It was South Korea’s — rather than Netflix’s[1] — night at the Oscars, thanks to Bong Joon-ho’s biting class satire Parasite, which won a well-deserved best picture gong.
But tech giant Samsung appears to have been hoping to steal a little of the national limelight: The Korean phone maker chose a prime Oscars ad slot to show off a 360-degree view of its next foldable, running it as a teaser for its Unpacked 2020[2] unboxing event — which takes place in San Francisco tomorrow.
The ad shows the flip phones from all angles, opening and closing while the Comic Strip sounds of Serge Gainsbourg[3] and Brigitte Bardot[4] pop and crackle in the background.
Notably we see the foldable propping itself up, with the screen half or three-quarters open, for a hands-free face-time style chat. (In case you were wondering what the point of a flip phone might be in 2020.)
There’s also an eye-popping iridescent purple colorway on show that seems intended to make the most of the screen-concealing clamshell design. A black version does a much better job of blending into the background.
While a brief side view of the phone shows what looks like a side-mounted fingerprint scanner — per earlier leaks[5].
And if you’re wondering how you’ll screen incoming calls when the clam is closed the ad shows a micro display that tells you the name of the person calling. tl;dr you can still ghost your frenemies while packing a flip.
We’ve seen renders of the Samsung Galaxy Z Flip leak online before but this is an official full view of the foldable Samsung hopes will spark a retro fashion craze...