It was pretty embarrassing for Samsung. With much Bohei, the South Korean company had announced its first smartphone with foldable screen at the end of February. The sale was due to begin in May, and at the end of April, journalists were given the chance to try out the devices for the first time - and faced massive problems: dirt could penetrate the joint and under the screen, and some accidentally peeled off a protective film to work the plastic display is essential. At the Ifa in Berlin, Samsung is now showing a revised version of the Galaxy Fold. It took four months to fix the flaws of the first version.
AFP
Samsung's Galaxy Fold after the relaunch
An obvious innovation is that the protective film is now drawn into the display frame during manufacture. So there are no edges left over where you could tamper with your fingernails. Who wants to remove the protective film now, would have to go to it with tools.
It is less obvious that Samsung is now underlining the flexible plastic display with a metal foil. You can not see that, but feel it. The screen feels sturdier, firmer. Whether he does that will only become apparent over time.
DPA
The protective film on the Galaxy Fold was pulled into the display frame
The same goes for the elaborate hinge used to move the screen. It seems a bit like being screwed tighter, you need a bit more power to move it. More important, however, is that the screen is now bordered on the top and bottom of a plastic frame. This is supposed to prevent dirt from penetrating, as testers of the first version reported.
Against dirt, it should also help that the hinge now seems to close a little tighter overall, so that the gap between the top and bottom with closed cell phone is not quite as big as before.
AFP
The gap between the top and bottom is not so big when the cell phone is closed
With these innovations, however, Samsung has also raised the price once again: Instead of 2000 euros, the Galaxy Fold now costs 2100 euros when it comes on 18 September in the trade. It is now also supplied with 5G functionality, you can really exploit the provisional but only in very few places.
LG G8X with dual display
Matthias Kremp / SPIEGEL ONLINE
Two screens flanged together
LG is much more pragmatic about the topic double or folding display than Samsung or Huawei. Instead of struggling to build an expensive and hard-to-protect folding display, the Koreans simply fling a second screen to their mobile phone. At the Mobile World Congress in February, LG had previously introduced a similar device, the V50 ThinQ. In South Korea they have sold half a million copies, said a LG spokesman in a press conference in Berlin. In the new G8X ThinQ, which has now been presented in Berlin, the group has incorporated some improvements in contrast to the first model.
In principle, the G8X is in itself a complete and stand-alone smartphone. The additional screen is - as the name implies - an accessory that you can plug in if necessary to the phone and then lose weight again, if you want that.
photo gallery
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G8X: This is LG's dual-screen smartphoneWith a diagonal of 6.4 inches is the same size as the G8X built-in screen, has the same resolution and the same color representation. For the V50, the additional display was even smaller than the main screen. However, the most important innovation from the point of view of the manufacturer is the new hinge with which the extra screen can be rotated 360 degrees continuously, thus also folding onto the back of the cell phone. In addition, LG has installed on the outside of another small display that can show, for example, the time.
In contrast to real folding cell phones such as the Galaxy Fold and Huawei Mate X lies between the two screens due to the design, however, a good finger thick gap, the frames of the two screens form. This gap is all the more noticeable when using Wide mode, where Google's Chrome browser uses both screens as one. Less noticeable is the gap, if you use two apps in parallel or two windows of the same app next to each other (see photo gallery).
Interestingly, the concept is still safe and it will continue to find fans. At a price of 750 euros for the G8X and 250 euros for the additional screen, but you are already in the price range of high-end smartphones - and high-end is the thick biplane certainly not.
Nokia 2720 Flip
Matthias Kremp / SPIEGEL ONLINE
Nokia's Flip-Phone - that's how mobile phones used to be
The same certainly applies to the new Nokia flip phone. The 2720 Flip can be seen as a remake of legendary feature phones like the Motorola Razr V3. Just like its predecessors from the 1990s, its biggest advantage is comfort: when a call comes in, you just open it and say hello. To hang up it works just as easy again. So mobile telephoning was earlier.
As operating system, Nokia uses KaiOS in this new model and has already eliminated its worst flaws: Although the device is a mobile phone and not a smartphone, you will find apps like WhatsApp, Facebook, Twitter and Google. It should also be suitable as a festival and go out cell phone, as long as you can do without selfies and snapshots, because the 2-megapixel camera is unfortunately not good for anything. Unfortunately that also applies to the colors. The black is still okay, hard to bear the gray variant.
At least it is not expensive: 99 Euro should cost it, so about five percent of what you have to spend for a Galaxy Fold.
