After taking its foot off the gas in a category it helped define, Samsung has finally woken up to the fact it doesn’t have foldable phones completely sewn up. The Galaxy Z Fold Special Edition is the refined and upgraded flagship that will take the fight to upstart rivals including Google, OnePlus and Honor – or at least, it will if you live in Korea.
The long-rumoured Special Edition is a slimmer, lighter version of the Galaxy Z Fold6, which also brings some welcome internal upgrades. It weighs 236g – a modest yet welcome 3g improvement from the regular phone – and it now measures just 4.9mm when unfolded, compared to 5.6mm before. That means it’s just 10.6mm when folded, too – a 1.5mm saving that puts it ahead of the Google Pixel 9 Pro Fold.
Both screens have grown in size. The outer display has gone from 6.3in to 6.5in, and gets a more mainstream 21:9 aspect ratio that should make it easier to use than the super-skinny Z Fold6. The inner display now stretches over 8in, up from 7.6in. Both get Samsung’s latest AMOLED panel tech, so should be just as easy on the eyes as before.
The Special Edition uses the same Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 for Galaxy chipset as the Z Fold6, but comes with 16GB of RAM as standard. There’s just one storage capacity on offer: 512GB. The 4400mAh battery is unchanged, and charging speeds are likely to be identical – though Samsung had yet to confirm at the time of writing. WiFi 7 support is a nice addition, too.
Camera buffs will be very happy to see it gain the 200MP main snapper last seen in the Galaxy S24 Ultra, while the rest of the sensors stay the same. That means a 12MP ultrawide, 10MP telephoto with 3x optical zoom, a 10MP external selfie cam and a 4MP under-display webcam inside.
On paper these sound like small but worthwhile improvements that should help close the gap to rivals that are rapidly gaining momentum. It’s a small slap in the face to anyone that dropped $1800/£1800 on the regular Z Fold6 just a few short months ago, though.
That said, getting hold of one won’t be easy. The Galaxy Z Fold Special Edition is launching exclusively in Samsung’s Korean home market on 25 October. It’ll set foldable superfans back 2,789,600 KRW, or more than $2000/£2000, for the Black Shadow model – there aren’t any other colours on offer.
It will then head to China, likely as the Samsung W25, but there’s been no hint it’ll be sold anywhere else.