Samsung’s Galaxy Z Flip phone needs to do way better than past foldables

Samsung always goes hard at the Oscars, so it’s no surprise that it aired an ad this year. I was not expecting such a full reveal of its folding flip phone, though!

Expecting anyone to be surprised at a phone event is no longer a viable strategy, given how everything leaks. So Samsung just took a page out of Google’s 2019 playbook and started revealing details itself. But, as with Google’s coy photos leading up to the Pixel 4 unveil, Samsung’s decision to air an ad showing (though not naming) the Z Flip raises the stakes on a situation where the stakes were already pretty high.

This isn’t the first time Samsung has released a folding phone, you know? I mean I know, because I reviewed the Galaxy Fold not once, but twice. That’s because the first phone broke within a day of unboxing it — and not because I did anything wrong to it. Samsung cancelled the original launch, reworked the device, and released it later.