Samsung lowered the price of its foldable flip phone, the Galaxy Z Flip 5G, by $ 250. Now it’s $ 1,199.99, which, in appearance, looks like a pretty big drop from the original asking price of $ 1,449. , 99 in July 2020.
However, there are two things to remember about the price change. Firstly, this phone is about six months old and is the same design as the non-5G version released last February. Samsung phones are famous for seeing aggressive and upfront deals; now this trend is reaching foldable phones as well. So while it is good to see a price drop, it is not exactly rare.
Second, $ 1,200 is still very expensive for a phone that has essentially the same specifications and functionality as a Galaxy S20 FE 5G, which can be purchased for $ 700 (or less, if you can find a deal).
The news of the price drop came after Samsung cellphone president TM Roh promised to make foldable phones “more accessible to everyone” in 2021. It also came after Samsung’s latest earnings announcement, in which it said that would expand its portfolio of foldable products – specifically citing that it plans to “expand the foldable category, including the Galaxy Z Fold and Galaxy Z Flip”.
We were already expecting a new version of the Z Fold (which opens to the size of a small tablet) sometime this year with stylus support, but it is unclear when Samsung will be able to launch it. As for the Z Flip, it is not clear what this drop in price means for the next time.
But the biggest question around folding phones is not when new ones will arrive; it’s about how much they will cost. While it is definitely true that $ 1,200 is $ 250 less than $ 1,450, there is still a very high price for customers who want their phones to be folded into smaller packages.
The Z Flip is easily the best flip-style phone on the market, but it is a small market. The only other viable competitor is the Motorola Razr 5G, which, at the time of this writing, was also discounted to $ 1,200 from its original $ 1,400 price.
In other words, foldable phones are still luxury products. These flip phones cost almost 50 percent more than comparable non-foldable devices. It’s nice to see the Z Flip 5G become “more affordable”, but unless the price difference can get smaller, foldable phones will continue to be curiosities rather than mass-market devices.