Be careful what you want: we finally have some new industry insights into the Galaxy Z Fold 3 at our fingertips – and things are not looking so exciting. Mainly because of the fact that Samsung seems to be reducing the external screen a bit compared to the Galaxy Z Fold 2.
Although last year’s flagship offered a 6.2-inch screen, its successor now features a 5.4-inch Super AMOLED panel. Its narrow aspect ratio (25: 9) and resolution (2,260 x 816) remain unchanged compared to the Galaxy Z Fold 2, as per the same source.
Is that the price of S Pen?
Now, a 120 Hz update to the front display would help a lot to compensate for this reduction in screen space. And while this is more or less what several other sources have claimed since the end of 2020, coverage of the Galaxy Z Fold 3 across the industry remains less than consistent, to say the least. To begin with, it remains to be seen whether the S Pen should be blamed for this largely flat generational upgrade in terms of size.
Given that this is the first piece of information about the Galaxy Z Fold 3 to emerge in almost a month, its implications make the report quite disheartening. Being able to put tablet-like screen surfaces in your pocket has been one of the main attractions of foldable smartphones since long before Samsung was able to market them. But today’s leak suggests that the company is already putting the brakes on expanding the screen.
This is not to say that a foldable smartphone must be huge to compete; the Galaxy Z Flip hardly had a hard time impressing in both 2020 iterations. But it seems that cutting costs is Samsung’s number one priority at the moment. We can only hope that this strategy will also lead to significant price reductions across the foldable niche.