New York: Six-and-a-half years since Samsung first unveiled a smartphone with a folding screen, the company has today showcased its seventh-generation product, pushing almost all the boundaries of design and capabilities for any smartphone.
“Samsung Unpacked” is the twice-annual event Samsung uses to reveal new smart devices including smartphones, headphones and wearables.
The event in Brooklyn, New York, focused on foldable smartphones and Samsung Galaxy smartwatches.
While the Samsung Fold – a device that opens up like a book to reveal a large screen inside – has been popular, it’s always suffered from being a bulky device to hold and keep in your pocket when folded, compared it to a traditional smartphone.
That’s a problem of the past now for Samsung and could lead to a surge in Aussies converting to this all-new yet six-year-old form factor thanks to the ultra-thin design of the new Samsung Galaxy Fold 7.
When folded shut, this new Fold7 is just 8.9mm thick.
That’s 3.2mm thinner than last year’s Fold 6, and when compared to Samsung’s largest “traditional” smartphone it’s just 0.7mm thicker than the 8.2mm thin Galaxy S25 Ultra.
What that means is when you open it up, and “unfold” the inner 8-inch display, the device is just 4.2mm in thickness.
Frankly, it can’t get any thinner and still include a physical charging port.
To achieve this, engineers have worked on new hinge mechanisms, as well as new screen technologies, but some compromises have been made, albeit ones that are unlikely to affect sales in any way.
The Fold 7 does not support Samsung’s S-Pen stylus for writing on the screen, and the internal camera is now a “hole punch” in the screen, instead of working from behind the screen pixels.
Eric Chou, Head of Mobile for Samsung Australia, told 9news.com.au: “What’s interesting is that more than a third of the customers who buy a Samsung Galaxy Flip or Fold are customers who previously had not used a Galaxy phone before, so we are definitely generating a lot more new customers coming across to the Samsung Galaxy Family.”
And while rumours of Apple’s entry into the foldable space have long circulated, there’s no sign of any device from iPhone maker just yet.
Though Chou isn’t bothered by any potential new player.
“We welcome competition because that continues to give credibility to this category, but we are very confident that this is the seventh generation of our foldable devices and we’ll continue to go from strength to strength.”
Samsung also revealed a new version of their Flip phone, a smartphone that looks like a traditional smartphone when in use, but folds shut in the middle from top to bottom, allowing a half-sized device in the hand or pocket.
That Galaxy Flip 7 is actually wider and larger than previous generations, with a 6.9-inch main foldable display along with a 4.1-inch outer display.
It fixes the main concern with previous Flip products by adding a 4300mAh battery for longer battery life.
In addition to these new smartphones, Samsung revealed new smartwatches.
The Galaxy Watch 8, Watch 8 Classic and a new version of the Watch Ultra will also go on sale August 1.
While there are some impressive new software features, including being the first smartwatches with generative AI connectivity on-device using Google’s Gemini AI, the standout and most unique feature is antioxidant level checking within Samsung Health.
Take the smartwatch off, open Samsung Health on your smartphone and begin a check – place your thumb on the back of the watch, wait a few seconds and your antioxidant levels will be displayed on a bar chart and can be monitored over time.
If you don’t know that that is telling you, it’s simple – have you been eating enough vegetables?
For me, the answer was a resounding no.
So now we can measure sleep, steps, heart rate and if you’ve been eating well.
All these new devices go on sale on August 1 and pre-orders start today.
Galaxy Fold 7 will be priced at $2899, Flip 7 at $1799 and the watches start at $649.
Trevor Long travelled to New York as a guest of Samsung Australia.
