The Galaxy Z Fold Special Edition is indeed special, just not in a good way

Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger: that's not just a catchy Daft Punk song from (more than) twenty years ago. That's also the slogan of virtually every phone manufacturer out there, be it Apple, Samsung, Huawei, or Xiaomi. Whether they succeed at it – or fail spectacularly – is a discussion for another time.

There's more to the Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger motto, however: let's not forget about Thinner.

Everyone seems to be obsessed with delivering a super-thin handset these days. You may not be a tech-savvy person, but I'd say there's a reasonable chance that you've heard about Apple's future aspirations. They want to make a super slim phone, too. It's allegedly coming in the iPhone 17 series and it's going to arrive under one of the following monikers:

• iPhone 17 Slim
• iPhone 17 Ultra
• iPhone 17 Air

The Cupertino giant has fresh experience with thin mobile devices. Let's not forget that it was just several months ago that Apple released their thinnest-ever iPad Pro M4 (2024) duo at just 5.1 mm thick. Pretty respectable numbers for a tablet (and even more so for a tablet that's extremely powerful).

So the iPhone 17 Slim/Ultra/Air is gathering lots of attention, naturally. Besides, we're waiting for 2025 to get a real iPhone update. To each his own, but I think the 2024 "It's Glowtime" event didn't deliver any substantial, real upgrades apart from the Camera Control Button, but this new button will appeal only to a few people out there.

Until the rumored thin iPhone materializes in the Fall of 2025, we're going to get lots and lots of slim phones.

In fact, we're really close to the next one. It's coming straight out of South Korea's Samsung and it's (so far) called Galaxy Z Fold Special Edition.

• Samsung Galaxy Z Fold Special Edition release date and preorder period leak

What a poor choice of words and epithets, Samsung.

What's it all about?

The Galaxy Z Fold 6 Special Edition is anticipated to feature a larger 8-inch inner display and a 6.5-inch cover screen (impressive!) on the outside. When folded, the device is expected to measure 10.6 mm thick, and just 4.9 mm when unfolded. These are very different from the 5.6 mm and 12.1 mm thickness numbers of the Galaxy Z Fold 6.

That's what it's all about: thickness.

If the rumors so far are true, the Z Fold Special Edition would be slightly thicker (by 0.1 mm) when closed than the Google Pixel 9 Fold Pro and its 10.5 mm waist.

Speaking of the Pixel 9 Fold Pro, do you remember how Google claimed that its new phone was the thinnest foldable with the largest inner display? Spoiler alert: it's not. It's all in the details.



Google said in fine print that the "largest display" claim comes with the note: "among foldable phones in markets where Pixel Fold is sold, excluding India". Meanwhile, the "thinnest display" claim has a more detailed disclaimer: "among foldable phones in markets where Pixel Fold is sold, excluding Singapore, the UK, Germany, Ireland, and France".

Hilarious.

Both Google and Samsung should go kick rocks.

It's a question of Honor and Magic

Enter the Honor Magic V3.

If we're talking about thin foldables, it's the Magic V3 that we're talking about. This bijou is 9.2 mm when folded (heck, that's thinner than my non-folding flagship!) and just 4.35 mm when unfolded.