Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 6 Special Edition could land in weeks, but is it what you expect?

Lanh Nguyen / Android Authority

Competition is starting to get fierce in the foldables market. It’s no longer simply enough for a manufacturer to prove it can successfully build a phone like this — you’ve got to build one better and fancier than all the other players. That’s bringing us not just crazy designs like triple-screen foldables, but also some with incredibly slim profiles, rivaling even non-folding hardware. For months now, we’ve been hearing rumors that Samsung could be working on a super-thin version of the Galaxy Z Fold 6, and now some new evidence gives us maybe our best guess yet at when we could hope to see it debut — or not.

While we’ve been talking about this phone all summer, no one’s seemed to be able to agree on how to identify it. Galaxy Z Fold 6 Ultra? Galaxy Z Fold 6 Slim? Back in late August we heard that the phone might instead be branded as the Galaxy Z Fold 6 Special Edition. Now some very similar branding has popped up in promotional imagery from a South Korean retailer, advertising Special Edition pre-orders opening next month, and shared by X user sawtooth special edition (via 91mobiles).

The text, after translating, doesn’t really say anything about the phone in particular, and instead focuses on details of the pre-order period, ahead of retail availability on October 25. But is this the super-thin Fold 6 we’ve been hearing about, or not?

There’s a product listing for a Galaxy Z Fold6 (Special Edition) on Samsung India’s site, but the hardware depicted there appears to be the bog-standard Z Fold 6, with the same screen size and same dimensions — both folded and unfolded. It’s possible that this could just be something like a landing page for the time being, with Samsung intending to update it with Special Edition-specific details closer to launch. But we also have to consider the very real likelihood that this is more along the lines of a special colorway than all-new foldable hardware. The fact that the site also shows a Z Flip 6 (Special Edition) offering the same thing doesn’t have us feeling super optimistic, either.

Then we have to consider how so far all signs of this phone point to Southeast Asia, and we’ve yet to really get a whiff of Samsung’s plans for it in other markets. Considering the engineering effort that would go into a larger-screen, thinner-hinge version of its flagship foldable, why would Samsung not make the most of its development money and target global markets? Or at the very least, emphasize that new construction when putting out the call for pre-orders?

We’re still not quite sure what’s going on with this phone, and all we can really say with much confidence at the moment is that this story is far from over.

Got a tip? Talk to us! Email our staff at [email protected]. You can stay anonymous or get credit for the info, it's your choice.