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Samsung's brand-new batch of folding smartphones hits store shelves across the UK today. Announced at a Galaxy Unpacked event held in Paris earlier this month, the Galaxy Z Fold 6 and Galaxy Z Flip 6 arrive with brighter folding screens, faster chipsets, and improved cameras.
But the headline new addition for both foldable is Galaxy AI — a batch of new Artificial Intelligence (AI) features, including real-time translations, summaries for lengthy documents or webpages, and the ability to convert your hand-drawn doodles into Pixar-like creations. Speaking at the launch event at the start of the month, Samsung’s mobile division president TM Roh said AI was “supercharging our latest foldables”.
After a lengthy preorder period, the Galaxy Z Fold 6 and Galaxy Z Flip 6 are now available to buy in-store and online.
Neither of these cutting-edge Android handsets comes cheap, with the Flip 6 starting from £1,049 and the Fold 6 starting from £1,799. The latter is pricier than Samsung's Galaxy Z Fold 5 (£1,749) launched around the same time last summer.
Alongside these new smartphones, Samsung has also launched a new wearable device — Galaxy Ring — that's designed to record your calories burned, continuously track your heart-rate, and monitor your sleep 24 hours a day. This lightweight device, which has enough battery to last one week between charges, supports menstrual cycle tracking through overnight skin temperature monitoring.
Priced at £399, Samsung is keen to stress that its sensor-packed smart ring will offer insights into your health and wellbeing, including an Energy Score that incorporates all of your vital signs, for free. This isn't the case with some of its rivals, which charge a subscription for some features.
Many of the health-focused features found in the titanium-built Galaxy Ring are replicated with the all-new Galaxy Watch 7 and Galaxy Watch Ultra.
Galaxy Ring is available in three colour choices – Titanium Black, Titanium Silver and Titanium Gold
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These new smartwatches, which were also announced at the second Galaxy Unpacked event of the year, offer personalised advice to improve the quality of your sleep and leverage dual-frequency GPS to map out your route during an outdoor run or hike. The latest wearables from Samsung are also the first to be authorised by the US government's Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to detect sleep apnoea.
Galaxy Watch 7starts from £289, while the ultra-durable Watch Ultra — rated to withstand temperatures between -20ºC and 55°C, 9,000m altitude, and depths of 100m — starts from £599.
Speaking about the new announcements, James Kitto, Samsung UK and Ireland’s head of mobile, said: "Current data shows consumers want more control over their health and wellbeing, with nearly half of the UK wanting to be able to track their health and sleep data on a regular basis, turning to technology to achieve this.
Galaxy Watch Ultra has a square-ish design built from strong titanium. It's only available in a single size — 47mm size, but is available in three separate colours: Titanium Gray, Titanium White and Titanium Silve
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"We’re proud to not only be extending our Galaxy Watch range to open up new possibilities for our customers’ wellness journey, but also by announcing Galaxy Ring – our smallest-ever wearable, discreetly designed to allow our customers to monitor their health, wellness and sleep 24/7."
So, what's missing?
The final product unveiled during the Galaxy Unpacked event was the Galaxy Buds3 Pro wireless earbuds. These new Bluetooth 'buds boast a sliver of LEDs down the stem that can be customised to personalise your look, Samsung's first dual amp design to improve sound, swipe controls to control playback and skip tracks, and new AI models trained on a large database of common sounds to intelligently remove background sounds with ANC.
These £219 earbuds were supposed to launch alongside the Galaxy Z Fold 6, Flip 6, Galaxy Ring, Watch 7, and Watch Ultra, but have been delayed after a series of complaints about the removable rubber tips being too fragile. Social media and social news site Reddit have seen a flurry of reports from people complaining about tears in the interchangeable tips.
Buds3 Pro are the first wireless Bluetooth earbuds from Samsung to feature built-in LEDs in the stem
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Speaking to Android Authority about the emerging issue, a spokesperson for Samsung said: "To ensure all products meet our quality standards, we have temporarily suspended deliveries of Galaxy Buds 3 Pro devices to distribution channels to conduct a full quality control evaluation before shipments to consumers take place. We sincerely apologise for any inconvenience this may cause."
Galaxy Bud3 Pro are still available to buy, but won't ship until at least August 14 in the UK.
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Speaking about the slew of new Samsung products coming to the UK, industry expert Ben Wood, chief analyst at CCS Insight, said: “Samsung has gone all-in on AI with this latest portfolio of products with Galaxy AI as an omnipresent theme for all the new devices. Now it must clearly explain the tangible benefits that AI delivers, beyond just being a buzzword for the latest tech.
"The storytelling around the new products needs to offer relevant and understandable use cases for Galaxy AI that will help consumers justify investing in premium products that don’t look that different from their predecessors."
