Early August announcement and 'global' rollout tipped for first-ever OnePlus foldable
If the very familiar-sounding specs of the Galaxy Z Flip 5 and the largely unchanged design of the Z Fold 5 haven't managed to build up your excitement for Samsung's "late July" Unpacked product launch event, you may want to wait a couple more weeks and see how OnePlus aims to rival the world's top smartphone vendor in the struggling foldable segment.
While the China-based outfit has yet to join said market segment, we've known for quite some time that would happen by the end of Q3 2023, and now a generally reliable tipster has reached out to the folks over at Pricebaba to narrow down that release window.
Interestingly, the OnePlus Fold (or OnePlus V Fold) is expected to see daylight in New York just when Samsung decided to move the formal announcement of its next-gen foldable devices from the US to South Korea.
This undoubtedly glamorous OnePlus event in NYC is today tipped to take place "during the first half of August", much like Samsung's summer Unpacked shindigs used to happen until this year. The company's rookie foldable effort will then start a "global" tour expected to include markets like the US and India, although no commercial release dates (specific or general) are available at the moment for any such countries.
According to previous rumors and conjecture, the OnePlus Fold could share a design language and a number of key specs with an Oppo Find N3 model... that's not announced yet either.
Said specifications are likely to include a large 8-inch foldable AMOLED display with QHD+ resolution, as well as a generous and similarly sharp FHD+ 6.5-inch cover screen, state-of-the-art Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 processing power, up to 16 gigs of RAM paired with as much as 512GB internal storage space, and a reasonably hefty 4,800mAh battery equipped with blazing fast 80W charging technology.
There are clearly at least a few things on that list to make you more excited about this bad boy than the Galaxy Z Fold 5, but of course, it remains to be seen just how expensive the OnePlus (V) Fold will be in markets like the US and how widely a segment newcomer can release it by the end of 2023. All of those variables and question marks aside, we're definitely looking at a heavyweight contender for the title of best foldable phone you'll be able to buy soon.
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