The cat, having poked its head out several times over the last few months, is now fully out of the bag. Samsung’s latest Unpacked in Seoul has now been and gone, and the company has a whole host of new foldables, tablets and watches it would very much like for you to buy.
The most exciting in a range of mostly iterative updates is the Samsung Galaxy Z Flip 5. It’s still a flip phone foldable, but now it has a far bigger screen on the outside, making it significantly more usable when closed. It’s up from 1.9 inches to 3.4 inches.
On top of that it comes with an improved flat hinge, the Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 for Galaxy chipset and 256GB of storage in the base model. It starts at NZ$1,879.
Next up is the other foldable, the Galaxy Z Fold 5. The most interesting thing here is that, like the Z Flip 5, the hinge has also been vastly improved with a teardrop design, leaving no gap between the screens when closed. That makes it more pocketable (13.4mm thick when closed, rather than 14.2mm for its predecessor), as well as more stylish.
Otherwise, not a lot else has changed, barring the addition of that new-fangled Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 for Galaxy chipset and a ten-gram weight reduction. That includes the price, which still starts at a hard-to-justify NZ$2,849 but the good news is that you won’t miss much by opting for last year’s now cheaper version.
Then there are the Samsung Galaxy Tab S9s: three of them, to be precise, with the regular 11-inch model being accompanied by a 12.4-inch Plus version and a slightly silly 14.6-inch Ultra edition. All of them benefit from that seven-word Qualcomm processor I refuse to write out for a third time, but otherwise look pretty familiar.
There are two big, important changes though. Firstly, all of them benefit from IP68 dust and water resistance for the first time, and secondly the entry-level Tab S9 gets an OLED panel upgrade. Previously, if you wanted the superior viewing experience of OLED, you’d have to go Plus or Ultra. Prices start at NZ$1,449 for the Tab S9, rising to NZ$2,199 for the Ultra version.
Finally, there’s the Galaxy Watch 6, and if you were sad when Samsung killed the physical rotating bezel last year, then good news: it’s back on the ‘Classic’ version.
No Pro model this time around, but the bezels are between 15% (Classic) and 30% (regular) thinner than the last generation, and the batteries are ever so slightly larger too. There’s also an upgrade to the 1.4GHz Exynos W930 chip, though the 3-in-1 biosensor remains unchanged. Prices start at NZ$449 for the 40mm, Bluetooth Galaxy Watch 6, or NZ$649 if you fancy the rotating bezel of the 43mm Classic.
