Samsung Unpacked 2023: event highlights

Samsung’s had a smooth, largely unopposed run at the foldables market since it launched the Fold and Flip series that have come to define the market. This year though, new releases from Oppo, Google, Motorola and OnePlus mean that every Galaxy foldable will be compared against formidable competition, and that’s impetus enough for the brand to amp up the Unpacked launch event and bring it home to Seoul, Korea. I was in Seoul at the invitation of Samsung to see if the home advantage had its effect on the Unpacked event, and here are my early impressions of everything Samsung launched.

Galaxy Z Flip5: Samsung’s clamshell style foldable may have an all-new external cover display to boast of, but it’s in the tiny details that Samsung has shown marked improvement over the past year. With its new 'Flex Hinge', which folds the screen in the shape of a tear drop by using a dual rail structure, Samsung has finally gotten a foldable display that folds completely flat – no gap to allow dust or pocket lint in. It’s a solution one was waiting for Samsung to adopt after it successfully yielded similar results and a noticeably smaller crease on competing phones, and it’s finally here. Coupled with the shock absorbent nature of the hinge and the IPX8 water resistance, the new foldables should be the most durable launched yet, not to mention a lot thinner when unfolded (6.9mm, 15.1mm when folded).

Of course, out goes last year’s Z Fold4’s 1.9-inch outer display, replaced by a more usable 3.4-inch display that not only offers more at-a-glance information via widgets for weather, stock markets, now playing etc, but also lets you do more with incoming notifications with the ability to display a full keyboard to respond (the Z Flip4 only allowed canned responses). There’s no direct support for running full apps on the cover display, but the adventurous amongst the early buyers can install the Good Lock app and try out the app rendering on the external display (something I’ll leave for my full review). The Galaxy Z Flip5’s cover display also lets you access Samsung Wallet to pay for tap-based-payment systems and access stuff like boarding passes and membership cards directly on the cover screen, without having to open the phone up. After some initial use, the display is easy to use and type on, and didn’t feel cramped, and the pinch to zoom out to view all the widgets at once is a neat gesture.

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Elsewhere, the Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 ‘for Galaxy’ should deliver better performance and eke out battery life from the 3700mAh battery. The inner display (a 6.7-inch 120Hz AMOLED panel) remains largely the same, as does the 12MP primary and ultrawide camera setup. I’m eager to see how much the new cover display impacts the need to unfold the main display, and how much the weight and new found slimness will impact handfeel in my full review. The Z Flip5 can be yours as soon as August 11th, for a starting price of Rs 99,999 for the 8GB/256GB storage variant, with a 512GB variant on offer as well.

Galaxy Z Fold5: The Z Fold5 benefits from the same no-gap hinge design as the Flip5, which allows for a more dramatic reduction in thickness, from 6.3mm to 6.1mm when open and from 14.2mm to 13.4mm when folded…not to mention shaving off 10 grams of weight. The result is a device with much better hand feel than the Z Fold 4 which, for a device of considerable weight as this, matters in daily use. The S Pen loses some weight as well, but it still needs to be stowed separately in an external case. The Z Fold5 checks on many more durability boxes as well, beyond the sturdier hinge – Corning Gorilla Glass Victus 2 on the front and on the spine, with the metal frame made of Armour Aluminum and IPX8 rating for use near water bodies. 

As with the Z Flip5, the Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 ‘for Galaxy’ chipset gives the device a fillip even though there doesn’t seem to be any change in rated battery capacities, and the improved peak brightness of 1750 units on the 7.6-inch 120Hz main screen brings it in line with the S23 series. There’s a bigger vapour cooling chamber for better sustained gaming performance, which should be a breeze with the standard 12GB of RAM across all variants – 256GB, 512GB and 1TB of storage starting at Rs. 1,54,999 on August 11. 

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Tab S9 Series: Launched alongside the foldables, the Galaxy Tab S9 series of premium tablets all come with the same core screen specifications – Samsung’s Dynamic AMOLED 2X display – in 11-inch (Galaxy Tab S9), 12.4-inch (Galaxy Tab S9 Plus) and 14.6-inch (Galaxy Tab S9 Ultra) variants. What’s more surprising is that all three tablets get IP68 rating for dust and water resistance, a feature oddly rare in tablets given how much we’ve come to be accustomed to that feature on premium phones. This is no hollow claim, as I tested the water resistance of the Tab S9 and the S-Pen stylus by writing on the tablet as it was submerged in a shallow tank of water. Certainly, the kind of computing device once can take onto the roughest of holidays, come monsoon or harsh sunshine. Together with Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 ‘for Galaxy’ processor, the Tab S9 series should land right on top of the premium Android tablet pile. Available with 12GB of RAM and up to 1TB of storage, the tablets also offer micro-SD card expansion, along with 5G SIM capabilities on the Ultra variant. Units retail at Rs 72,999 (128GB) onwards from August 11.

Galaxy Watch6 / Watch6 Classic: As had been heavily rumored, Samsung revived the much-loved physically rotating bezel with its new Galaxy Watch 6 Classic, in 43mm and 47mm sizes. The standard Watch 6 (in 40mm and 44mm) sizes shares the sapphire crystal displays atop 20% larger displays with the Classic, and the only difference lies in the rotating bezel that allows you to navigate the Watch 6 Classic’s interface without touching the circular screen. In my short duration of use, the bezel feels great to use to move through home screens, menus and settings, almost like a bigger version of Apple’s Digital Crown that allows you to avoid touching the screen as much as possible on a smartwatch. 

Inside, both watches share the Exynos W930 chip with 2GB of RAM and 16GB of storage and will both ship with Wear OS4. Sleep tracking is a much more fleshed out feature now, with support for sleep stages, skin temperature tracking and snoring detection. Heart rate monitoring gets a boost as well, with personalized heart rate zones that can be targeted when working out. Fall detection is welcome, as is irregular heart rhythm notifications and AFib warnings. Battery life should also see a bump up – the smaller versions of both watches have 300mAh batteries, while the larger versions have 425mAh batteries, and courtesy fast charging, eight minutes of charge should yield eight hours of battery life. Available on August 11th, the Watch 6 and the Watch 6 Classic come in at XXXX and XXXX respectively. 

Disclosure: The author was invited to attend Unpacked by Samsung India

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