Samsung has big expectations from its new foldables, but they haven’t gotten any cheaper (the opposite, in fact) and the upgrades, while appreciated, are nothing groundbreaking – other brands had already figured out hinge designs that close shut and have large cover displays on their clamshell foldables.
Last week’s poll shows that the price is a major issue for the Samsung Galaxy Z Fold5. Even glowing reviews won’t sway most people, it’s just out of reach for them in terms of cost. And it doesn’t help that the Z Fold cameras have languished behind what the Galaxy S Ultra phones are getting.
The cameras and to some extent the battery life were the biggest complaints about the Z Fold5 hardware. That new hinge sure is cool and the faster, more efficient chipset is also a plus, but the Z Fold remains a niche device that only the most well-heeled buyers can consider.
Moving over to the Galaxy Z Flip5, this one is seeing stronger demand but also more hesitation – the reviews will be important as things as the functionality of the larger cover display are still in flux. It does more than Samsung initially announced, but there might be some wasted potential too. We’ll see how the review goes.
Crucially for the Flip, far fewer people believe that there are better options available – the vanilla Motorola Razr 40 suffered a lot of knocks and while the much more capable Razr 40 Ultra/Razr+ had its defenders, they were few and far between.
We saw a lot of praise for the Honor Magic V2 as a potential alternative to the Z Fold5, so Honor better hurry up and launch it in Europe. As a reminder, we don’t know how much it would cost and whether Honor will be able to match Samsung’s software support (a big positive for both Z phones). Disappointingly for Google, the Pixel Fold barely got a mention or two.
