Samsung Galaxy Fold 2 could miss this major upgrade

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The battery in the next Galaxy Fold might not be much better than the first's

Samsung Galaxy Fold 2 render
An artist's render of the Samsung Galaxy Fold 2 based on rumors. (Image credit: Zone of Tech)

We're gradually learning more and more about the Galaxy Fold 2, and the latest piece of news to surface is that Samsung's second-generation tablet-sized foldable will pack a 4,500-mAh battery.

A tweet from the_tech_guy on Twitter shows a pair of screenshots listing battery components for a new device. It's not explicitly stated in the documents that these batteries will be used for the Galaxy Fold 2, but context is added in the tweet itself.

Like the original Galaxy Fold, the successor is said to join two separate batteries — one 2,090 mAh unit, and another 2,275 mAh one. The sum of that is 4,365 mAh, which is right around the first-generation Fold's 4,380 mAh total capacity.

Interestingly, minutes after that initial tweet was made, XDA Developers' Max Weinbach retweeted it, stating that the Galaxy Fold 2 will have a 4,500-mAh unit. It's unclear where the extra 135 mAh came from, but the upshot is that the next Fold's battery capacity will either come in about the same or ever so slightly larger than the first device's.

The first Galaxy Fold lasted exactly 10 hours and 1 minute in Tom's Guide's battery test, where smartphones endlessly load webpages over an LTE connection while set to 150 nits of screen brightness until they run out of juice. That's not a bad result, and if that battery grows a bit in the Fold 2, it's quite possible the new device will exceed that result.

However, this news will likely disappoint those hoping for massively upgraded longevity in the next Fold. Given the 5G modem onboard the next iteration — something the first Fold lacked — the battery might be under more stress through a day's use than the previous model's was.

We don't expect to see the Galaxy Fold 2 in the flesh until August. Ice Universe, a Twitter user who leaks lots of information concerning Samsung's mobile products, believes that Samsung is planning an event on August 5 where it will announce the Galaxy Note 20, Galaxy Fold 2 and perhaps even the Galaxy Z Flip 5G, a new variant of the clamshell foldable the company launched earlier this year.

When all those phones will actually go on sale, however, is more difficult to predict. Weinbach believes the Galaxy Fold 2 may arrive in September, which would actually square up quite nicely with the original Fold's release in September 2019, after it was delayed due to design faults after being sent to reviewers earlier that spring.

Adam Ismail

Adam Ismail is a staff writer at Jalopnik and previously worked on Tom's Guide covering smartphones, car tech and gaming. His love for all things mobile began with the original Motorola Droid; since then he’s owned a variety of Android and iOS-powered handsets, refusing to stay loyal to one platform. His work has also appeared on Digital Trends and GTPlanet. When he’s not fiddling with the latest devices, he’s at an indie pop show, recording a podcast or playing Sega Dreamcast.