Samsung is leading the innovation game when it comes to smartphones right now. The Galaxy Fold was one of the most innovative smartphones of the past 10 years, I’d actually go as far as to say that the Galaxy Fold is the most innovative smartphone since the iPhone came out back in 2007.
This is the first actual foldable phone, that came from a major smartphone manufacturer. A phone that’s technically a tablet and then folds in half into something that’s much more portable. Now, yes the Huawei Mate X is in many ways even more innovative but that’s not out just yet, so Samsung Galaxy Fold was and still is one of the most unique phones to ever see the light of day.
In fact, Samsung’s already working on the second generation Fold, the Fold 2 for a release in 2020, so get those snacks ready and here’s everything we know so far, about the Fold 2!
Ok, so the first Galaxy Fold was not a flawless product. It was first teased at Samsung’s Developers Conference, back in November 2018 and back then, we couldn’t really see much.
When it was first shown off, the design of the Fold was hard to determine thanks to the darkened stage
All that Samsung showed us was a phone that had a very small outer display that unfolded into a larger tablet. The issue with it was that you couldn’t really see anything in terms of its design, since I believe the Fold was in a case and the scene was made dark on purpose, so that you couldn’t really tell what Samsung’s new innovative phone was.
But this was something that was leaked and rumoured and hyped so much! We even made videos on this back in 2017, on the Foldable Galaxy X, and back then our concepts weren’t that great, but I think we’ve evolved a ton since.
Anyway, a few months later and in February 2019, the Fold was officially unveiled by Samsung. Full design, full specs and shortly after, reviewers have gotten their hands on it and they found out that it broke extremely easily. You see, since the display was made out of plastic, any dust or debris that got under the display, killed it off instantly. So Samsung cancelled the release, in order to redesign the Fold and they’ve made a few tweaks, they’ve tested it thoroughly and finally re-released it in September 2019, almost an entire year since the November 2018 tease.
And the reviews have now been quite positive. I mean, you could literally kill the display with your fingernail, since the display was still made out of plastic, but at least it now as more difficult for dust and debris to get under the display. This is thanks to that screen-protector layer that a lot of reviewers ended up removing, now being attached under the frame of the phone.
So so far so good, but now we’re in November 2019, just in time for Samsung’s 2019 Developers Conference and they’ve actually released a video titled “A New Form Factor for Foldable Smartphones”. This video is pretty much pointing at the next thing to come after the Galaxy Fold. The video starts with the Galaxy Fold but then they increase the display size and turn it into what looks to be a similar to our Galaxy S11 concept, where we have that very tall 20:9 aspect ratio display and just a central camera cutout. But what’s really interesting about this folding phone is that instead of folding horizontally like the Galaxy Fold does, it actually folds vertically.
But probably one of the biggest differences is that instead of being a foldable tablet that folds into a phone, this is essentially a regular phone that folds in half, like those old clam shell phones did back in the days of OG cellphones. Now, this is a pretty interesting approach, because I personally find foldable tablets to more way more useful than foldable phones. I mean what would the point of the Fold 2 be, if it’s just a regular smartphone that folds in half? I guess the fact that you can hang up on phone-calls in a really cool way but aside from that, a foldable phone is actually worse from a functional standpoint than a non foldable phone. The reason I say this is because when you fold it in half, whilst you do decrease the height of it by half, but you also increase the thickness of it by two. So rather than having a long thin sheet of metal in your pocket, you would have a short and fat piece of meal and I’m personally not into that.
However, it seems like there might just be a market for these types of devices.
The new Moto Razr of 2019 (Source: TechRadar)
Do you guys remember the famous Motorola Razr phone? That iconic clam shell smartphone that had a colour display on the back and an extremely thin form factor, for its time at least back in 2005. I never had one myself but I was in middle school back then and one classmate had one and I was always so interested in it, but my parents couldn’t afford buying me one so I never had one. This was back when Motorola was one of the best and most popular cell phone manufacturers.
Well last week Motorola unveiled the new Moto Razr 2019 which is still a clam shell phone but with a more modern twist to it. So it now has a full-screen display and that’s the one that also folds now, pretty nuts when you realise how far we’ve come since.
