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Daily Authority: 👉 Early Flip 4 look

The Flip 4 looks more like a 3S — here's why that might work for Samsung
By
June 13, 2022
galaxy z flip 3 camera preview
Ryan Haines / Android Authority

🎶 Good morning! I heard The Strokes last night at a concert! (Not saw, but heard, because I could hear it from the old airport field they were playing at here in Berlin.)

Flip unpacks early

Wow, the Samsung Galaxy Z Flip 4 has shown up in the real world, far, far ahead of the launch thought to be happening in August or so.

What’s been rumored for a while, that Samsung’s 2022 clamshell looks like it has only mild refinements from the 2021 edition, seems to be true.

Problematic leaks:

  • The problem with leaks like this is that Samsung doesn’t get a chance to inflict its marketing on us.
  • And, without really knowing what’s changed, or knowing if this is a prototype or the final version, we can only observe changes from the outside.

What we see:

  • The leaks are via sourced images by TechTalkTV (including the image above), plus a brief video, showing what looks like a production sample of the Flip 4.
  • There’s an almost identical design to the Galaxy Z Flip 3: two vertically stacked rear cameras, a small external display, and an internal punch-hole screen.
  • But there are some nice little improvements: the Galaxy Z Flip 4 looks like it has a less visible crease, with refinements that appear to make it a little more shallow.
  • The phone’s hinge and bezels are also a tad bit thinner, putting the same size display in a smaller device overall, that’s lighter as well.
  • Also, the YouTuber reveals that the phone will house a 3,700mAh battery (up from 3,400mAh) and 25W charging, up from 15W.
  • Interestingly, apparently, it’ll come with the same 12MP main and ultrawide cameras, and the same 10MP selfie camera.
  • We don’t see internal specs: it’s likely the Flip 4 will come with a new chipset, possibly even the Snapdragon 8 Plus Gen 1, which is set to offer performance and efficiency improvements as well.

What it means:

  • Samsung offering the Flip 4 without any revolutionary features isn’t a bad thing — the old style of an “S” edition comes to mind, though Samsung calling this the Flip 3S doesn’t sound great.
  • What it may mean, if Samsung isn’t pulling out all stops, is that the Flip 4 could get a price drop. The Flip 3 started at $999, for what it’s worth.
  • I’m unsure: the 8 Plus Gen 1 chipset won’t be cheap, and inflation is widespread across materials and goods.
  • But it’s possible Samsung has some margin to drop the price a little to make the foldable more attractive.

Roundup

📺 “Ultrawide monitors are overrated, here’s why I use a 4K TV instead.” Great read. (Android Authority).

📊 Poll: What’s the first thing you change on a newly purchased phone? (Android Authority).

👉 We asked, you told us: You want way more storage on your TV box (Android Authority).

🔌 By the way, the UK will not copy the EU’s demand for common charging cable, but likely won’t make any difference to how manufacturers will abide by the ruling (BBC).

🎮 Here are the biggest trailers and announcements from the 2022 Xbox & Bethesda Games Showcase: a longer look at Starfield, and news about Overwatch 2 (free to play) and Diablo IV (now a 2023 release!) (The Verge). Plus, Hideo Kojima’s next game is coming to Xbox (Engadget). Also: Starfield gameplay premiere resembles “No Man’s Skyrim,”, and what about today’s no-shows? (Ars Technica).

📉 As the stock market and crypto fall due to rising inflation (and the likelihood of the Federal Reserve raising interest rates), expect to see shakeouts, just as we saw with Terra/Luna. The latest trouble is with Celsius, a crypto lending service, which said it has paused withdrawals, causing Celsius’s CEL token to fall as much as 70% (CoinDesk).

🦜 There’s a wild story about a Google engineer who became convinced a Google-made AI, based on an advanced language model, is sentient. Google placed the engineer on paid leave (NYT, gift link). There’s a chat posted by the engineer, Blake Lemoine, but it’s based on nine separate conversations stitched together and appears largely invalid… (Medium). This explains why it’s not intelligent(Medium).

📺 Squid Game’s Season 2 teaser promises old faces and a new game (Gizmodo).

👉 Intel details 13 chip inventions at tech symposium (Venture Beat).

💡 “Controlling my family’s smart home is driving us mad”: A rant about errant light switches and too many apps frustrating the home (Wired).

🚁 NASA’s plan to get Ingenuity through the Martian winter (Ars Technica).

🚀 Astra’s second failed launch this year resulted in the loss of two NASA weather satellites (The Verge).

🐴 It’s all happening in Wales: Man vs horse race won by person for only third time (BBC).

🤔 “Veterinarians of Reddit, what do pet owners ignore the most?” (r/askreddit).

Monday Meme

Dall-E and Dall-E 2 are limited betas only available to those who have been whitelisted.

godzilla robs

The Dall-E Mini generator, which is much less ambitious and freely available, is here, and it’s creating all kinds of things, the weirdest of which are posted to subreddits and Twitter.

Please enjoy: Weird Dall-E Generations, such as washing machine soup, Godzilla robs a McDonald’s, and a Pikachu that looks like a Pug.

  • Also, faces appear to not be generated at all in any serious way, I think deliberately so to avoid deepfakes.

Have a great start to your week,

Tristan Rayner, Senior Editor