Earlier this week, Samsung announced the latest generation of its high-end foldable phones at its Summer Galaxy Unpacked event. The Galaxy Z Fold7 and the Galaxy Z Flip7 are variously lighter, thinner, less crease-prone than before. They are more expensive too. Some call them the “foldables to beat.”
It’s Samsung messaging and a commentator response that sounds an awful lot like what we heard last year. And the year before that, for that matter, in a hall of echoes typical of the iterative progress loop much of consumer tech hardware has fallen into. It's not that we think they'll be bad—we liked their predecessors just fine. It's just that when you compare them to the progress being made by Chinese competitors, they feel a bit dull, and already a step behind in an area they are widely thought to lead.
Yes, calling the latest tech boring has a touch of The Simpsons' “Old Man Yells at Cloud” meme energy to it. But it’s symptomatic of a truth that could have serious implications further down the line for all of us: China is winning consumer tech, in a big way.
Déjà Vu
It’s a situation we are already watching unfold with EVs, something that was most stark at this year’s Shanghai Auto show. WIRED writer Alistair Charlton called the show a “warning to the West,” as Chinese brands showed off innovation and scale that far surpasses what Western brands have managed in the same time.
Chinese car-makers push harder on features, design, charging speeds and simply getting their cars out there—and it’s now ready to start the push outside of its own (already huge) market. China’s biggest EV-maker BYD has already launched in the UK and Europe, and the same would likely be true for US streets were it not for tariffs and the dangerous political spotlight this would put on the giant car-marker.
The old idea that Chinese-designed tech is trash, that Japan, South Korea and the West do the innovating while China provides the factory floor, is out of date. And its innovations are not (entirely) from IP theft either. Its early investment in EVs proves it, but it’s just the tip of the iceberg.
Let’s bring this back around to foldable phones. From the perspective of a shopper in the West, the Samsung Galaxy Z Fold7 was beaten to the sub-9mm foldable milestone by Chinese brand Honor. It announced its Magic V5 a week before Samsung’s Unpacked launch event, in timing that has an eye-roll-worthy schoolyard feel to it—particularly when it comes in just 0.1 millimeters thinner.