Samsung is working on bringing dustproofing to its foldable phones, despite the feature being unavailable on the Galaxy Z Fold 5 and Flip 5 launching this week.
Rumours had suggested Samsung had mastered the ability to protect the phone from dust ingress and may have been certified in time for this new generation. That wasn’t the case, with the phones keeping the IPX8 certification for waterproofing but not dustproofing.
However, Samsung is still hopeful of bringing the additional protection to its foldable phones for future versions of its Flip and Fold handsets.
“We are well aware of consumer demand for dust proofing, and we are making various efforts to achieve this, but due to the nature of foldables, there are many moving parts, so dust proofing is difficult,” Samsung boss TM Ron reportedly said during a press conference reported by BizWatch (via Android Authority).
Roh asked users “please wait a little longer” for feature to come to fruition.
The dustproofing is somewhat of a holy grail feature for the foldables, but it remains really difficult due to the unique nature of the hinge. Effectively, foldables and flippables are two separate pieces with only that flexible display spanning both.
Inherently, it’s quite difficult to keep the dust out and it’ll be interesting to see how Samsung explains the technology when they finally achieve it.
Samsung isn’t alone in struggling to dustproof its folding phones when the candy bar form factor has offered the certification as standard for years now.
Perhaps this time next year we’ll be welcoming the first dustproof foldables… if another manufacturer doesn’t beat Samsung to the punch.
