Samsung Unpacked 2022 live, with Galaxy Z Fold 4, Z Flip 4 and Watch 5 incoming

Hello and welcome to our Samsung Unpacked 2022 live blog, the place you need to bookmark now because this is where you’re going to hear all about the latest handsets, smartwatches and earbuds from the big South Korean brand.

Of course, nothing is set in stone just yet, but let’s be honest here: Samsung has hardly hidden the fact it’s launching new foldable phones at this event, which starts (very soon) at 9am ET / 6am PT / 2pm BST / 11pm AEST – so the Galaxy Z Flip 4 and the Galaxy Z Fold 4 are almost certain to appear.

If this live blog isn’t to your liking, you can always check out our ‘How to watch Samsung Unpacked live‘ page, which packs all the ways  you can stream it in one place… I won’t be offended.

That’s a lie. I’ll be devastated. While our ‘how to watch’ piece is, of course, an excellent article, this Galaxy Unpacked live blog is the place to be, and has been all morning if you’ve been sticking around.

I’ll be giving you the low down on the best rumors we’ve heard in the build up, giving you the inside scoop on what you can expect and publishing the best tweets from #TRUnpacked – so get Tweeting now if you want to be involved.

If you want an overview of what to expect from today – and do scroll down as we’re going to dissect these expected devices in more depth – then here’s what you can get all excited for.

Galaxy Unpacked: what to expect

Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 4
This is going to be the headliner, even if it’s not the highest-selling device. Set for a triple-lens camera, large 7.6-inch internal display and a case (not a slot) for the S Pen it supports, this could be the phone that finally gets you to fold.

Samsung Galaxy Z Flip 4
Samsung has already mildly leaked this device in the promo, and we’re seeing an incremental upgrade to the Galaxy Z Flip 3. That means the same size of display , but the main thing is that the hinge will be better and the crease down the middle will be far less noticeable.

Samsung Galaxy Watch 5
We’ve already seen a huge leak for this model – along with a rugged, long-lasting Galaxy Watch 5 Pro – with big jumps in battery life, a 1.2-inch and 1.4-inch display and improved wireless charging to bag that upgrade.

Samsung Galaxy Buds 2 Pro
Less has been said about these new headphones, but we’re expecting them to land in white, graphite and purple, as well as packing improved audio and better battery life – although that’s hardly shocking.

Hello hello! The sun is shining (well, depending on where you are and what time of day it is) and it’s time to get ready for one of the tentpole events of the year: the August edition of Samsung Galaxy Unpacked.

Spoiler alert: we’re going to see some new foldable phones today. That’s not me giving you the inside scoop or anything… it’s just that Samsung has been so obvious about it that if it didn’t launch the new Galaxy Z Fold 4 and Galaxy Z Flip 4 today, I’d be utterly and completely shocked.

Let’s start things off with something of an interesting rumor: while I don’t think this is going to come to pass, leakers have tipped that the Z Flip 4 and the Z Fold 4 are going to come as just the Flip 4 and the Fold 4, as the Z is being used as a military symbol in Russian attack on Ukraine.

I doubt that will happen at this point as so many leaks have tipped them to still pack the ‘Z’ – but it’s an interesting note for how brands need to react to outside events when considering how their naming conventions will go down.

It’s important, when discussing leaked information, to always point to when the brand in question – in this case, it’s Samsung – pretty much just shows a video of one of the devices it’s showing off in an upcoming launch.

Now, I’m no forensic expert (I do know a thing or two about phones…) but you don’t need a degree to see the new Galaxy Z Flip 4 in this teaser from Samsung:

I had a dream last night that I was jogging down some stairs, jumped onto the banister, slid down a bit and then did a pretty good spin onto the floor. 

A man looked at me, smiled and gave me the finger guns. I felt good about it.

That’s all – it was just a pretty nice dream.

There have been a number of leaks about the new Z Flip that we’ll be seeing today – and while you can never be sure of the validity of a leak until the device is actually shown off on stage, we can be pretty confident that what’s leaked out is likely to be legitimate.

The first leak came from Amazon in the Netherlands, where the specs of the phone were unleashed onto the world. Now, we traditionally ignore these, as a retailer can sometimes put a product listing in its system in readiness, and do ‘best guess’ specs just to have something holding.

Those can sometimes go live, and therefore are seen as fact when they’re not. But what looks more realistic with Amazon’s leak is the pictures – and there were a lot of pretty accurate-looking marketing materials published.

It seems a number of these have been redacted of late as Samsung seems to be shutting them down – but we can see said Dutch imagery over on Telegram if you want to check out some of the dimensions.

There’s one thing I’m really excited about – as TechRadar’s Running Man of Tech – to see today.

In a recent blog post about innovation in wellness, TaeJong Jay Yang, EVP and Head of Health R&D Team at Samsung Electronics said the following when referring to the upcoming Galaxy Unpacked event:

“Samsung is excited to continue expanding our Galaxy Watch lineup to better cater to the many unique needs of our users — especially those with a passion for the outdoors.”

Now, you could easily think that means the new Watch 5 is going to have enhanced fitness elements, or a slightly bigger bezel or something. But that’s not really going to change the game – Samsung has been making ‘pretty good’ fitness watches for a while, and ‘expanding’ that means making something better – and that means a device that properly takes on Garmin.

So the rumored Galaxy Watch 5 Pro or Galaxy Watch 5 Rugged is where I think this is going – and that could be something to take on Garmin. It’ll need a bigger screen, much better battery (my Fenix 7 can last 28 days without a charge in smartwatch mode) and improved GPS features.

