Samsung unveils the new Galaxy Fold at Unpacked 2019

Samsung has finally shed some light on its first folding smartphone – last seen in less than ideal lighting conditions. The Samsung Galaxy Fold, as it’s somewhat predictably called, changes from a 4.6in smartphone into a 7.3in tablet at the blink of an eye, and Android adapts dynamically to change the content to fit the new aspect ratio.
 
If you’re thinking “oh, that’s not going to come cheap,” then you’re absolutely correct. The Samsung Galaxy Fold will start at $1,980 (a straight pound conversion makes that £1,516, but expect it to closer to £1,980 if bitter experience is anything to go by) making it about as expensive a smartphone as you can possibly expect.

To be entirely fair to Samsung, there’s a lot of good technology in there that goes some way to justifying the price tag. It pairs a 7nm processor with 12GB RAM, making it “one of the most powerful phones on the market.” It comes with 512GB of UFS 3.0 flash storage, which the company says means it will be twice as fast at reading data than most other phones. Just as well it has that much internal storage, mind, as there’s no microSD support.

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You might think that putting a single lithium-ion battery in a tablet that folds would be a big mistake, and Samsung agrees, which is why the Galaxy Fold comes with two – one on each side of the fold, for a total capacity of 4,380mAh. The phone has six cameras in total: three on the back (16MP, ultra-wide f/2.2; 12MP wide-angle, f/1.5-f/2.3; 12MP 2x telephoto with optical zoom), two in the middle (10MP, f/2.2; 8MP, f/1.9 depth sensing) and one on the front (10MP, f/2.2). 

The picture above shows one of the innovations that take advantage of that extra screen space: you can now have three apps on screen at one time, and it looked pretty effective on stage. We’re less convinced by its closed look, where the screen appears to be considerably smaller and looks like a return to the bad old days of thick bezels.
 
What we do know is a release date. The Samsung Galaxy Fold will be available for preorder from 26 April and will be on store shelves on 3 May.