Samsung has finally announced the Galaxy Z Fold Special Edition. This new book-style foldable comes with a slimmer design than the Galaxy Z Fold 6, but as expected, it will have limited availability.

The Galaxy Z Fold Special Edition is official and it comes with a slimmer body

Samsung announced this phone via a press release in Korea. Trusted sources said, a while back, that the phone will be available in Korea and China only. Those are sad news for many people out there, but this launch type kind of confirms the rumors.

We’ve exclusively revealed the design of the Galaxy Z Fold Special Edition a while back. This launch confirms the accuracy of that leak. This phone has a different-looking camera island on the back, while it offers a more compelling camera setup, and a slimmer design, amongst other things.

You’ll notice that its back side is flat, and the same goes for its sides. The edges are not sharp at all, though, so the phone shouldn’t be too uncomfortable to hold. All three rear cameras are vertically-aligned and a part of the same camera island.

This handset is 10.6mm thick when folded, 4.9mm when closed, and weighs 236 grams. That makes it 1.5mm thinner and 3 grams lighter than the Galaxy Z Fold 6. The thickness difference will be easy to notice, that’s for sure. The phone, when open, measures 157.9 x 142.6 x 4.9mm. When closed it measures 157.9 x 72.8 x 10.6mm.

Samsung replaced a dated 50-megapixel camera with a 200-megapixel one

Samsung is using a 200-megapixel main camera on the back of this phone. For that camera, Samsung says that it’s “supporting more vivid and clear photos and videos”. Samsung did not go into too much detail spec-wise, which is why we cannot offer you more information. The other two cameras are 12-megapixel and 10-megapixel units, ulrawide and telephoto cameras.

The phone comes with 16GB of RAM and 512GB of storage included. We presume that’s LPDDR5X RAM and UFS 4.0 flash storage, though Samsung didn’t confirm it. The Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 for Galaxy SoC fuels this smartphone.

The main display on the Galaxy Z Fold Special Edition measures 8 inches, and offers a 20:18 aspect ratio. That panel has a resolution of 2184 x 1968, and it goes up to 2,600 nits of brightness at its peak. It is also a 120Hz panel. The cover display measures 6.5 inches and has a display aspect ratio of 21:9. That display has a resolution of 2520 x 1080, and its refresh rate goes up to 120Hz.

The phone is water resistant, and it has the Gorilla Glass Victus 2 on the cover display. The S Pen stylus is not supported on this phone.

This phone is far from cheap

The device comes in only one color, ‘Black Shadow’. The phone is priced at the equivalent of $2,020 (in Korean won). It’s around $500 more expensive than the Galaxy Z Fold 6 in the country.

These are tough times to be running a business. Relief at exiting the pandemic was short-lived, followed by rampant inflation, sky-high interest rates, business uncertainty and geopolitical volatility. Against this backdrop, the last thing an organization needs is to have critical data stolen and systems crippled by cyber-attack. Or for a key supplier to suffer the same. June’s ransomware attack on an NHS provider showed the catastrophic knock-on effect such a breach can have.

That’s why CISOs up and down the country are trying to build a case for improving cyber resilience. However, their job isn’t easy. First, they have to convince a skeptical – and sometimes downright hostile – board.

Why resilience matters

Samsung has just pulled a surprise out of its kitty by giving a svelte design makeover to its flagship foldable phone. Earlier today, the company introduced Galaxy Z Fold Special Edition in its home market.

The latest from Samsung makes a couple of key upgrades in the design and camera department. First, Samsung has shaved 1.5 millimeters worth of thickness compared to the Galaxy Z Fold 6. The weight, however, has only reduced by three grams.

The display size has increased ever so slightly, and resolution figures have also gone up, but there’s nothing too dramatic here. The cover screen now stands at 6.48 inches (up from 6.3 inches), while the inner foldable panel measures roughly 8 inches, compared to the 7.6-inch screen on the Galaxy Z Fold 6.

Another notable change is the color chemistry. The special version only comes in a single “shadow black” trim. However, this one is treated to an eye-catching rear glass refresh that now has thin lines running across, inspired by pinstripe patterns on suits.

