Or could that just be within the US?

This could be the Galaxy Z Flip (Image credit: WinFuture)

It's heavily rumored that Samsung will introduce its second foldable phone within the next few weeks alongside the Samsung Galaxy S20 series - but it's going to not accompany 5G on board.

We know this because the Samsung Galaxy Z Flip - the present rumored name for one among the foldable phones the corporation has in development - recently had authentication from the FCC (Federal Communications Commission).

This is a United States government agency that regulates gadgets that use radio signals within the US, and therefore the listing thus far doesn't include a 5G band for the upcoming device.

• The absolute best Samsung phones
• All of the confirmed foldable phones
• There also are rumors of a Samsung Galaxy Fold 2

While which will mean the phone doesn't support 5G in the least, it might be that this is often only one variant of the phone that has been run through the FCC.

Samsung's Galaxy Fold came during a 5G version in some markets including the united kingdom and South Korea, but it had been never an option for those that sleep in the US. which will be repeated again here with the Galaxy Z Flip.

But albeit no version of the Galaxy Z Flip comes with 5G, some upcoming Samsung phones likely will.

Most notably, consistent leaks have suggested the Galaxy S20 series will all accompany versions that support the technology.

We're expecting both the Galaxy Z Flip and therefore the Galaxy S20 range to be announced on February 11, and we have seen some strong rumors that you're going to be ready to patronize least a number of the phones on March 6.




source:

But there's still no release date

After months of delays, Samsung might finally be ready to release the Galaxy Fold, as the handset has supposedly now been redesigned, hopefully fixing the issues it faced.

That’s according to ‘people familiar with the matter’, speaking to Bloomberg, who said a two-month redesign to fix the phone’s screen failures has now been completed. Apparently, Samsung is now in the ‘final stages’ of producing a commercial version but hasn’t yet pinned down an exact launch date.

The sources did say that it’s unlikely Samsung will launch the redesigned Galaxy Fold during the Samsung Galaxy Note 10’s announcement on August 7 though, which at this point means it will probably go on sale after the Note 10.

• Read our full Samsung Galaxy S10 review
• Lots of foldable phones are on the way
• The iPhone 11 is also coming soon

With the foldable Huawei Mate X now set to land by September, it remains unclear whether Samsung will still be the first company with a high-profile foldable handset on the market.

Still, it sounds like the wait is almost over now, if this information is accurate, and we’d expect to hear official details about a release date soon.

We’ll let you know as soon as we hear anything on the subject, and at least you’ll have had more time to save – at $1,980 / £1,800 (around AU$3,225) the Samsung Galaxy Fold is sure to be a big hit on most bank balances.




READ MORE:

We spoke to Vincent Pang, who said 5G's slow rollout, not US politics, is the reason behind the wait

The foldable Huawei Mate X is still coming and we know when it'll launch: September or sooner, according to a Huawei executive who spoke to TechRadar this week.

"It's coming in September – at the latest," said Vincent Pang, President of Huawei's Western European Region, while visiting New York City. "Probably earlier, but definitely September is guaranteed."

Where will the Huawei Mate X launch? "Any country that has 5G," Pang told us, making sure to remind us that Huawei's foldable phone is a 5G phone.

This was likely stressed because the Samsung Galaxy Fold launched with a 4G LTE version (before ultimately being recalled), with a 5G version only spoken about once and never officially priced.

Of course, Pang's "any country that has 5G" comment comes with a caveat. The Mate X isn't coming to the US, which is no surprise given the Huawei ban in the US.

Surprise: it'll still run Android at launch

We got more hands-on time with the Huawei Mate X, going as far as playing a game on all of its screens: folded front, folded back, and unfolded in tablet mode.

While PUBG looked great and felt roomy on the 8-inch screen (foldable phones will almost certainly dominate our best gaming phones list one day), it got us wondering: will the Mate X actually run Android and its apps when it launches?

"Yes," Pang told us. "Because it has already been announced," suggesting that it may fall outside of Trump administration's ban on US companies (including software companies like Google) from dealing with Huawei.

We've seen a lot of your comments predicting "We'll probably never see this phone" in the last two months given the ban. But Pang and Huawei officials we've spoken to seem awfully confident it'll launch, and launch with Android intact.

