microsoft Office run easily, the smartphone has optimised them.
Samsung is the very first company to launch its foldable smartphone. Other companies like Lenovo, Xiaomi, and LG are still working on it. As per the rumours, recently Apple patent was seen in Cupertino which points out to the foldable smartphone.