Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 5 review
01.08.2023 - 19:23
/ techcrunch.com
In February 2020, Samsung planted its flag in the sand. Screen issues aside, the original Galaxy Fold was met with a mixed response. “Innovation for innovation’s sake” was a common refrain. The wildly expensive device arrived at just a hair under $2,000. People questioned whether anyone really needed to carry a tablet in their pocket. The device was big and bulky. And then there was the crease.
I won’t go so far as saying the company was definitively proven correct, but in 2023, things are certainly trending that way. According to Counterpoint, foldable shipments grew 64% y-o-y in Q1, hitting 2.5 million. It’s a drop in the bucket versus the overall market, but it’s a positive trend for a category many assumed was dead on arrival. It’s doubly impressive given that — until recently — there simply weren’t many foldables on the market.
Here’s the thing about successfully planting your flag in the sand: The next thing you know, you’re surrounded by everyone else’s flag. Again, I’m not quite ready to declare 2023 the year of the foldable, but it’s certainly the year a lot more companies got into the act. Motorola released a second, Google’s got one, OnePlus is readying its own and its parent company already has a pair, echoing the Samsung’s two form factors.
Image Credits: Brian Heater
Heck, even Apple is rumored to be getting into the game in 2024/2025, pending apparent supply chain concerns. The more the category grows, the more competition the Galaxy Z line will face.
China is now the world’s largest foldables market by a sizable distance, courtesy of its own 117% y-o-y growth. Samsung is currently a close third in the country, just behind Huawei and Oppo — of course the former has been struggling on the international stage, courtesy of the trade war. Samsung released the W23 and W23 Flip — variants of the Fold 4 and Flip 4 with a more blinged-out black and gold design — in the country last year and has seen growth as a result.
You only get one chance to make a first impression, as they say. The original Fold undoubtedly made a big one, but even boundary-pushing design is subject to the basic laws of physics. You can’t expect the wheel to be reinvented every year. Some upgrades will be more impactful than others, but on the whole, it’s a game of refinements after you hammer out those initial kinks.
The Fold 5 is one of those iterative devices. It’s a perfectly fine thing for a smartphone to be, but it’s unavoidably made more pronounced amid the rapidly changing category the line helped create. The product’s position in the market means it will invariably be the baseline against which all other foldables are contrast — fairly or unfairly, for better or worse.
Image Credits: Brian Heater
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