Next month, just shy of what should have been the one-year anniversary of the launch of the Samsung Galaxy Fold (which unfortunately had to be delayed at the last minute as a result of Samsung’s rush-job design that led to some handsets breaking within hours of landing in reviewers’ hands) the company will unveil its successor to that first-generation foldable phone. And if the early renderings are anything to go by, this launch will be night-and-day different compared to last year’s dumpster fire, when pretty much everything that could go wrong with the release of the first Galaxy Fold … did, in fact, go wrong. The price was too high, the design and build were nowhere near durable enough, the phone’s screen seemed to become unusable after barely any use in some early models — and the list goes on.On Monday, we showed you YouTuber Waqar Khan’s concept design that takes various leaks and design tidbits that have shown up in the rumor mill to try and present a good idea of what we can expect when Samsung formally unveils the Fold 2 at a press conference on February 11 (when Samsung will also launch its new Galaxy S20 series). Today, we have a new set of images and a video rendering of the second-generation Fold prepared by the Dutch 3D designer who goes by the moniker Concept Creator in partnership with Dutch tech news blog LetsGoDigital, and let’s just say if the finished product looks anything like what’s presented here, it would seem that Samsung may have learned the lessons of the Galaxy Fold’s misfire, and then some.
Right off the bat, one of the things that stands out from the video above and the images below is that a Fold 2 along these lines would be a seriously beautiful device. Thanks to a combination of leaks that we and other outlets have been reporting on for several weeks now, it’s believed that the foldable Samsung introduces next month will sport a clamshell design a la the Motorola RAZR that was introduced last month. We in the press have been unofficially referring to it as the Fold 2, but it’s not certain whether Samsung will officially use that as the branding or not.
The much more attractive-looking design you can see here relies on changes Samsung decided to make this time around that include a hinge you can barely see which Samsung has trademarked as the “hideaway hinge.” In the original Galaxy Fold, there’s a noticeable vertical line you can see where the phone folds in half. This new kind of hinge on the Fold 2, meanwhile, is hidden in the housing of the device and will thus be hardly visible at all.
Samsung will also use a new kind of glass for the Fold 2 display that’s less prone to scratches and supposedly as thin as human hair. Samsung’s official name for the material is the perhaps uncreatively named “Ultra Thin Glass,” and while it will apparently be more expensive to manufacturer it will provide benefits that include greater scratch resistance — in addition to being less than 100 micrometers thick, so hopefully making it possible to shrink down the entire bulk a bit.
Meanwhile, as LetsGoDigital noted in a report on Monday, the Fold 2 will also come without a notch while including a hole-punch camera. There’s also a rumor that this handset will sport a 6.7-inch Dynamic AMOLED screen, which would make it a bit larger than the RAZR with its 6.2-inch display.
Additionally, there will be a small notification screen on the front of the phone that will display minor items like the date and time, as well as a battery indicator. As we noted, some of the materials Samsung is using in this new version of the foldable are a bit more expensive to manufacture with the phone, so it will certainly be interesting to see what that does to the price tag — especially since the smaller, clamshell form factor might imply a correspondingly less expensive cost than that of the first Fold ($1,980). Everyone will be watching closely to see what Samsung comes up with, so check out the video and images and see what you think.
