Fold the phone: all the foldables coming in 2023

The specs for Motorola’s upcoming flagship foldable have leaked. A marketing image posted by leaker SnoopyTech indicates that the premium Razr 40 Ultra could come with a massive 3.6-inch pOLED outer display at 144Hz, as well as a 6.9-inch inner pOLED display when the device is unfolded.

The leaked image, which contains Italian text that we translated with the help of Google, suggests that the device will come with Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Plus Gen 1 chip. That’s the same component that comes in Samsung’s flagship Galaxy device and the one that Motorola added to its 2022 version of the Razr, which was only released in China and Europe.

The Moto Razr Ultra foldable still isn’t official — but thanks to reliable gadget leaker Evan Blass, who’s been on top of this phone for months, we now have what appears to be an official 44-second commercial for the phone.

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Samsung’s expected to reveal the new Galaxy Z Fold 5, Flip 5, and Tab S9 devices at its Unpacked event later this year, and thanks to reports from Winfuture and the Korean news outlet The Chosun Ilbo, we now have an idea of when exactly this could take place. Rumors suggest that Samsung could hold Unpacked on July 26th, while the devices could become available in stores on August 11th.

If these reports hold true, this means Galaxy Unpacked will occur a couple of weeks earlier than last year’s event, which Samsung held on August 10th. Just like last year’s mid-summer Unpacked, Samsung’s set to reveal the latest iterations of its flagship foldables, including the Galaxy Z Fold 5. This device is rumored to feature a much thinner design when folded compared to its predecessor, along with the same 6.2-inch cover display and a 7.6-inch inner display.

I don’t give a damn about the bezels. Just let me get that part of Google’s new $1,799 Pixel Fold out of the way. They’re fine. And I’m absolutely on board with the squat form factor: having this phone / tablet hybrid feel like a notepad in hand when it’s closed seems like a far better solution than Samsung’s tall boy.

The Galaxy Fold 4 is too narrow for us large-handed humans, and when opened up, its square-ish inner display leaves sizable black bars when watching videos. In his Pixel Fold hands-on, my colleague Dan Seifert found Google’s wider aspect ratio to feel more natural for multitasking.

Google’s taken a page from Samsung’s book and made itself a foldable phone. In fact, the newly announced Google Pixel Fold, shown off at Google I/O 2023 alongside the Pixel 7A and Pixel Tablet, looks as if it borrowed a few chapters from Samsung’s Galaxy Z Fold 4. The foldables share a fairly striking resemblance since Google opted for the phone-unfolds-into–tablet method of design philosophy and an equally lofty $1,799.99 starting price. However, when you look just a little closer, you notice some stark differences.

Here, we’re pitting the two folding ultra-flagships up against one another to compare their specs and features on paper. While Samsung is on its fourth iteration of the Galaxy Fold, Google will be a first-time player in the world of foldable phones when the Pixel Fold launches in late June. But can Google really even compete with a first-gen product?

After the rumors, leaks, and an early tease, Google has now properly introduced both its new flagship foldable and midrange slab phone offerings: the Pixel Fold and the Pixel 7A. These were some of the showcase device announcements at the tech giant’s Google I/O 2023 keynote, accompanied by other Android and AI-related news.

The Pixel 7A continues Google’s formula of taking some of the best features from its latest generation of flagship phones, leaving out extras that cost a premium and dropping the cost to a more budget-friendly price. And speaking of premium, the Pixel Fold is a new ultra-flagship addition to the Pixel lineup, one that represents Google’s first attempt at a foldable phone and takes a page from Samsung’s Galaxy Z Fold 4 in the “it’s a regular-ish phone that also unfolds into a small tablet” department.

Following literal years of rumors and leaks, Google has finally announced the Pixel Fold, its first folding device. The $1,799 Fold is set to go head-to-head with Samsung’s Galaxy Z Fold 4 with preorders starting today, May 10th, and will be shipping to customers in June.

Though this is Google’s first attempt at a folding phone, there’s a lot to like here. As a general gadget or device that you hold and manipulate in your hands, the Pixel Fold is very nice — the hinge is stiff but not cumbersome, the screens look great, and it feels like the expensive object it is. Google’s apps and software appear to work well on it, and it’s likely that any future folding phone features built into Android will be done with the Pixel Fold front of mind.

Yet another leaked teaser for the Pixel Fold has surfaced just hours before its expected launch at Google I/O. In a promo video by leaker SnoopyTech, Google highlights just how thin its flagship foldable really is and also shows off how you can prop the device up on a table when watching videos.

The ad offers a look at what multitasking on the device might be like as well. As shown in the clip, a user has a video call open in one panel when the device is unfolded, while Google Drive is open in another. They’re also able to drag and drop files across both screens.

The rumors are true: next week, Google will introduce its first foldable phone, the Pixel Fold, during the Google I/O 2023 event.

Google hasn’t revealed any specs for the device, but a brief teaser video shows off a full-size outer display on a phone that opens up similarly to Samsung’s Galaxy Z Fold devices. The camera bar on the back is similar to other Pixel devices but doesn’t stick out as prominently, reflecting what we’ve seen in leaked marketing materials and even a hands-on video.