Interestingly, Samsung has managed to reduce the cross-section profile of its latest foldable without toning down the battery size. The battery capacity matches that of the Galaxy Z Fold 6 at 4,400 mAh, which is impressive.

The second noteworthy change on the Galaxy Z Fold Special Edition is a new camera sensor. Samsung has treated it to a 200-megapixel primary camera at the back, upping the ante from a 50-megapixel wide camera on its mainstream foldable phones.

The rest of the camera hardware remains identical. We get a 12-megapixel ultrawide snapper and a 10-megapixel telephoto camera with 3x optical zoom output.

The camera atop the front display relies on a 10-megapixel sensor, while the under-display unit on the cover screen outputs 4-megapixel shots.

The silicon in question is Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 Mobile Platform for Galaxy, tagging alongside 16GB RAM and 512GB of storage. For comparison, the Galaxy Z Fold 6 is capped at 12GB of onboard memory.

Samsung also claims that it has used armor aluminum for the frame and has retained the IP48-level dust and water resistance on its new foldable offering.

The asking price of the Samsung Galaxy Z Fold Special Edition has been set at KRW 27,89,600, which roughly translates to $2,024 based on the current conversion rates. The Galaxy Z Fold 6, on the other hand, starts at $1,900 in the USA.

The latest from Samsung will go on sale starting October 24 in Korea. However, the company has yet to reveal any details about the phone’s arrival in overseas markets, especially in the West.

The use of technology has long been a key part of what makes for business success, but now more than ever. With innovative new business solutions emerging at unprecedented rates, just embracing new technologies is no longer enough for us to stay competitive in business. Rather, we need to demonstrate agility and responsiveness to trends in our digital landscape, and continuously improve ourselves in order to keep pace. This is why digital transformation is so important, and as it turns out, Android might just have a significant role to play in it.

Digital transformation and Android

As you likely know, digital transformation is about harnessing the power of technology in every aspect of business operations, with the objective being to streamline processes and improve experiences for customers. Essentially, it’s about reinventing how our businesses function at a fundamental level so that we can unlock their latent potential.

However, continually implementing new technologies in a business can be a serious challenge. In my view, this is chiefly due to the demands of digital adoption. Ask any authoritative source in the field of digital transformation, and they’ll tell you that adoption is the key to success in digital transformation. So, to achieve success in our long-term transformation journeys, it’s clear that we as businesses need to establish a solid framework for repeatable, frictionless adoption.

Now, you may be thinking “How does Android fit into all of this?” Well, for many, Android could well be the foundation of that framework and the key to a new, more effective way of operating.

Android as a catalyst for change

Android has become the go-to operating platform for a whole host of businesses in recent years, and this is in large part because of its uniquely diverse and robust set of capabilities. More specifically, Android has shown that it can support digital transformation in several key ways:

– Leveraging the flexibility of open-source

It’s common knowledge that Android is an open-source platform, but what’s less widely known is how this presents an advantage to businesses. Android’s open-source design makes the platform almost infinitely customizable, which means that as organizations, we can develop purpose-built applications that are designed to meet our specific needs. More to the point, we can use Android to develop applications that meet the needs of our employees, which helps to facilitate better software onboarding.

Rather than forcing work to adapt to new tools that are completely foreign to them, we can create applications that feel more intuitive from the outset, which makes adoption smoother and more consistent.

– Facilitating on-onboarding with integrated support capability

Another way that Android supports digital adoption is by allowing the creation of integrated onboarding functionalities. When you use Andoird to developing custom tools for internal use, for instance, you can add features like text guides, instructional videos, and interactive tutorials to support your employees in learning them.

By providing this kind of support directly through the apps we develop, our companies can streamline onboarding by making learning resources simpler, more accessible, and more intuitive to use. Moreover, bespoke in-app onboarding support can help guide our employees’ learning so that they begin by learning the features most essential to their roles. This means they can get up and running with new tools more quickly.

