There is a lot of excitement and curiosity around the Galaxy Fold as unlike other phones, Samsung’s first foldable device remains something of a mystery even after its official unveiling. Folks over at XDA Developers were recently able to scoop up some details about the European unit of the Galaxy Fold, thanks to a tester who was happy to answer some questions regarding the device.
First off, the tester revealed that the inner display of the phone does have a crease. However, it apparently isn’t that bad and is barely noticeable when the screen brightness is set to more than 70-percent. This is expected of most first generation folding devices so it hardly comes as a surprise. Furthermore, the Galaxy Fold apparently doesn’t fold perfectly, leaving a small gap between the two display panels. This could make the phone a little chunky when it’s folded. The tester also says that the Galaxy Fold cannot be used in a laptop mode, as when the device is folded at a 90-degree angle, the screen powers off.
Remember App Continuity, the feature that’s supposed to make apps adapt quickly according to the changing form factors? Well, it reportedly doesn’t work so seamlessly either and thus when switching between displays, there is a lag.
So, for instance, when you are browsing a web page on the small, external display, and decide to work in the tablet mode, the Galaxy Fold would apparently take its own sweet time to render it to the full screen. For apps that are unable to respond to the new form factor, a button has been added so that users can force the system to re-render the UI.
Samsung had previously said that the Galaxy Fold would be fueled by a 7nm processor and the tester has now confirmed that the device is indeed running the Qualcomm Snapdragon 855 SoC and its performance is comparable to that of the Exynos Samsung Galaxy S10+. It’s worth mentioning that Samsung’s home-brewed Exynos 9820 is made using an 8nm process so you can expect the Snapdragon 855-fueled Galaxy Fold to work faster than the Galaxy S10+.
The Galaxy Fold is also one of the first devices to come with UFS 3.0 storage and the benchmark results show that the storage speed is twice that of the Galaxy S10+. This could surely be one of the redeeming points of the Galaxy Fold.
The battery life of the phone is also said to be similar to that of the Galaxy S10+ and the EU bound variant of the phone also has an unlockable bootloader. The phone is said to be running the OneUI 1.2 and different wallpapers can be chosen for the internal and external displays. The device will apparently support Samsung Pay as well.
There have been reservations about the Galaxy Fold ever since its launch, as the press wasn’t given a chance to use the device. Later on, during the MWC, the phone was demoed behind a glass display, further raising speculations that it’s not ready for showtime. Based on what the European tester has said, it doesn’t seem like Samsung is going to tweak the device anymore as the phone will go on sale on April 26, though that’s hopefully not accurate, and hopefully a new update will arrive before the launch.