Even with its many flaws — and Samsung’s eye-watering $2,000 asking price — customers have flocked to the company’s first foldable phone, which has already sold half a million units. That’s half of what a Samsung exec previously claimed, but it’s impressive nonetheless.
All of which makes us wonder just how successful Samsung’s follow-up to the Fold — dubbed the Galaxy Z Flip — could be, especially if the latest reports out of South Korea are to be believed.
iNews24, citing sources within the country’s mobile carriers, suggests Samsung is in the process of negotiating a price for the Galaxy Z Flip that’s somewhere between one and one and a half million won. That’s roughly equivalent to $861 and $1,292, respectively, and lines up pretty well with a previous report from Korea that cited a similar pricing scheme.
The company has had to make some cuts to facilitate the price, however. The phone will reportedly have a smaller battery than the Galaxy Fold, with support for only 15W charging. It’ll also be powered by a Snapdragon 855, instead of the SoC of choice for 2020 flagships: the Snapdragon 865.
It’s not all bad, though. Alongside the more amenable clamshell form factor, the phone is also going to feature a glass display, instead of a plastic one, though there will be a plastic layer on top of the screen to protect it. That’ll make it far more resistant to scratching, and should hopefully help it avoid the cracking issues the Galaxy Fold has to endure with its debut.
If true, the $1,000 price would make the Z Flip extremely competitive against Motorola’s RAZR, which boasts only a midrange Snapdragon 710 chip found on year-old devices and costs a hefty $1,500. The RAZR has now been delayed, while Samsung is set to reveal the better-priced, and more powerful, Galaxy Z Flip in just a few weeks, leaving Motorola in a rather precarious position. Despite the overwhelmingly positive response it elicited from the tech community at large, the RAZR may be dead in the water as soon as it starts shipping.
Samsung, it seems, plans to steal not only the RAZR’s clamshell form factor but also all of its thunder.
