The Golden Week holiday grab bag

Samsung adds folder screen to folding phone

Welcome back to Multicore for Thursday, May 4th.

Golden Week is upon us here in Japan. If you're unfamiliar, it's the biggest domestic travel week because of the four national holidays that fall in quick succession. This year the first of those landed last weekend, but most of the country still has Wednesday to Sunday off. With the recent easing of pandemic measures and the reopening of borders to tourists, right now Tokyo has a very different feel to it from the past few years.

I myself will be contributing to the local travel and tourism sector by heading to Okinawa tomorrow. I'll have the Xiaomi 13 Ultra in tow, which I'm excited about putting through its paces. Stay tuned for holiday snaps.

This week has been very quiet for news, so there’s a few quick updates today and I'll have another review up soon.

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When I reviewed Oppo's Find N2 Flip back in February, I thought it beat Samsung's Galaxy Z Flip line in several important ways. The most obvious one was the much larger outer screen, and now it looks like Samsung is hitting back in unusual fashion with the Galaxy Z Flip 5.

Here's an image posted by reliable Samsung oracle Ice Universe, who says the Flip 5 will have a 3.4-inch external display with 720x748 resolution (305ppi):

If someone at Samsung thought "what if we make the external screen on our folding phone look like... a folder", I applaud them. But even if they didn't, this looks like a big upgrade, allowing for a good amount of glanceable information without going overboard on tiny-screen UI.

Your move, Oppo.