Ice Universe, an anonymous Twitter account with a good track record of leaking details about unannounced smartphones, says Samsung’s upcoming Z Flip 5 will have a 3.4-inch cover screen with a resolution of 720 x 748. This isn’t the first time Ice has predicted that 3.4-inch secondary display, but it’s the first time we’ve seen a specific resolution listed. It’s a big increase over the 1.9-inch 260 x 512 cover display on the Z Flip 4.

The leak comes a few short days after OnLeaks and MediaPeanut published a series of unofficial renders of the upcoming handset based on leaked specs, while also claiming the phone will have a 3.4-inch cover display. Meanwhile, OnLeaks expects the size of the internal display to remain unchanged at 6.7 inches. Late last year, supply chain analyst Ross Young also reported that the Z Flip 5 would have a secondary display in excess of 3 inches.

The latest leaked images of the upcoming Motorola Razr give us an even better look at the foldable’s large outer display and interface, as first spotted by 9to5Google. In a set of images posted to Twitter by reliable leaker Evan Blass (who has made his account private), you can see how the display extends from the phone’s hinge and wraps around the device’s dual cameras.

The images also show off some of the different clock displays you can use and suggest that you can customize the interface’s font, layout, color, theme, and wallpaper to your liking. It seems like Motorola may add a new color option into the mix as well, with the above image showing two devices featuring a deep red hinge.

Huawei’s Mate X3 is its latest foldable phone, and it has a set of specs that, in an alternate universe, would give Samsung’s Z Fold 4 a run for its money. It pairs a 6.4-inch external display with a 7.85-inch internal foldable screen in a device that’s 5.3mm thick while unfolded and that weighs 239 grams. That’s theoretically thinner and lighter than Samsung’s latest foldable, which is 6.3mm thick and weighs 263 grams and matches its IPX8 rating for dust and water resistance.

Huawei has announced the foldable alongside a series of more traditional smartphones including the P60, P60 Pro, and P60 Art.

The Google Pixel Fold could be available as soon as the second week in June, according to WinFuture’s Roland Quandt. The reliable leaker tweeted on Tuesday that the phone will come with 256GB base storage and that you’ll be able to get it in either a black / dark gray color or white.

The foldable has been rumored for a long time, and there have been whispers that it would be announced sometime in the next few months. However, a January report from The Elec threw some cold water on that idea, saying that the screen wasn’t even set to go into production until July or August.

We have good reason to believe that Samsung will put a new kind of hinge in its next flagship foldable, and a South Korean trade publication has just supplied more confirmation. Spotted by 9to5Google, The Elec reports that Samsung has started reliability testing a new water drop-style hinge for the upcoming Galaxy Z Fold 5.

The new hinge design would make the folded phone thinner and help reduce the appearance of a crease with the main screen unfolded. But according to this report, Samsung is testing the hinge to withstand 200,000 folds like the last one, which falls short of longevity claims from recent competitors like the Honor Magic VS and Oppo Find N2 — both rated to 400,000 folds.

Trade shows like Mobile World Congress are filled with one of my favorite kinds of phones. They’re the ones that have a single amazing, standout feature to offer to the world, even if their overall package might not represent something you’d want to buy and use as your everyday smartphone.

They’re phones like the Vivo X20 Plus UD, which we tried out at CES 2018 and was the first phone to ship with an under-display fingerprint sensor. And although it wasn’t announced at a trade show, I’d put the OnePlus 7 Pro in the same category for being one of the first mainstream smartphones with a 90Hz display. Sometimes, it feels like all it takes is for one phone to show how beneficial a feature can be before the rest of the industry rapidly catches up. 

Motorola’s launching yet another Razr this year, according to a report from CNBC. Yang Yuanqing, the CEO of Motorola’s parent company Lenovo, told the outlet that the next-gen foldable would arrive “very soon” with some improvements to the device’s hinge.

In an interview with CNBC, Yang didn’t expand much on what’s new with the upcoming Razr but said its inner display could have a less notable crease when unfolded — an issue that just about every foldable maker has to contend with. “I think it’s much better,” Yang told CNBC in reference to the new device.

We finally have global pricing for the Honor Magic VS, which is the first foldable from the company that it’ll sell outside of China. During its presentation at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, the company said it’ll be available to buy in global markets starting at €1,599 (around $1,690) for a model with 12GB of RAM and 512GB of storage. It’ll be available in the UK in June, but release dates in other global markets are yet to be announced. For reference, at €1,799 (£1,649 / $1,799), Samsung’s competing Galaxy Z Fold 4 was priced a little higher at launch last year.

Alongside it, the company announced a more traditional flagship smartphone series headed up by the Honor Magic5 Pro, which will cost €1,199 (around $1,267) for a model with 12GB of RAM and 512GB of storage and which will be available in the UK in May and in the second quarter of this year in other global markets. There’s also a non-Pro Magic5, which will start at €899 (around $950) for a model with 8GB of RAM and 256GB of storage.