Samsung built a bigger, $3,000 version of the Galaxy Fold 2 for China
The Galaxy W21. It looks like a Fold 2 except... [credit: Samsung ]
Samsung's "Galaxy W" line of phones is really something. The company has been making this line of flagship smartphones targeted specifically at wealthy Chinese consumers for a while now, complete with sky-high prices. In the past, there have been phones like Samsung Galaxy W2019, a crazy dual-screen flip phone (with a number keypad) for $2,700. With the launch of the Galaxy Fold line, the big-screen foldable tablet phone has served as the basis for the W line, and this year's Galaxy W21 is a dressed-up Galaxy Z Fold 2. It's also somehow $1,000 more expensive than a Galaxy Z Fold 2 in the US, so it's 19,999, or about $3,027.
A hands-on comparison from phone leaker IceUniverse shows the W21 is somehow bigger than the Fold 2, but it's not clear why. Samsung doesn't have a complete spec sheet posted yet, but an official walkthrough of the phone lists a 6.2-inch outer screen and a 120Hz, 7.6-inch inner screen, the same as the Galaxy Z Fold 2. It also lists a 4390mAh battery, which is smaller than the 4500mAh battery on the Fold 2. Other than that, you get an exclusive bump up in storage to 512GB, plus dual-SIM support and all the usual Fold 2 specs: a Snapdragon 865+, 12GB of RAM, a side-mounted fingerprint reader, and all the same cameras.
There's also the, uh, unique color scheme, which is straight-up shiny, polished gold. We're working through translated descriptions here, but it sounds like the back is still glass. Samsung's site says the phone has a "7-layer nano-level optical film attached to the glass back panel." A brief hands-on video and some of Samsung's shots show that the back surface is flat, so the vertical ribbing that appears in pictures is just a design that lives under the top glass surface.
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