Samsung has confirmed that their Unpacked launch event will be held later this summer. Their new products, however, may already have been all leaked, courtesy of the famous rumormonger Evan Blass.
He has posted a long series of GIFs on Twitter of what looks to be all of Samsung’s upcoming launches: Two new folding phones, a new Galaxy FE phone, two new Galaxy Watch versions, and what could be Galaxy Buds 2.
Blass, who is usually relatively accurate with his leaks and predictions, also claims to know the date of the event: August 11. Samsung has had the habit of inviting media to Unpacked events in early August for the past couple of years, so the date does not seem unlikely.
On to the leaks: This is supposed to be the Galaxy Z Fold 3, the next version of Samsung’s “fold out into a kind of tablet” phone. I’ve had a look at a previous version, and it’s clear that Samsung is ahead of its competitors on foldables.
Among the rumors circulating it’s said the phone will get a Snapdragon 888 processor, support for Samsung’s S Pen, and, more importantly, the launch price may be as much as 20 percent lower than the Z Fold 2 (which admittedly is an extremely expensive cell phone).
According to Blass, this should be Z Flip 3:
Blass tweeted animations of the phone in purple, black, gold, and green, and it seems that Samsung is skipping over a model number with their Z Flip. There was never any second version offered. For the Z Flip 3, rumors have pointed to a slightly larger outer screen than the current model, which only has a 1.1-inch screen on the outside. Here too, price cuts are expected from the previous model, and some have pointed to a starting price close to Samsung’s other flagships, such as the Galaxy S21 Ultra.
Then it comes to what is said to be the Galaxy S21 FE (cheaper version of Samsung’s S21). FE stands for “Fan Edition”, and the S20 FE 5G received near-universal praise from the media – and is actually the phone I’m using personally.
In addition to phones, Blass posted animations of two new Samsung watches, probably the Galaxy Watch 4 Classic and Galaxy Watch 4 Active.
Samsung announced in May that it would merge its Tizen smartwatch operating system with Google Wear OS, which would provide better battery life, higher performance and make things easier for developers, as they no longer need to create apps for several different platforms.
These watches will be the first products with the new system onboard, and will thus be rather exciting to try out (and possibly review).
Most recently, Blass also showed what appears to be the sequel to Samsung’s now quite old Galaxy Buds. Among other things, rumors have mentioned they will come with active noise reduction, which Galaxy Buds Pro did a great job with earlier this year.
In terms of design, Galaxy Buds 2 also seems to inherit a lot from Buds Pro, with a smaller and square case also copying much of the shape of the plugs themselves – if we are to believe the GIF. This will in reality be Samsung’s direct competitor to Apple’s AirPods 3, which is reportedly also launching later this year.
