Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 6 Slim may not be thinner than its rivals

The Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 6 is expected to launch later this year, as a modernised take on 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 companies have introduced sleeker 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 sold in India by Vivo and OnePlus (released earlier) are already slimmer, at 11.2mm and 11.7mm respectively. The South Korean tech conglomerate is also expected to launch another foldable phone this year.

The alleged Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 6 Slim is expected to be slimmer than the current Galaxy Z Fold 6 that recently went on sale. The Elec reports that the rumored foldable phone could still be thicker than its competitors. The report, which cites a source, claims that Samsung has managed to achieve a thickness of 11.5mm when folded. It has reportedly achieved this by removing the digitizer that is needed when using the S Pen. The digitizer layer reportedly adds around 0.6mm to the thickness of the currently available model.

Even at 11.5mm, the Galaxy Z Fold 6 Slim will still be competing against an older crop of foldable phones, primarily made up of Vivo’s X Fold 3 Pro (11.2mm) and OnePlus’s Open (11.7mm). Xiaomi has already announced its latest book-style competitor, the Mix Fold 4, which measures just 9.47mm thick when folded.

Honor recently announced its latest foldable phone, the Magic V3, which surpasses the Mix Fold by about 0.2mm: 9.2-9.3mm.

The publication claims that Samsung is struggling with long-term reliability issues when designing foldable phones that are slimmer than its current offerings. The Slim is said to have a larger 8.0-inch display, joined by a 6.5-inch cover display (with a wider 19.5:9 aspect ratio), but recent reports suggest it will only be available in certain markets (South Korea and China).

The Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 6 Slim is said to be arriving in October. A previous report claimed that Samsung Electronics President and Head of MX BusinessTM Roh had asked Samsung engineers to develop an extra-thin foldable smartphone similar to the Samsung Galaxy S24. The Galaxy S24 Ultra, which we reviewed this year, is just 7.7mm thick, since it’s not a foldable phone.