Samsung’s first folding screen phone is here – It’s the Galaxy Fold, it has 6 cameras and costs $2,000
Feb 21, 2019
John Aldred
John Aldred is a photographer with over 25 years of experience in the portrait and commercial worlds. He is based in Scotland and has been an early adopter – and occasional beta tester – of almost every digital imaging technology in that time. As well as his creative visual work, John uses 3D printing, electronics and programming to create his own photography and filmmaking tools and consults for a number of brands across the industry.
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Flexible screens have been quite the hot topic over the last couple of years. People want ultra-thin displays that they can just fold away. And it’s not just phones that have driven this desire, either. Both the concept and proof-of-concept for flexible displays have been around for a number of years now. But it’s never really made it into a mainstream product. Until now…
Along with the new Galaxy S10, Samsung has announced the new Galaxy Fold, with a giant 7.3″ folding display. And it seems that the previously rumoured six cameras for the Galaxy S10 were actually destined for the Galaxy Fold instead.
There’s not all that much known about the phone yet, but what we can tell you about are its cameras and lenses.
| Location | 35mm equivalent focal length |
Aperture | Autofocus | Optical stabilisation |
|
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 12mp “Main” camera | Rear | 27mm | f/1.5/2.4 | Dual-Pixel | Yes |
| 12mp Telephoto | Rear | 52mm | f/2.4 | Phase-Detect | Yes |
| 16MP wide-angle | Rear | 12mm | f/2.2 | None | No |
| 10mp selfie camera | Inside | 26mm | f/1.9 | Dual-Pixel | No |
| 8mp depth camera | Inside | 22mm | f/2.2 | Unspecified Autofocus | No |
| 10mp selfie camera | Front | 26mm | f/1.9 | Dual-Pixel | No |
Besides the cameras, we know that the smaller screen will be 21:9 with an 1960×840 resolution, while the main folding screen is 1536×2152 resolution, both offering a density of 420 pixels per inch.
Samsung says that the phone can withstand 200,000 folds which works out to around 5 years of usage if you’re folding it 100 times a day. Maybe 6 months for the hardcore Instagram and Facebook addicts.
Other than “7nm 64-bit octa-core processor”, there’s no mention of exactly what processor is inside this thing, but there is 12GB RAM with 512GB UFS 3.0 storage. So, it looks like the new 1TB Samsung chips won’t be making it into this generation.
To help keep things fairly slim, the battery is split across both halves of the phone, for a combined capacity of 4,380 mAh. But with two displays, one of them being extremely large, it remains to be seen just how long that battery will last in real-world use. Especially if you start doing more demanding things like editing photos and video clips – which becomes much more viable on a phone with such a large screen.
It will be interesting to see how each of the cameras in the device stand up once this becomes available on April 26th (or May 3rd for Europe). It will also be interesting to see just how many people are willing to pony up that insane $2,000 price tag.
John Aldred
John Aldred is a photographer with over 25 years of experience in the portrait and commercial worlds. He is based in Scotland and has been an early adopter – and occasional beta tester – of almost every digital imaging technology in that time. As well as his creative visual work, John uses 3D printing, electronics and programming to create his own photography and filmmaking tools and consults for a number of brands across the industry.
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3 responses to “Samsung’s first folding screen phone is here – It’s the Galaxy Fold, it has 6 cameras and costs $2,000”
It’s also too ambitious to be practical. This thing is gonna have massive issues.
and again another bs product people think they need, and brands just make them so people act like it is useful.
One question: “but why” ?! :-D