We're waiting for the price of foldable phones to come down to make them affordable for the rest of us, but it looks like we might be waiting a few years before the cheap phone revolution hits these futuristic handsets.
Leaker @chunv8888, who has a mixed track record with targeted leaks, posted a tweet reading "Galaxy A foldable," which is short but easy to understand: Samsung is apparently working on a foldable member of its affordable Galaxy A line of devices.
Sadly, the leak was quickly cleared up with a follow-up tweet saying "Not Happening Anytime Soon, 2024-2025."
Oh. So, do we have two or three years to wait? Fortunately, there was no third message, so we didn't have any more bad news piling up.
It won't happen so soon, 2024-2025. At least, that's when Samsung intends to launch... https://t.co/qQbwgAff5YJune 4, 2022
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We don't expect Samsung's cheap foldables to actually be called the 'Galaxy A foldable': the current ones are called the Galaxy Z range, not the Galaxy S foldable (which it should be called to match its S range of high-end phones). ). But we interpret it as chunv8888 using that term to keep the message clear and simple.
The leak doesn't give any reason why Samsung's affordable foldable phones might be so far behind, but our analysis shows that it's likely an unfortunate cocktail of foldable tech's natural prices taking a while to depreciate in cost, and the continuing shortage of chipsets as well. affecting the value of the components.
Analysis: Samsung will probably be the first
This news was only about Samsung's first affordable fold in two or three years, you might be wondering why we refer to all these devices so far, but Samsung is likely to be the first to venture into this new niche.
Although it is not the first company to launch folding phones, it is one of the companies (along with Huawei) that has worked most feverishly to launch new phones of this type.
We imagine that most companies, despite generally focusing on cheap phones, will make their first foldables more expensive to recoup R&D costs and allow them to establish a more affordable manufacturing process.
This will allow for cheaper devices over time. Just look at Motorola: while many of its smartphones were cheap, its Razr range of foldable devices was quite expensive.
A potential threat to Samsung's cheap foldable phone dominance would be TCL, as the company has said in the past that it was looking to make cheap foldable phones, but after years and years of showing off cheap foldable mobile concepts, there's only one left to launch. . , so we doubt the brand can put its money where its mouth is.
If we see a low-cost, affordable foldable phone worth buying before 2024, we'll be very impressed, but deep down we hope Samsung will be first with its foldable Galaxy A, especially since Samsung revealed how it learned from previous foldable phones. . mistakes.