We don't need a Samsung Ultra foldable — we need a cheaper one
Samsung has officially started the countdown to the Galaxy Z Fold 7's reveal, albeit without actually naming the phone. What it did tell us was to get ready for an Ultra experience, which is something I find to be more of a threat than an invitation to get excited.
An Ultra model, or perhaps a relabelling of the Fold 7 to emphasize its premium status, would be interesting, I'll admit. It signals that change is coming, perhaps more than we've seen between previous generations of Z Fold. Given Samsung's lost the top spot among the best foldable phones in recent years, it could be considered a much-needed move.
Plus, Samsung says in its teaser that its users are asking for bigger screens and more cameras, and AI features. Therefore ultra-ifying the Z Fold makes perfect sense. But this still feels like Samsung's moving the foldable genre of phone in the wrong direction — continuing to focus on high-end foldables instead of trying to make them more affordable.
Rumors of a Galaxy Z Fold FE have been circulating for years at this point, and I still believe this is the smarter way to go with foldables. I don't think foldables need to remain a premium phone type. While they'll perhaps always be a niche product, they can cost less, like we've seen with the $500 Nubia Flip 5G, now that the flexible display tech that underpins them has matured.
Samsung is one of the best-equipped phone manufacturers in the world, and the longest-standing maker of foldables. This makes it the best placed out of anyone to pioneer the cheap foldable phone. Even getting a book-style foldable priced around the $1k mark - the price of a typical flagship phone - would be enough of a difference from the $1,600+ pricing of current foldable phones to make an FE-badged foldable stand out.
This is a bigger issue than just the cost too. The smartphone market is huge, but more homogenous than it's ever been, especially in terms of handset size. And if companies remain reluctant to make more small phones, then the next best thing would be to make more large phones that fold up small.
A Galaxy Z Flip FE has been rumored alongside the Z Fold FE, and if it's real, I'm looking forward to seeing it. It'll have the same kind of impact that I hope the Z Fold FE will have, but perhaps a smaller one, given flip foldables are priced like more typical phones already.
I'll wrap things up here by acknowledging that as one of the biggest tech companies in the world, Samsung may know that its internal goals or customer desires don't currently point to developing a cheap foldable as worthwhile. But I'm not bothered about what is best for business, I'm advocating for users to have the widest possible choice of products to pick the effectively mandatory computing device for themselves from. And while it may not be Samsung who finally gives the people (or at least me) the cheap foldable phone, I hope one company or another accepts the challenge.
Chances are we're going to see Samsung's next foldables next month, so here goes out my very late plea to Samsung — make an expensive foldable more affordable before making it "ultra." And revamp DeX mode while you're at it too.
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