Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 5: Price, release date, and everything to know

Samsung's new flagship foldable, the Galaxy Z Fold 5, is officially here. It brings a few noteworthy improvements over the Galaxy Z Fold 4 to compete with the Google Pixel Fold and other foldable phones that are slated to arrive in 2023. We've heard a lot of rumors about the Galaxy Z Fold 5 leading up to its big release, and it's finally time to see how much of an improvement it really is over the outgoing model. Has Samsung done enough to deliver a solid device with meaningful upgrades, or has it left the door open for more improvements? Here's everything you need to know about the Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 5, including its price, availability, specifications, and more. Let's dive in!

Price, availability, and specs

The Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 5 is now up for pre-orders across a lot of regions, including the United States. It officially hits the shelves on August 11, but you can pre-order and reserve your unit right now. Samsung hasn't increased the price of its foldable this year, meaning you'd still be paying $1,800 for the Galaxy Z Fold 5's base model. It carries the same launch price as the Galaxy Z Fold 4, and you can get a bunch of discounts on it at the moment as a part of pre-order bonuses.

You get to pick between 256GB, 512GB, and 1TB storage variants, all of which have 12GB RAM as standard. As far as the color options are concerned, you can choose between Icy Blue, Phantom Black, and Cream. Those who buy the Galaxy Z Fold 5 from Samsung's online store will also have the option of Gray and Blue in addition to the three standard colors you get from other retailers and carriers.

Samsung, as usual, is offering a bunch of discounts as part of the pre-order bonuses to make the Galaxy Z Fold 5 easier on your wallet. You can head over to our collection of the best Galaxy Z Fold 5 deals to find the best price for the best price of Samsung's new foldable online right now from the likes of Amazon, Best Buy, Verizon, T-Mobile, AT&T, and more.

Design

Samsung has made a few changes to the Galaxy Z Fold 5, but it still looks very similar to the Galaxy Z Fold 4 from last year. The new foldable is a hair thinner and slightly lighter than its predecessor, but you're not going to notice a huge difference in form factor or the overall dimensions of the two phones. The Galaxy Z Fold 5 does fold flat with a lot less gap when closed than the Galaxy Z Fold 4, so that's definitely a new huge improvement.

The Galaxy Z Fold 5 features Gorilla Glass Victus 2 instead of the Victus+ on the older model, but it comes with the same aluminum frame and IPX8 rating for water resistance. It's a bit more durable than the older model, but you'll need one of the best cases to protect it from accidental drops and scuffs.

Display

The Galaxy Z Fold 5 sports a 6.2-inch Dynamic AMOLED 2X display on the outside with support for up to 120Hz refresh rate. It's essentially the same 23.1:9 ratio cover display we saw on the Galaxy Z Fold 4, supporting 904 x 2316 pixels. The main 7.6-inch foldable screen on the inside is also the same as the one we saw on the Galaxy Z Fold 4. It supports 1812 x 2176 pixels and up to 120Hz refresh rate. The Galaxy Z Fold 5's main display also supports the S Pen, but you still don't get one bundled with the phone. There's no slot to store the S Pen on the phone either, meaning you'll have to buy a compatible case with a slot to store it.

Internals and software

Samsung's new Galaxy Z Fold 5 is powered by Qualcomm's Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 chipset for Galaxy, which is the same one powering this year's Galaxy S-series flagships too. It's a slightly tweaked version of the regular Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 chip you'll find inside other smartphones, with a higher clock speed and some other additions. You can learn more about it in our Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 for Galaxy breakdown. You get the option to pick between a 256GB, 512GB, and a 1TB variant of the Galaxy Z Fold 5 this year. The 1TB variant is exclusive to the online stores, so keep that in mind. They all carry the same 12GB of memory, and neither of them has support for additional storage via a microSD card.

Moving over to the battery department, the Galaxy Z Fold 5 packs a 4,400mAh battery, which is the same as the one inside the Galaxy Z Fold 4. It also supports the same 25W wired charging speeds, along with wireless and reverse wireless charging. Some other highlights of the Galaxy Z Fold 5 include a side-mounted fingerprint scanner and support for Samsung DeX. The Galaxy Z Fold 5 ships with One UI 5.1.1 software that's based on Android 13 out of the box. It's likely to receive four major Android OS updates as other Samsung flagships, although there's no official confirmation on that just yet.

Cameras

As far as the optics are concerned, the Galaxy Z Fold 5 sports a triple camera setup at the back, along with a selfie camera on the cover display and an under-display camera on the foldable screen. It carries the same sensors as the outgoing model, which means you are looking at a 50MP f/1.8 main camera with Dual Pixel AF and OIS, a 12MP ultrawide camera with an f/2.2 aperture, and a 10MP telephoto camera with an f/2.4 aperture and 3x optical zoom. The selfie shooter on the cover screen is a 10MP f.2.2 camera, while the under-display camera uses a 4MP f/1.8 sensor.

We'll have more to talk about Galaxy Z Fold 5's cameras, along with samples, in our full review, so stay tuned. It essentially uses the same sensors as the ones on the Galaxy Z Fold 4, but it remains to be seen whether Samsung has made any software improvements and how it stacks up against the competition.

A more polished foldable

The Galaxy Z Fold 5 is shaping up to be an iterative upgrade that further refines Samsung's foldable experience. It doesn't seem like a significant upgrade over the existing model, but it brings a lot of interesting changes that make it worth considering over other foldables. Our full review will have more details about the phone and the kind of features it brings to the table, so stay tuned for that. In the meantime, you can check out the Galaxy Z Flip 5, which is definitely a big step up from the last year's Galaxy Z Flip 4.

What are your thoughts on the Galaxy Z Fold 5? Let us know in the comments.