Samsung has started mass producing flexible OLED displays for its very first foldable smartphone, the Galaxy Fold. Samsung Display announced that via its official website, and the announcement was made during a ceremony to which arrived more than 100 executives from the company.
The company is actually expected to start selling the Galaxy Fold on a global basis on April 26, though it seems like a 5G version of the phone will go on sale a bit later on, in May, and it will hit South Korea first.
Samsung managed to beat Huawei when it comes to announcing foldable smartphones, as it announced its offering several days before Huawei back in February, and it seems like Samsung will be first to hit the market as well. The Galaxy Fold will go on sale later this month, while the Huawei Mate X is not expected to hit the market until June.
The Galaxy Fold is Samsung’s very first foldable smartphone and the company is not expecting insane sales numbers of the phone, for a good reason. Not only is the device extremely expensive at $1,980, but its availability will also be somewhat limited. The company is actually expecting to sell around one million of Galaxy Fold units overall.
Samsung and Huawei are actually expected to get some more competition in the foldable smartphone space later this year, as a number of other companies are working on their foldable smartphone offerings, like Motorola, for example. Motorola is set to revive its Razr brand by announcing its very first foldable smartphone under that name, and if the company’s smartphone design patent is anything to go by, that foldable device will look somewhat similar to the Motorola Razr cellphone which launched a long time ago, and that may win some points for Motorola with consumers.
The Samsung Galaxy Fold is made out of metal and glass, and it comes with two displays. The phone’s main display measures 7.3 inches, and that display folds right down the middle. Think of the Galaxy Fold like a book, as it folds inwards, and when that happens, the phone’s smaller panel on the outside lights up. That smaller display measures 4.6 inches, and it doesn’t cover the whole front side of the phone, not even close.
The phone’s main display also comes with a rather large corner display notch, which is not the case with the Huawei Mate X. The Galaxy Fold includes three vertically-aligned cameras on the back, and those three cameras are placed in the top-left corner of the phone’s back side.
The Galaxy Fold is fueled by the Snapdragon 855 64-bit octa-core processor, while the phone also includes 12GB of RAM and 512GB of non-expandable storage. A 4,380mAh battery is included in this package, along with 18W fast charging. The phone does not include an audio jack, while it will ship with Android 9 Pie out of the box, and Samsung’s custom UI on top of it. It is also worth saying that the phone sports two cameras on the front, and that its fingerprint scanner is mounted on the phone’s right side.