Samsung yesterday announced its latest flagship foldable phone, the Galaxy Fold 4. The new foldable is the company's fourth foldable handset and comes just weeks before Apple plans to announce the iPhone 14.
The Fold 4, compared to last year's Fold 3, has minor tweaks and improvements to build quality, display, user interface, and cameras. Here we've compared five Galaxy Fold 4 features with new features expected for the upcoming iPhone 14.
New Display Material
The Galaxy Fold 4 utilizes Samsung's latest display technology and the company's M12 material set. The new display material, compared to past generations, offers richer colors and improved brightness.
According to a report from The Elec, that same material set is rumored to be used for the upcoming iPhone 14 Pro and iPhone 14 Pro Max displays. The lower-end models of the iPhone 14 will stick with the M11 material set.
Other than the benefits offered by the new display material, no other display tech changes are rumored for this year's upcoming iPhone. Apple introduced ProMotion with support for up to 120Hz in the iPhone 13 Pro last year.
48MP Wide Camera
The Galaxy Fold 4 features an improved main camera with a 50MP lens and f/1.8 aperture. Paired with improved on-device image processing, Samsung says the hardware and software changes will yield better quality images and videos.
The iPhone 14 Pro is rumored to be gaining some significant camera improvements, including a major boost in the main camera. Compared to the current 12MP wide camera on the highest-end iPhone, the iPhone 14 Pro is likely to feature a 48MP wide camera.
The iPhone 14 Pro will be capable of taking 48MP photos when lighting conditions are ideal, but when they're not, the iPhone will resort to a process known as pixel-binning to take 12MP images. The iPhone 14 Pro's wide camera is also said to be receiving a 21% larger sensor to provide more detail to photos and improved low light capabilities.
The iPhone 14 Pro is also rumored to be capable of recording 8K video, the first ever for an iPhone. The Galaxy Fold 4, like current iPhones, is capable of recording 4k at 60FPS.
WiFi 6E
Originally rumored for the iPhone 13, this year's iPhone 14 could be the first iPhone to feature the newer WiFi 6E standard. The new standard offers improved speed, range, and capacity on public networks.
The Galaxy Fold 3 was the first Galaxy Fold to support WiFi 6E, with the Galaxy Fold 4 and Galaxy Z Flip 3 following suite. You can learn more about WiFi 6E and the improvements it offers here.
Faster Performance
The Galaxy Fold 4 is powered by Snapdragon 8+ Gen 1 chips that are based on the 4nm fabrication process and can reach speeds of up to 3.2GHz. The iPhone 14 Pro will feature Apple's new and faster A16 Bionic chip.
Both the Galaxy Fold 4 and the iPhone 14 will be equally fast and speedy for the majority of customers and their day-to-day workflows. One difference, however, will be RAM. The Galaxy Fold 4 features 12GB of RAM that enables true multitasking on the device, while the iPhone 14 Pro, like current high-end iPhones, is expected to feature just half of that.
The RAM on the upcoming iPhone will feature LPDDR 5 type of memory, which is faster than previous models. This means that even with just 6GB of RAM coupled with iOS's memory management, the iPhone 14 Pro is likely to remain competitive with Samsung's 12GB of RAM offering.
Better Selfies
On the outside display, the Galaxy Fold 4 has a 10MP selfie camera, and the inside features an under-the-display 4MP camera. Like the Galaxy Fold 4, the iPhone 14 will feature an upgraded front camera.
Rumors point to the iPhone 14's selfie camera being a "high-end" camera with a wider f/1.9 aperture and autofocus capabilities. The wider aperture will allow more light to pass through the lens to reach the sensor for sharper, crisper photos and improved depth of field.