– Supporting remote transitions with compatibility

As remote work becomes more widespread, it has presented some significant adoption challenges to many businesses, and understandably so. With more employees starting to work off-site, a lot of companies have had to adapt to a completely new way of operating, which isn’t easy. Often, this necessitates switching to new digital collaboration and project management tools, which can lead to teething problems. However, for those who embraced Android, this transition is often simpler.

Since Android is compatible with the most widely used collaboration and productivity tools and can integrate with enterprise-level solutions, it can allow us to keep many existing solutions in place. What’s more, its support of cross-platform development has enabled companies to develop new apps that function seamlessly across their different devices and systems. Doing so can help us improve change management processes, minimize disruption, and reduce obstacles to adoption for our remote teams.

Wrapping up

Digital transformation is a movement that is sweeping the world, but if we are to get in on the act, we first need to address the challenges that digital adoption poses to our businesses. With mobile devices becoming more versatile and powerful all the time, more of us are adopting the mobile-first approach and modular mobile platforms like Android can empower us to remain agile and adaptable.

By harnessing the power of Android’s flexible open-source design, ease of development, and wide scope for integration, we can successfully tackle the adoption challenge and enact repeatable digital transformations. In an increasingly mobile-oriented digital ecosystem, this could well be the key to sustained success.

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Uber is reportedly exploring the idea of purchasing Expedia, one of the largest travel booking companies in the world, according to the Financial Times. Expedia, which is valued at $20 billion and which reported its highest-ever annual revenue in 2023, will be the company’s biggest acquisition, if the deal does indeed push through. The Times says it’s very early days, however, and Uber hasn’t even made a formal offer for the travel company yet. It’s still in the process of studying the implications of acquiring Expedia and has, over the past months, worked with advisers to figure out whether the deal is feasible and how it would be structured.

The company’s CEO, Dara Khosrowshahi, may have to sit out deal discussions, seeing as he used to be CEO of Expedia before he was hired by the ride-hailing service in 2017. He’s still in its Board of Directors, as well. It doesn’t sound like Khosrowshahi was the one who suggested the potential purchase, though — in its report, the Times said the idea was “broached by a third party.”

Uber has had plans to become a wider travel booking platform for a while now. Khosrowshahi said he wanted Uber to be the “Amazon of transportation” from the time he joined the company. Since then, the ride-hailing service has added train, bus and flight bookings in some markets, and it has also made several large acquisitions. It purchased online food delivery service Postmates for $2.65 billion and alcohol delivery service Drizly for $1.1 billion before shutting it down three years later. The company also teamed up with Waymo and Cruise to offer autonomous rides in certain markets. As the Times notes, Uber became profitable for the first time in 2023 due to a renewed demand for rides and food delivery and could be a in a good position to acquire a company as big as Expedia.

Samsung just announced the Special Edition model of the Galaxy Z Fold. It’s thinner and a little lighter than the Galaxy Z Fold 6 that only recently went on sale, and includes slightly larger displays on the inside and out and a new banded pattern on the back. It also has more memory available for Galaxy AI and an upgraded 200 megapixel wide-angle camera.

Great! Unfortunately, it’s only been announced for South Korea, priced at 2,789,600 KRW or just over $2,000 when it goes on sale Friday, October 25th. And it seems the only other release market will be China.

At 10.6mm and 236 grams, the Galaxy Z Fold SE is 1.5mm thinner and 3 grams lighter than the Galaxy Z Fold 6. Memory is now 16GB standard, and the wide-angle sensor has been bumped up from 50 to 200 megapixels. The inner and outer displays are slightly larger as well at 8.0 inches and 6.5 inches, respectively, up from 7.6 and 6.3 inches. That does make the device a little taller and wider to hold when folded or unfolded.

The changes are unlikely to address the concerns we had when reviewing the Galaxy Z Fold 6 this summer. There’s still nothing here that’s meaningfully different in a device category that Samsung helped pioneer. But if you’re looking for a good foldable that’s the best Samsung has to offer, then the Galaxy Z Fold SE is what you’ll want to import.