In spite of countless successes, Samsung's track record with smartphones is far from spotless – largely due to the company's slow but steady decline into irrelevancy in China, the world's largest smartphone market. Which makes any individual success in the Far Eastern country all the more significant – especially when it revolves around an exotic, bleeding-edge flagship with an eye-watering $3,300 price tag. The Galaxy Z Fold 2 Thom Browne Edition may be a mouthful, but it's also the reason why Samsung has lately been counting money by the handful.
This hybrid between an Android flagship and a fashion statement continues to perform so strongly that its pre-sales are turning into lotteries, and China isn't immune to the craze, either. Newly emerged reports reveal the Galaxy Z Fold 2 Thom Browne Edition sold within four minutes of becoming available for pre-orders in the country on Wednesday.
How artificially scarce is this this foldable, exactly?
Naturally, while Samsung and the local branch of the American fashion brand were quick to tout that milestone, don't hold your breath for any actual pre-order figures to get released. After all, a set of head-turning sold-out headlines is much more valuable to Samsung's nascent foldable smartphone efforts than a few hundred extra sales. Though none of that is to say we expected this level of global enthusiasm for a smartphone that costs as much as a serviceable used car.
The Galaxy Z Fold 2 Thom Browne Edition is scheduled to begin shipping to early adopters on September 25th, a week after regular model hits the market. If “regular” is how you'd call a state-of-the-art, unapologetically extravagant flagship with a buttery smooth, vast, and bendable Dynamic AMOLED display. The remaining few Samsung tech enthusiasts in China are also in the luck because they're getting exclusive access to the ultimate version of the vanilla Galaxy Z Fold 2, that has double the amount of internal storage, along with Taiwan.
Curiously enough, this extra-luxurious Galaxy Z Fold 2 model is the third Samsung smartphone to have sold out in China this year, after the comparabily high-end Galaxy Z Flip and the decisively mid-range Galaxy A51 5G. It's almost hard to believe that China, on the whole, doesn't care about the Galaxy brand any longer. It's still true, though – at least for now.
