Forward-looking: The Galaxy Fold’s journey from initial announcement back in February to its launch last month was arduous, to say the least. But despite the saga, it seems Samsung still has plans for a successor to its bendable device, and it could arrive as soon as April 2020.
We’d already heard that Samsung was working on another Galaxy Fold device, one with a smaller (6.7-inch) screen that uses a flip phone-style clamshell design similar to the new Motorola Razr.
According to Korean publication ETNews (via TechRadar), another change to the Fold 2 – assuming it uses that name – will be its use of scratch-resistant Ultra Thin Glass (UTG). Samsung uses a transparent plastic polyimide (PI) protective layer on the current Fold.
One of the issues people have with the Galaxy Fold is its near $2,000 price tag. With the Fold 2, Samsung is aiming to bring that down to around $1,500. While that’s still a lot of money, it’s not far off a top-specced flagship smartphone.
In order to sell the Fold 2 at that price, Samsung might have to abandon plans to use UTG due to the high production costs along with its low production capabilities and yield rates. If this is the case, the company will once again use transparent PI in the device.
Another way of saving money would be to lower the Fold’s storage capacity. The original Fold comes with 512GB of UFS 3.0, but SamMobile reports that this will be halved to 256GB in the Fold 2.
We still don’t know when Samsung is planning to release the new Fold. It had been predicted to arrive as soon as Q1 2020, though The Bell believes it will arrive slightly later, in April.
https://www.techspot.com/news/82396-cheaper-redesigned-galaxy-fold-could-arrive-april.html
