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Did Samsung just kill the Galaxy Z Fold 7 with the Z Fold Special Edition? Not so fast!

Published: Oct 24, 2024, 7:58 AM

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This article may contain personal views and opinion from the author.

I guess it's official now: Samsung's powers that be don't read my opinion pieces. If they did, I'm pretty sure they'd have been persuaded by my rock-solid arguments a couple of months ago into canceling the Galaxy Z Fold Special Edition (previously known under the rumored Z Fold 6 Slim name) and focusing instead on an affordable Fold FE model that... may never come.

All joking aside, I must sincerely confess that I still don't "get" the state-of-the-art Z Fold SE and continue to wonder where this device fits in its manufacturer's grand product release strategy. Because I refuse to believe that a tech giant like Samsung doesn't have at least its next few moves on the foldable segment's chess board prepared ahead of time, I'm going to try to predict what these moves might prove to be and what exactly the company is aiming to achieve with the hot new Galaxy Z Fold Special Edition.

Yes, the Galaxy Z Fold 7 can still be special too

For those of you who missed the news out of South Korea a couple of days back, here's a quick recap of precisely what makes the Z Fold Special Edition so special compared to the "normal" Galaxy Z Fold 6:

Reduced 4.9mm thickness (when unfolded) and 10.6mm (folded);
Reduced 236 grams weight;
Enlarged 8-inch primary foldable display with 2184 x 1968 pixel resolution;
Enlarged 6.5-inch secondary screen with 2520 x 1080 pixel resolution;
200MP primary rear-facing camera;
16GB RAM.

That's a pretty extensive list of clear and most likely very easily noticeable upgrades over a phone that looks an awful lot like last year's Galaxy Z Fold 5. But if you're expecting next year's Galaxy Z Fold 7 to mimic these "special edition" specs and add little to the mix in terms of notable improvements and enhancements, I think you might be in for some big surprises.

The primary screen on the Galaxy Z Fold Special Edition

That's a lot of screen real estate on the Z Fold Special Edition. | Image Credit -- Samsung

Call me a hopeless dreamer, but in a weird way, I feel like the existence of the Galaxy Z Fold Special Edition proves that Samsung has much bigger plans for the Z Fold 7. Worst case scenario, we're looking at a transitional device here meant to test the waters for just how big and thin the company can go without harming the battery life aspect of the Z Fold family's value equation too much.

Best case scenario, the Z Fold SE is a decoy of sorts designed to distract us from an entirely separate plan of revolutionizing foldable phones as we currently know them. Am I overestimating this industry pioneer and early global sales champ that somehow managed to lose its crown in a few short years? Perhaps, but I simply see no logical reason why the company would have unveiled the Galaxy Z Fold Special Edition now if something considerably bigger and better is not around the corner.

I have a dream!

Let's all close our eyes for a second and picture the following scenario. The Galaxy S25 family arrives in January with all of those recently rumored upgrades and revisions meant to give the iPhone 16 line a run for its money.

Samsung then catches the entire tech world by surprise with the global expansion of the Galaxy Z Fold Special Edition (under that name or a different one) in, say, March 2025. Four or five months later, a "standard" Galaxy Z Fold 7 drops with a faster than Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 processor, even bigger than 8 and 6.5-inch screens, largely unchanged dimensions, killer cameras, a built-in S Pen, and a sub-$2,000 starting price.

What if the next Galaxy Z Fold Special Edition takes inspiration from the tri-fold Huawei Mate XT?

Along with that, Samsung also unveils a "Special Edition" new Galaxy Z Fold with a huge display capable of folding in three. Now open your eyes and tell me that doesn't make perfect strategic sense. And yes, that would still put the company a couple of steps behind Huawei in the currently nascent tri-fold segment, but we all know it's far more important who does a groundbreaking smartphone design best than who does it first.

Of course, I must highlight that I don't own a crystal ball or know anyone with direct knowledge of Samsung's future product launch plans, so if nothing of the above proves accurate, please don't send horse heads to my home address or hateful e-mails to my work address. Unless they're funny, in which case my inbox is always open.

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Adrian, a mobile technology enthusiast since the Nokia 3310 era, has been a dynamic presence in the tech journalism field, contributing to Android Authority, Digital Trends, and Pocketnow before joining PhoneArena in 2018. His expertise spans across various platforms, with a particular fondness for the diversity of the Android ecosystem. Despite the challenges of balancing full-time parenthood with his work, Adrian's passion for tech trends, running, and movies keeps him energized. His commitment to mid-range smartphones has led to an eclectic collection of devices, saved from personal bankruptcy by his preference for 'adequate' over 'overpriced'.