Foldable Phones

Unbox Therapy has published an early unboxing of the upcoming device and interviewed CEO Pete Lau. Although the unboxing only gives a limited view of the foldable (OnePlus has plenty more announcements to tease out before launch, after all), it does give a nice look at how flat it’s able to fold shut.

At TechCrunch Disrupt on Wednesday, the company announced its new OnePlus Open is releasing “soon,” but leaker Max Jambor is providing some more specific insight: apparently, it will get its full reveal on October 19th, and a release soon after.

OnePlus hinted at the foldable’s name, “Open,” in July. Jambor reported that month that the device had an August release date.

Sick burn from Ars Technica’s Ron Amadeo, who points out the Surface Duo is likely the “worst-supported premium Android phone ever” with only two super-late OS updates to its name.

Remember, this is the phone that saw Microsoft Surface boss Panos Panay team up with Google Android boss Hiroshi Lockheimer and spend six whole years supposedly getting it right... only to ship a buggy foldable that’ll certainly make our next flops of the decade list.

iFixit just posted its video teardown — which includes throwing the phone in a bag with a bunch of bright green dust. The Z Fold 5 has an IPX8 rating, meaning it that it’s not rated for dust resistance, so you can imagine what happens with that bright green dust.

The Z Flip 4 and Z Fold 4 get the update this month, with other Samsung foldables getting it “sequentially,” according to Samsung. One UI 5 Watch is starting to officially roll out, too.

You can read more on Samsung’s website.

Founder and CEO Lei Jun has announced a launch date for Xiaomi’s latest foldable, the Mix Fold 3, alongside a short teaser trailer. We’re not expecting the phone to be available outside of China given Xiaomi’s previous foldables, so we’ll have to appreciate its massive four-strong camera bump from afar.

A YouTuber is livestreaming people repeatedly folding and unfolding two of this year’s biggest releases until they break. The Motorola Razr 40 Plus Ultra broke after just 126,266 folding cycles, but as of this writing the Samsung Galaxy Z Flip 5 is still going strong at over 330,000. Not bad considering Samsung’s promotional materials say it’s rated for 200,000.

With all eyes on Samsung’s new foldables yesterday, Oppo subbrand OnePlus couldn’t help itself. “We OPEN when others FOLD,” the brand tweeted, in reference to the rumored name of its foldable. It confirmed its foldable plans in February, when it said it’d be releasing the foldable in the second half of the year.

Less than a day after Samsung announced its new foldables, Xiaomi is teasing the Mix Fold 3, which will be announced in China next month with an interesting rear quad-camera setup and Leica branding.

Let this serve as a reminder that a) hot foldable summer is alive and kicking and b) China gets a lot of foldables that never make their way to the West.

Okay this Galaxy Unpacked video was fun.

It captured well the frustration of phone cords. the excitement of the first cell phones (“I’m calling you from the back of a taxi!”). And the late night talk show-style gag about phablets being too big was spot on and a funny moment to look back on.

It almost swerved into being a little too smug, but I think pulled off staying on this side of the line.

Samsung mobile business president TM Roh mostly waxes poetic in his pre-Unpacked blog post about human-inspired product design, but also confirms one small detail about the upcoming folding phones: they’ll be thinner and lighter than last year’s models.

Samsung’s Galaxy Z Fold 4 was already appreciably lighter than the Pixel Fold, so that likely gives the Z Fold 5 another advantage over Google’s first foldable. We’ll get all the details soon enough — Unpacked is next Wednesday which is fast approaching.

A set of images obtained by reliable leaker Roland Quandt and later posted to 9to5Google shows all the ways you might be able to use the upcoming foldable’s cover display.

In addition to the ability to take selfies, it looks like there are also keyboard, calendar, weather, call history, and boarding pass widgets. While the Galaxy Z Flip 4 already offers some of these widgets on its 1.9-inch cover screen, the extra screen real estate on the Z Flip 5 should make them much easier to use.

Look, the Pixel Fold is the new hotness and we know the Z Fold 5 is coming in just a couple weeks, but both of those are going to cost you close to $2,000. Last year’s Z Fold 4, meanwhile, is still an excellent device and with today’s $700 discount, much more attainable than those other folding phones.

This new (and strange) Samsung ad is mostly forgettable, but watch all the way to the end for a potential hint of the Galaxy Z Flip 5’s cover screen, which is rumored to be much bigger than before.

Samsung is set to reveal the new phone on July 26th.

WinFuture has dug up a host of images of Samsung’s unannounced Z Fold 5 and Z Flip 5 foldables, as well as its Tab S9, which are expected to launch later this month. There’s nothing too surprising in here, given we’ve seen images of both foldables before, but it’s nice being able to see them from (almost) every angle.