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There I am, popping some gnocchi and sausage in my mouth to get energized for the main event, and I’m browsing Twitter for some down time before I try and rub my fingers to nubs on the keyboard for you, dear reader.
I find a Twitter thread of Kimi Raikkonen adverts – the most morose, anti-media ex-F1 star doing ads? Yes please.
So color me surprised when the second one down is not only advertising the Galaxy Z Fold 3 and Z Flip 3… but he’s actually animated in this one! It must be because his wife, a well-known celebrity in Finland, made him jazz up for it.
Anyway, watch it. It’s brilliant. Then folllow the thread – but be back here in 35 minutes. This is a school trip, not a rodeo.
Samsung Galaxy fold commercial 2021. pic.twitter.com/1mZYgfHTc9August 9, 2022
OK, we’re T-minus one hour from the launch of the new slew of Galaxy Z Fold and Flip phones, and (probably) new watches and headphones too.
Make sure you’re ready to watch with our How to Watch Samsung Unpacked guide, and remember that this page autorefreshes regularly, so when everything starts going nuts and I need to type faster than ever, just let the page do its thing – you don’t need to press F5 (although it will give us more page views, which is nice).
One of the things that really puts me off buying a new Z Fold phone is the crease down the middle – I used the Galaxy Z Fold 2 for a few months, and I’ll admit I stopped noticing it after a while, but whenever I open it back up it’s there, staring me right in the face.
It’s like when I got my eyebrow pierced – I know that it didn’t hurt that much to get it done, but when I thought about having it done again I couldn’t bring myself to have someone push metal through my skin.
Same with the Fold 4 – I don’t want to spend well over $1,000 if I’m going to be greeted with sadness the first time I open it up – even though I know I’ll get used to it.
It depends if the rumors of a ‘reduced’ crease really are true or not – only an hour to go now to find out…
Let’s talk cameras – something that’s usually a strength of Samsung here. The brand will always be putting high-end snappers into the mix, partly because it develops the sensors itself, but the Fold and Flip series have never had the best-quality out there.
Will that change this time around? The rumors are clear that the new camera will be headlined by a 50MP sensor with optical image stabilization and a pretty-modern f/1.8 aperture sensor too.
That’s a far cry from the three 12MP sensor for last year, and could yield much better pictures as Samsung continues its campaign to make foldable phones ‘a thing’.
While we’re here talking about foldable phones, remember Microsoft’s Courier from all the way back in 2009? It was like a proto-foldable… well, it didn’t even fold at all, it was two Windows PCs without a keyboard welded together.
You interacted with a stylus, it sounded mega, you could move things across from one screen to the other in a note-taking manner… it’s clearly the grandmother of the Surface Duo phone, but man alive, I wanted it so much.
Speaking of the Microsoft foldable world, let’s not forget the Surface Duo was actually a pretty decent phone and was much-loved by those that reviewed it… but more in an affectionate way, than an overly-impressed one.
quite enjoying this. uh oh pic.twitter.com/qpjak1JugHAugust 9, 2022
There was an excellent article over on The Verge recently (opens in new tab) around the fact that Samsung is pulling far into the lead in the foldables space, which is why it can afford to make incremental changes to its phones.
It’s an interesting point – but the fact is that, without the massive marketing spend Samsung thrust on its foldable range with the Z Fold 3, it wouldn’t have sold 10 million units last year, and it would be back duking it out with Huawei, Oppo and (sort of) Microsoft right now.
Let’s go again team – and this time, we’re already seeing the standard efforts to try and generate some buzz. Some hype. Some thrash metal fun, over on Twitter.
It’s done the standard thing for a social media presence to do: run a poll.
So… are you Team Fold or Team Flip?
Let’s prepare a lovely battle here! Are you team Flip or team Fold? #SamsungUnpacked #GalaxyUnpackedAugust 10, 2022
At the time of posting, Team Fold is ahead, 60% to 40%. But, then again, only 254 people have voted… but I get the feeling that ratio will hold.