Today’s the day that Samsung is going to “surprise” us with its latest foldable phones. We say surprise, because the whole lot has been leaking in full for weeks. Even so, today is Samsung day and if the leaks are right we’re going to be very busy covering what phones are coming later this month.
Roughly 24 hours before Samsung executives are due to take to the virtual stage, OnePlus published a simple tweet containing a short video clip. This 16 second of Samsung-spoiling upset contains just 10 seconds of a new and clearly foldable phone. Two seconds are dedicated to a date, in this case 8.11.21 which when converted from arse-backwards American reads as 11.8.21, which the eagle-eyed among you will note is today. The tweet also contains a time, which is 10am ET – the same as Samsung's start time.
So presumably when Samsung gets busy with the Galaxy Z Fold 3 and Z Flip 3 and is busy extolling the virtues of its new Galaxy Watch and Galaxy Buds the upstart OnePlus is going to be attempting to grab some headlines with a new foldable phone. Will it be a device that’s available to buy soon, or is this some distant handset that won’t appear for ages? We simply don’t know.
What we can say is that for all Samsung’s leaking of its phones, no one seems to have had any information whatsoever about this folding OnePlus. That’s got to be a bit embarrassing for Samsung, although it does operate at scales far larger than OnePlus and does involve all manner of third parties in construction. Again, we don’t know if this folding OnePlus is even in production yet, but if it is, the achievement of no leaks would be truly remarkable.
Anyway, OnePlus is urging interested parties to keep an eye on its Instagram account, and no doubt any updates will appear on Twitter too. It does bear mentioning that this might not be what it seems either. While the video looks like a folding phone it could be a dual screen device, rather than one large screen, but until the company actually explains itself this is all guesswork.
We’ll keep an eye out for it and let you know when we have more information.
