The next generation of the Galaxy Z Fold Series is not yet out, but leaks and rumours indicate Samsung will be bringing substantial upgrades to the line-up. One such leak is in reference to the enhanced internal storage that one variant of the Galaxy Z Fold 4 will pack.
Sammobile report that they have exclusively learned that one variant of the Galaxy Z Fold 4 will have massive internal storage – 1TB. The variant is intended for power users who typically have hours of 4K footage stored on their devices.
This is not the first time the South Korean company is featuring phones with 1TB internal storage. The Galaxy S22 Ultra, for instance, also has a variant with 1TB internal storage while the much older Galaxy S10+ also has a variant with the same 1TB internal storage and a microSD slot that can handle another 1TB of added storage.
However, the recent removal of the microSD slot by most manufacturers has made it an easy avenue for them to lure customers into buying more high-end devices that offer more internal storage instead of the easier path of buying the less expensive variants then manually adding more storage to it.
The Galaxy Fold 2, for instance, only had 256 GB of internal storage, while the most generous variant of the Galaxy Fold 3 has 512 GB of internal storage. To make things worse, all the Galaxy Fold 2 and 3 variants lack a microSD slot. This makes them, at least in terms of storage, a straight downgrade from the Galaxy S10+ released back in 2019.
Now, when most OEMs dropped the microSD slot, especially for their flagships, their excuse was the move was intended to keep manufacturing costs down. They could easily have added the cost of including the slot to the final price, but they did not, since it makes more financial sense for them to release three or four variants with 128GB, 256GB, 512GB and even 1TB of internal storage at absurd markups rather than having one variant with 128 GB of internal storage and a microSD slot that can handle up to 1TB of added storage.
For users who do not necessarily need that much storage, the base model with the least amount of internal storage suits them just fine. The 256GB version of the Galaxy Fold 3 starts at around Kshs 160,000 while the 512GB version starts at around Kshs 220,000. That is a very healthy markup that Samsung would likely not have had, had they not dropped the microSD slot.
Should the company not cut prices for the Galaxy Z Fold 4 Series, then the 1TB variant will likely come very close or maybe even surpass the Kshs 250,000 price point, which is mind-boggling to think about given that flagships used to cost less than Ksh 100,000 just a few years back.
Online chatter heavily indicates that the Galaxy Z Fold 4 series will be unveiled towards the tail end of August, and will be launched alongside the Galaxy Flip 4, Galaxy S22 (lavender colour option), Watch 4 and Watch 5 Pro.
