Cher Horowitz had one, Serena van der Woodsen had one, Lizzie McGuire had one, and now, in 2023, Sydney Sweeney has one. I’m talking about flip phones, which through the 1990s and early 2000s were the must-have tech status symbol for teen girls everywhere.
I should know, I was one of them. When I rocked up to university, it was with my trusty Motorola Razr — an icon of its time that was famously endorsed by another icon of that time: Paris Hilton.
Just as Motorola tapped Hilton in 2001, Samsung is now leaning heavily on Sweeney, star of the beloved-by-Gen Z HBO show Euphoria and part of the cast of The White Lotus’ first season, to try to convince the teens of today that they need a flip phone in their lives. Specifically, it wants to sell them the Samsung Galaxy Z Flip 5, which it unveiled in Seoul, South Korea, along with the heftier Galaxy Z Fold 5 phone, Galaxy Tab S9 and Galaxy Watch 6 during last week’s Unpacked event.
Flippin’ pricey
One potential roadblock for the Z Flip 5 on its way to winning the hearts and minds of teens everywhere is price. Foldable phones have struggled on the whole to gain mainstream traction at least in part due to their $1,000-plus price tags. The Z Flip 5 comes in at just under this, at $999, making it more affordable than most. (For contrast, Samsung’s other foldable phone, the Z Fold 5, starts at $1,800.)
It could be in Samsung’s favor that the improvements it’s made to this year’s Z Flip offer better value for money, said Anisha Bhatia, senior analyst at GlobalData.
“Samsung is following its Galaxy S23 strategy by giving consumers ‘more’ for the same price in this time of inflationary stress,” she said. “The Flip 5 costs the same as its predecessor at $999 but doubles the base storage to 256 GB.”
Make no mistake: That’s still a hefty amount to part with whether you’re a young person or a parent of one. But no high-end phone these days comes cheap, and the Z Flip 5 offers a lot for the money, while standing out in a crowded market with its unique design.
If any phone can tempt Euphoria and K-Pop fans to embrace Android and foldable screen technology, it wouldn’t be surprising if the Z Flip 5 is the one to do it.
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Article source: https://www.cnet.com/tech/mobile/will-gen-z-buy-into-flip-phones-samsungs-z-flip-5-aims-to-find-out/#ftag=CADe34d7bf