 Embedded video

Me playing @PUBGMOBILE on the foldable Huawei Mate X and not letting @JulianChokkattu have any time with it 😈 pic.twitter.com/SsQc66tCIC

— Matt Swider (@mattswider) June 21, 2019

Two extra bits of information about the "by September" launch time frame. First, we were told that 5G's slow rollout was the reason for the 'delay,' not US politics.

Huawei is waiting for 5G to cement itself in China and other important areas. 5G just went live in the UK, which has always been a key territory for Huawei smartphones.

Second, the word 'delay' is in dispute: it was always due to launch in the summer (which ends on September 21 in the Northern Hemisphere). A journalist inferred July at MWC 2019, according to Huawei, and the internet ran with that story.



"It's basically the same hardware [as we showed at MWC]," Pang told us. He said Huawei has spent its time tweaking the software so that applications adapt to full-screen mode when the Mate X is unfolded in the tablet orientation.

When asked what Huawei was doing to ensure the durability of the Mate X's plastic OLED screen and avoid mimicking Samsung's botched launch, Pang told us "That's a secret. But we have done a lot of tests, especially for that."





ReAD MORE:

This time it won’t be two phones stuck together

Patents filed by Chinese phone manufacturer ZTE show the company is testing designs for a foldable phone, which it could bring to markets in the near future.

Filed on March 5 and discovered by Letsgodigital, the patents show a foldable clamshell design, in which the phone folds in half horizontally like a flip-phone, with the display inside the shell when folded. As the top and bottom part of the screen are different sizes there’s a prominent lip when folded, where part of the lower screen is still visible.

• These are all the rumored and confirmed foldable phones
• What is Apple up to with the iPhone 11?
• Are 5G phones the future of connectivity?

We can make out a lot about the device from the sketches, as they all seem to be of the same device – it has a USB-C port, power button and volume rocker on the left of the device, and no side or rear-mounted fingerprint sensor – so either it has an on-screen scanner, or it doesn’t use fingerprint ID.

The camera setup suggested by the images appears confusing – when folded, the phone has a dual-lens camera on each side, but when unfolded both these setups face the same way, and there’s no indication of a front-facing selfie-cam in this state.

As these cameras would presumably be pointing at slightly different angles when the device is unfolded, we’d be surprised to see them on the final device, and it could be that ZTE is just testing where they’d fit best – images in patents tend to be very early-stage renderings, so the camera setup could change substantially before we see a working device.

This isn’t the first time ZTE has experimented with foldable phones, as the ZTE Axon M was technically two phones you could fold into a tablet, but it didn’t have a flexible screen of the kind expected on the latest foldable like the Samsung Galaxy Fold or Huawei Mate X.

The most interesting part of the patent is the use of a clamshell design – while all the foldable announced so far have opened from smartphones to tablets, clamshells fold down to roughly half their opened size. Samsung, Apple, and Motorola are all reportedly working on clamshell foldable, so we’d expect to see one or more of these hit the market in the near future.




READ MORE:

Maybe a little too incredible...

We've just been given another look at the Xiaomi foldable phone, and this time it's a well lit shot of the firm's co-founder seemingly using the device to open apps and make video calls.

It looks to be the same device which was teased in a short video clip by @evleaks a few weeks ago, but this time we get a much better look at the concept foldable smartphone.

What gives this video credibility is the flexible phone is being used by Lin Bin, the co-founder of Xiaomi, and he shared it on his personal Weibo account where he said the "Xiaomi double folding mobile phone is coming."

Instead of having a central folding action, this device has two folding hinges, with the outer thirds of the large display folding behind the central portion of the screen.

That's different to the only other foldable phone we've managed to get our hands on - the Royole FlexPai - which has a more traditional central folding action, but also considerably more bezel, while the Xiaomi offering looks far slicker.

You can see the Xiaomi foldable phone in action below.


A little too good?

As impressive as the phone appears in the video, it's worth taking it with a pinch of salt. We're skeptical as the concept phone seems too good to be true.

Having been hands on with the Royole FlexPai - a heavy, thick device with clunky software and a sizable bezel to one side to house the various technical features of the phone - it's difficult to see how Xiaomi has made such a seemingly slick device.

It's worth noting that this is still very much a concept device, with Bin saying "if you like it, we will consider making a mass production machine in the future."

What it does mean is the rumored folding Samsung Galaxy X, which is tipped to launch on February 20 alongside the Galaxy S10, could have some serious competition.



SOURCE: