Samsung’s foldables — and, really, foldables in general — have come a long way since their first couple of generations, and nowhere is that clearer than in the durability realm. This summer’s upcoming Galaxy Z-series, including that newly-added “Wide Fold,” might come with a new software trick that helps keep that inner display from potential debris.
With early One UI 9 builds floating around, the folks at Android Authority have dug deep into Samsung’s upcoming software, discovering strings of code and illustrations that showcase exactly what this feature might entail. Those two strings mention a specific error warning — “Phone not fully folded” — as well as a full message for users indicating that the device did not fold completely due to potential “foreign substances” blocking its two halves. The illustrations don’t deliver a ton of additional information, though they are tied to the codenames for all three of Samsung’s upcoming foldables.
In all three illustrations — one for the Galaxy Z Fold 8, one for the Flip 8, and one for whatever Samsung decides to call its wider Fold — various shapes stand in for real-world debris. It’s unclear how large or small these foreign objects would need to be to alert the user to a potentially-dangerous situation, though. While I assume coins, buttons, SD cards, or other thin-but-large products would obviously be caught, I’d be curious if a substance like sand would also manage to trigger the warning.
And hey, we’re also getting yet another look at a rough estimate of the shape and size of Samsung’s wider foldable, which — based on my own estimates on animations previously leaked from this One UI 9 build — could sport a 16:10 outer display to allow for a much wider interior experience.
We’ll have to wait until One UI 9 arrives this summer to learn all the nuance of Samsung’s debris detection, including whether or not it’ll come to older foldables with the update. In the meantime, the company’s next launch — the Galaxy S26 series — kicks off tomorrow in San Francisco, alongside the arrival of One UI 8.5.
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