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Samsung Galaxy Z Fold Special Edition is expensive for more than a reason

By Daniel Petrov

Published: Nov 08, 2024, 9:26 AM

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Samsung Galaxy Z Fold Special Edition is expensive for more than a reason

After much deliberation, Samsung decided to bring the Galaxy Z Fold Special Edition to a world peppered with thinner and more powerful foldables from Chinese brands like Honor, Oppo, OnePlus, Huawei, and others.

Why? Well, it already spent a lot of time designing it, and, after it saw that it can't make it as thin as the Chinese foldables and at the same time more durable, it simply decided to bet on the added value of durability, and release it in a limited number of markets.

Those include China, where Samsung's main competition in the field comes from, but there the Galaxy Z Fold Special Edition is called the W25 and comes with in a tacky golden color and an even tackier $2,400 starting price. Wait, what? Why?

The Galaxy Z Fold Special Edition price is hinging on the hinge

Granted, the Samsung W25 comes with an exclusive ceramic back that the Korean version doesn't get, but even that one starts from the equivalent of $2,000, half a grand more expensive than the Galaxy Z Fold 6.

One of the main reasons, besides all the R&D that Samsung poured into making the thinnest foldable phone it can make as an answer to the Chinese onslaught, is the component complexity. Just the hinge of the Galaxy Z Fold Special Edition contains twice the number of moving parts than the hinge of the fattier Galaxy Z Fold 6 sports.

The Galaxy Z Fold 6 hinge comprises cogs, arms, and all the hinge paraphernalia that uses up to 70 separate small components to make it close and unfurl seamlessly. In contrast, the Galaxy Z Fold Special Edition hinge has nearly 140 tiny parts in it, and has been developed in cooperation with Samsung's long term partner KH Vatec from the home turf in Korea that makes sturdy but rather expensive hinges.

Since the Galaxy Z Fold Special Edition is 10.6mm thick when closed, and is much thinner than the Z Fold 6 that is 12.1mm, Samsung had to reinforce the hinge so that the display and screen crease can withstand all the folding and unfolding pressure applied to it. Unfortunately, Samsung just couldn't go any thinner without sacrificing things like hinge durability and ingress protection that the Z Fold SE brings to the thin foldable phones table.

Galaxy Z Fold Special Edition size | Image credit – Samsung

Would you like titanium or ceramic with that?

The Galaxy Z Fold Special Edition has a titanium backplate, making for a lighter and thinner yet just as sturdy as the regular Z Fold 6 device. Samsung's phones in the Fold line typically use plastic backs reinforced with carbon fiber because they have to support the S Pen stylus, and a metal backplate would've introduced interference to the extra digitizer layer.

Samsung eschewed the S Pen support hence the digitizer layer in the Galaxy Z Fold Special Edition screen in order to make it thinner and lighter, so it could use anything its heart desires for the backplate.

In China, for example, Samsung's heart desired a ceramic backplate for the Galaxy W25 version of the Z Fold SE. This will undoubtedly give it a more premium feel, but adds another $400 to the already exorbitant Z Fold Special Edition price.

A 140-part hinge? Titanium? Ceramic? Those things don't come cheap to order or manufacture, but there is more.

The Ultra camera and ultra display

The Galaxy Z Fold Special Edition comes with a 7.99-inch display, the largest that Samsung has put on a foldable. The screen offers 2184 x 1968 (QXGA+) pixels resolution, 2,600 nits of peak brightness, and 120 Hz dynamic refresh rate, beating the Z Fold 6 panel when it comes to its specifications.

Besides the record thin (for Samsung) girth and the biggest screen on a Samsung foldable, the Z Fold SE boasts another pretty remarkable set of specs, this time in the camera department. The 200 MP + 12 MP + 10 MP kit is better than what we have on the Galaxy Z Fold 6, at least as far as the main sensor is concerned, as it seems borrowed directly from the Galaxy S24 Ultra.

Inquiring minds are suggesting that Samsung will continue in that vein for its non-foldable phones as well, introducing a Galaxy S25 Slim with an "Ultra" camera in the spring, most likely the same 200MP sensor that the Special Edition foldable now boasts.

Again, the rear cameras that are capable of 3x optical zoom aren't up to par with the Chinese or Google foldable phones that are already using periscope zoom lenses, but it is still the best set Samsung has ever put on a foldable and that has added to the manufacturing costs.

The special Z Fold was bound to be expensive

All in all, Samsung sank so many R&D and component resources into the making of the Galaxy Z Fold Special Edition, that a higher price was inevitable, despite that the original idea may have been to make a cheaper foldable without S Pen digitizer.

Seeing what the competition came up with mustn't have been easy for Samsung, resulting in the mission creep that is the Galaxy Z Fold Special Edition, its pricey first crack at a more elegant foldable phone.

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Daniel, a devoted tech writer at PhoneArena since 2010, has been engrossed in mobile technology since the Windows Mobile era. His expertise spans mobile hardware, software, and carrier networks, and he's keenly interested in the future of digital health, car connectivity, and 5G. Beyond his professional pursuits, Daniel finds balance in travel, reading, and exploring new tech innovations, while contemplating the ethical and privacy implications of our digital future.