Samsung's 2026 flagship foldable, narrower than the Fold8, with a 200-megapixel main sensor, 10-megapixel 3X optical zoom, and 5,000-mAh battery.
Samsung's mechanical R&D chief tells WIRED that weight is the entire game in foldables, and his phone is now lighter than the company's own slab flagship. The grams came out of the camera and the dust seal.
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ETNews says Samsung added a million units to its launch run after the passport-shaped Z Fold8 took most of the lineup's preorders, which leaves accessory and app roadmaps designing for two hinge geometries instead of one.
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IDC's own inputs put the foldable iPhone at roughly 1% of units and 4.4% of industry revenue, while the demand it wrote off in one forecast revision exceeds the entire foldable category.
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The passport shape buys smaller letterbox bars and a fainter crease with a cover screen your thumb cannot cross and web pages that render off-frame. That is a trade-off frontier, not a finished product.
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Both new Folds run the same chip and hide the crease well. What separates them is a body shape, 200 mAh, and a 3X telephoto, which is a thin basis for a second tier.
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