After months of rumors, Samsung has finally released its Galaxy Z Fold Special Edition. It has a bigger display, a thinner design, is a few milligrams lighter, but it doesn’t support the S Pen. At the moment, Samsung says it is only for the South Korean market and has no plans to bring it to the global market. With a second model of the same design coming out in the same year, all eyes have been on another affordable model, the long-rumored Galaxy Z Fold 6, which Samsung reportedly has no plans to release.
A report by SamMobile quotes a Samsung Electronics official as saying that the brand has no plans to release an affordable folding book. The official reportedly said that the consumer should not consider the Galaxy Z Fold Special Edition as a premium product, but rather as “a product released to enhance your options”. Regardless of consumer perception, it’s the same thing. The new model will apparently expand Samsung’s lineup of foldable devices, at least for buyers in South Korea.
Samsung believes that users will now have more choices. For example, those who don’t need the S Pen feature can now opt for the larger and slimmer Galaxy Z Fold Special Edition (again in South Korea).
The same unnamed executive also reportedly said the company has “no plans” to launch another lower-priced product “at this time.” A recent report about an affordable foldable device (most recently labeled as the Galaxy Z Fold 6 FE) suggests that Samsung may delay the release of this affordable model until next year. So at this point, it seems clear that the affordable Galaxy Z Fold 6 won’t arrive this year, but there’s still a slight chance that it could be unveiled next year. However, this is not the first time that Samsung has denied the existence of an affordable foldable device.
Launched in South Korea, the Samsung Galaxy Z Fold Special Edition is priced at 2,789,600 won (roughly Rs. 1,70,000). The foldable device will be available with 16GB of RAM + 512GB of storage and in a special Black Shadow color. The device has a 6.5-inch 21:9 aspect ratio bezel and an 8-inch main foldable display, both of which are larger than the Galaxy Z Fold 6, which is currently on sale globally, including India.
The special edition is powered by a Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 SoC and is 1.5 mm thinner and 3 grams lighter than the Galaxy Z Fold 6. It also has a 200-megapixel main camera, which seems like a significant upgrade over the existing 50. -megapixel main camera on the Galaxy Z Fold 6. The thin form factor comes at the expense of Samsung’s S Pen, which is not supported on the new foldable device. Hopefully we’ll see some of these updates in the next version of the Galaxy Z Fold next year.