Honor’s recently unveiled Magic V3 measures just 9.3mm when folded.
Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 6 (pictured) has a refreshed design compared to older models
Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 6 is expected to arrive later this year as a modern version of the company's book-style foldable phone, with a chiselled design and straight lines. While Samsung has launched phones with incremental updates over the past two years, other firms have introduced slimmer rivals, raising the bar in terms of design. While this year's Galaxy Z Fold 6 is slimmer than its predecessor at 12.9mm, competing devices on sale in India by Vivo and OnePlus (released earlier) are already ahead slimmer at 11.2 and 11.7mm, respectively. The South Korean tech conglomerate is tipped to launch another foldable phone this year.
The purported Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 6 Slim is expected to be slimmer than the current Galaxy Z Fold 6 which recently went on sale. However, The Elec reports that the rumoured foldable phone may still be thicker than the competition. Citing a source, the report claims that Samsung has managed to achieve a thickness of 11.5mm when folded. It has reportedly achieved this by removing the digitiser which is needed when using the S Pen. The digitiser layer reportedly adds about 0.6mm to the thickness of the currently available model.
Even at 11.5mm, the Galaxy Z Fold 6 Slim will still be competing with an older set of foldables, which mainly includes Vivo's X Fold 3 Pro (11.2mm) and OnePlus's Open (11.7mm). Xiaomi has already announced its latest book-style contender called the Mix Fold 4 which is just 9.47mm thick when folded.
Similarly, Honor recently announced its latest foldable called the Magic V3, which edges out the Mix Fold by about 0.2mm at 9.2-9.3mm.
The publication states that Samsung has been struggling with long-term reliability issues when designing foldables to be slimmer than its current offerings. The Slim is said to have a larger 8.0-inch display accompanied by a 6.5-inch cover display (with a broader 19.5:9 aspect ratio), but recent reports suggest it will only be available in select markets (South Korea and China).
The Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 6 Slim is tipped to arrive in October. An earlier report claimed that Samsung Electronics President and Head of MX Business TM Roh asked Samsung engineers to develop an extra slim foldable smartphone similar to the Samsung Galaxy S24. The Galaxy S24 Ultra, which we reviewed this year is just 7.7mm thick as it's not a foldable phone.
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