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Samsung's new foldables will have one very important feature no one is talking about
Samsung next week is expected to unveil two new foldables, the Galaxy Z Fold 5 and Z Flip 5, during the company's Unpacked event. If this year's handsets are anything like their predecessors, they should deliver outstanding entertainment experiences, creative camera tools, jarring price tags, and all the fragility.
Also: Samsung's ViewFinity S9 monitor just blew past Apple's Studio Display
See, foldable phones are still struggling to avoid the dreaded display failures that have plagued the form factor since its inception. It's more of an "a few bad apples" affair, but there's been enough customer reports to warrant caution. Even the most recent bendy handset from Google fell victim to imperfect engineering and the force of gravity.
With the upcoming Galaxy foldables -- and the rise of new entrants from competing manufacturers -- all eyes are on Samsung to deliver an improved hinge system and design, and potentially a lower price tag. But, users should be paying just as much attention to the company's secret weapon, Samsung Care+, its in-house repair service responsible for patching up your foldable investment -- should anything go wrong.
To be clear, both Google and Motorola, the other two players in the U.S. foldable market have repair services of their own, and the rates being charged across the board for display and parts replacements are not too far off from Samsung's. You're looking at roughly $29 to fix a cracked screen, if you're insured.
One of Samsung's local walk-in locations for repairs and services.
What puts Samsung Care+ ahead of its competitors is convenience and availability. At the time of writing, Samsung has more than 900 stores that are authorized to fix Samsung products.
Also: Samsung just extended its at-home self-repair service to laptops
That's not including the 700+ UBreakiFix locations and 200+ Best Buy stores, according to a recent company press release.
Unlike Google and Motorola, who mainly rely on customers shipping their devices via Asurion and uBreakiFix to be fixed, Samsung has -- over the years, slow but surely -- built an infrastructure of local repair hubs throughout the country, many of which support same-day services for walk-in-walk-out repairs.
This benefit alone might low-key be the biggest draw for Samsung's upcoming foldables. Because while you may not think about breaking your new foldable at the start, when things do turn for the worse, you'll have a reliable repair service to fall back on. One that can give you a working phone back in less than a day's time.