Our inner geeks are completely freaking out
Many of us at Android Police are total Star Trek fanboys, and we happen to — maybe you’ve noticed — geek out over Android phones. So when we spotted what looked like a Samsung foldable phone being used as a prop in the latest episode of Star Trek: Picard, our inner geeks started hyperventilating.
Season two of the series is set at the beginning of the 25th century, and it’s currently streaming on Paramount+. It revolves around Starfleet Admiral Jean-Luc Picard, with actor Sir Patrick Stewart reprising his role (and also serving as executive producer) from Star Trek: The Next Generation. In this season’s second episode (via 9to5Google), we see Dr. Agnes Jurati working to restore communications between the main characters and using what we can presume is a classic Trek prop, a Personal Access Display, or PADD. But on closer inspection, it looks like this is a Galaxy Z Fold, possibly a 2 or a 3.
How do we know that the device, shown sitting right next to a disassembled Combadge, is a folding phone and not just a small tablet? It’s got a thick case on it to fit the world of the series, but we can clearly see a crease in the middle of the case, and it lines up precisely with where the Fold’s hinge would be. As for how we know how this is a Samsung phone and not another foldable from another OEM, well — the show is shot in California, and Motorola is really the only other major company selling foldable phones in the US — and this doesn’t look anything like a Razr.
It’s easy to think at first that a foldable Samsung phone would be a centuries-old vintage item in the 25th century, but without spoiling the context of the scene for anyone who hasn’t watched it yet, this looks more like a case of using the phone as a prop and not disguising one of its key attributes well enough for eagle-eyed fans to miss.
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