So, come on Unpacked – let’s see what you’ve got…

Right, let’s turn our attention to the Galaxy Buds 2 Pro (well, I assume they’ll officially  be called the Buds2 Pro because why not, eh, Samsung? Why bother with proper syntax?)

I’ve recently bought the Galaxy Buds Pro, and they’re… fine. Decent active noise cancelling, OK fit, battery life isn’t bad, sound is more than passable.

So what can we expect from the next models, a year on, should they appear?

“An updated Bluetooth codec would open the door (potentially) to 24-bit hi-res audio,” says Becky Scarrott, our Senior Audio Writer. 

“If Samsung can achieve 24-bit hi-res audio with its proprietary codec wizardry, the Galaxy Buds2 Pro might finally put Sammers on the map as a key player in wireless earbuds – but only if they can also work on that disappointing battery life”.

Oh, I thought the battery life was OK… shows what I know. ^😒

While we’re talking of massive leaks, how about this one? Nearly everything from today’s event has leaked out in some form or another so there’s not much that will surprise, but a few days ago we got a supposed official marketing image from WinFuture (although we won’t know until Unpacked unfurls) and some battery capacities too.

This is what’s excited* me:

“The 40mm Samsung Galaxy Watch 5 will apparently have a 284mAh battery, the 44mAh model said to have a 410mAh battery, and the 45mm Samsung Galaxy Watch 5 Pro apparently getting an enormous 590mAh battery.”

A 590mAh battery for the Watch 5 Pro? Given high-end Garmin watches have a (roughly) 400-500mAh battery inside, this could be game-changing. However, it’s likely that the display on the 5 Pro will be far more power hungry, so let’s not expect miracles here.

But that’s a big boost, and it sounds like we’re about to see a chonky little monster.

*Yes, I’m an absolute fun palace at parties.

Shock of the century, there’s been a last-minute leak from the Flip 4. Regular a clockwork, these are. 

This time it’s from two sources: Slashleaks has published a dummy unit of the Z Flip 4, with the front and the back shown in white and black.

The leak from noted tipster Roland Quandt over at WinFuture (they’ve clearly got a good in with someone in the Samsung food chain…) gives far more detail – noting a thinner bezel, a smaller and more compact hinge, strong aluminum used in the construction and, crucially, a bigger battery to make the most of the high-endQualcomm Snapdragon 8 Plus Gen 1 chipset, wtih 8GB of RAM.

That’s a meaty phone indeed – is it one you’ll be buying though?

Let’s go again team – and this time, we’re already seeing the standard efforts to try and generate some buzz. Some hype. Some thrash metal fun, over on Twitter.

It’s done the standard thing for a social media presence to do: run a poll. 

So… are you Team Fold or Team Flip?

At the time of posting, Team Fold is ahead, 60% to 40%. But, then again, only 254 people have voted… but I get the feeling that ratio will hold.

There was an excellent article over on The Verge recently around the fact that Samsung is pulling far into the lead in the foldables space, which is why it can afford to  make incremental changes to its phones.

It’s an interesting point – but the fact is that, without the massive marketing spend Samsung thrust on its foldable range with the Z Fold 3, it wouldn’t have sold 10 million units last year, and it would be back duking it out with Huawei, Oppo and (sort of) Microsoft right now.

Speaking of the Microsoft foldable world, let’s not forget the Surface Duo was actually a pretty decent phone and was much-loved by those that reviewed it… but more in an affectionate way, than an overly-impressed one.

While we’re here talking about foldable phones, remember Microsoft’s Courier from all the way back in 2009? It was like a proto-foldable… well, it didn’t even fold at all, it was two Windows PCs without a keyboard welded together. 

You interacted with a stylus, it sounded mega, you could move things across from one screen to the other in a note-taking manner… it’s clearly the grandmother of the Surface Duo phone, but man alive, I wanted it so much.

Let’s talk cameras – something that’s usually a strength of Samsung here. The brand will always be putting high-end snappers into the mix, partly because it develops the sensors itself, but the Fold and Flip series have never had the best-quality out there.

Will that change this time around? The rumors are clear that the new camera will be headlined by a 50MP sensor with optical image stabilization and a pretty-modern f/1.8 aperture sensor too.

That’s a far cry from the three 12MP sensor for last year, and could yield much better pictures as Samsung continues its campaign to make foldable phones ‘a thing’.

One of the things that really puts me off buying a new Z Fold phone is the crease down the middle – I used the Galaxy Z Fold 2 for a few months, and I’ll admit I stopped noticing it after a while, but whenever I open it back up it’s there, staring me right in the face.

It’s like when I got my eyebrow pierced – I know that it didn’t hurt that much to get it done, but when I thought about having it done again I couldn’t bring myself to have someone push metal through my skin.

Same with the Fold 4 – I don’t want to spend well over $1,000 if I’m going to be greeted with sadness the first time I open it up – even though I know I’ll get used to it.

It depends if the rumors of a ‘reduced’ crease really are true or not – only an hour to go now to find out…

OK, we’re T-minus one hour from the launch of the new slew of Galaxy Z Fold and Flip phones, and (probably) new watches and headphones too. 

Make sure you’re ready to watch with our How to Watch Samsung Unpacked guide, and remember that this page autorefreshes regularly, so when everything starts going nuts and I need to type faster than ever, just let the page do its thing – you don’t need to press F5 (although it will give us more page views, which is nice).