In my opinion, the Moto Razr 2019 is very close to what the Galaxy Fold 2 will look like. It will be a clamshell style foldable phone, rather than a foldable tablet like the Fold 1 was. However I actually do believe that this Fold 2 will not be called Fold 2 and instead something else. The Fold E or something along those lines. The reason for this is mainly because if you look back at Samsung’s teaser video, towards the end, they show both the Galaxy Fold 1 and the unreleased one as well, making me think that it won’t replace the current Fold but rather add onto the lineup.
I do think that this is a great choice! You see, by having two foldable devices, or even more if Samsung decides to expand on the lineup in the future, customers get even more choice at different price-levels as well. We all know that the Galaxy Fold is crazy expensive, at close to £2000 in the UK there’s not many people buying this. However, the Fold E or whatever this new fold will be called, should start at a much more reasonable price. The Moto Razr 2019 would cost $1500, compared to $2000 and even £2000 that the Galaxy Fold 1 costs. Therefore it would make a lot of sense for this Fold E to start from $1500 or so.
News website, TheBell from South Korea which had some fairly good track record in the past when it comes to unreleased products, reports that the Galaxy Fold 2 is currently in development and uses the code name Bloom and that it will actually be released in April 2020.
And considering that the Fold that Samsung has teased looks pretty much identical to the S11 leaks, this could even be a variant of the S11. The S11 Fold? I think that’s a very plausible scenario, but that’s just my personal prediction but we’ll see if that turns out to be true.
Also the S11 event will be in late February, which will point to a March release for the S11, so April for the Fold E/S11 Fold doesn’t seem that unlikely either.
Our concept of the Galaxy Fold 2 showing the clam shell hinge idea
Now, we’ve actually made our very own concept of the Galaxy Fold 2, based on all the leaks that we’ve had and even one of Samsung’s patents that does shows a foldable clam shell style smartphone. We’ve based this off of the Galaxy S11+ design, that comes with a gigantic 6.9” display size, with that single camera cutout in the middle. We have new Quad-Camera module on the back, which now adds the brand new 108MP sensor, just like on the S11, and we’ve modelled the hinge in quite a unique way.
Rather than doing it like Samsung has done it with the Fold 1, we’ve done it in a similar way to how Motorola has done it with the 2019 Razr, where the mechanism is actually on the inside, and then it’s protected and sealed by this rubber hinge on the outside. This means that the phone still preserves its water and dust resistance, unlike the Fold 1 which lacked both of those. Also, this is the same style hinge that Samsung has in one of their Galaxy Fold patents that do show a smartphone that folds vertically.
Now, comparing that design to the Moto Razr 2019, the Moto Razr does have a more usable design, as we do have another display on the back. Even though it’s a very small display, which is just being used for seeing incoming notifications and reading quick messages, at least you do have that. From the looks of it, the new version of the Galaxy Fold will not have any display on its back, however there are a few Samsung patents that do show this display folding both ways and that would be quite cool, being able to fold the fold on its back and have two mini-displays in this case. However, I dont see this having any major functionality for me at least, as I still prefer the idea of a foldable tablet, than a modern clam shell phone.
Now, interesting enough, there is a second patent that shows something completely different. This one was found by tech website LetsGoDigital and it shows what appears to be a foldable Galaxy Tab S rather than a Galaxy Fold 2. We have what looks to be a very big tablet sized display, with a fairly thick frame all across it, but I genuinely would pick this over the gigantic side notch that the Galaxy Fold 1 has, and we also seem to have a large display on the front to go with that.
The fold patents as seen on Letsgodigital (Source: Letsgodigital)
We also have two more patents , also found by LetsGoDigital that show something similar to the Galaxy Fold 1. Just with a thinner notch, and even a massive display that would actually fold vertically, rather than having mostly the same functionality as the Fold 1 does. So judging by all of these patents, it seems like Samsung is experimenting with different approaches to folding phones. A foldable Galaxy S11, a foldable Galaxy Tab S, a Galaxy Fold that folds vertically and possibly some even more form factors that we haven’t yet seen leaked.
So I’m really looking forward to seeing more foldable devices. I do hope however that the industry doesn’t start making “cool” foldable phones like a clam shell phone is rather than truly useful foldable devices, like a foldable tablet would be.