Samsung Galaxy Note 20 release date just leaked — and Galaxy Fold 2
Samsung is believed to be planning a trio of big launches this fall for the Galaxy Note 20, the Galaxy Fold 2 and the Galaxy S20 Fan Edition.
The source is a detailed report by Korean site ETNews (via Android Central), citing anonymous industry sources. It claims that Samsung is planning to launch one of these phones each month from August, starting with the Note 20, then launching the Fold 2 in September and finally revealing the S20 Fan Edition in October.
The report says that the reason for this three-month streak of launches is an effort by Samsung to kick start its sales after suffering the same slump as all smartphone makers during the world’s COVID-19 lockdowns.
ETNews’ report also references the Galaxy Z Flip 5G, a version of Samsung’s clamshell foldable from earlier this year that has a new 5G-enabled chipset. However, unlike the other phones mentioned until now, there was no specific release date given.
The Galaxy S20 Fan Edition revives an old Samsung branding, one that was originally used on the Galaxy Note 7 Fan Edition, a refreshed version of the infamous Samsung tablet known for its explosive battery. It appears in essence to be an “S20 Lite,” similar to the Galaxy S10 Lite and Galaxy Note 10 Lite that were launched earlier this year.
A previous leak had said the S20 Fan Edition would arrive in January 2021, a year after the S10 and Note 10 Lites, and would likely feature 128GB of storage and Android 10 as its operating system.
The ETNews article also refers to this phone as the S20 Pen Edition and the S20 Pan Edition. However checking different translations of the article has us reasonably confident that these are interpretation errors, and the report is consistently calling the phone the Fan Edition.
Before the October release of the S20 Fan Edition, we have the Note 20 and Fold 2 to look forward to. It has been the consensus of leakers and those in the know up to now that these two phones would launch simultaneously, as the Galaxy S20 series and Galaxy Z Flip had in February. This doesn’t fit with the new report however, so we’ll have to see if any other publication or individual revises their predictions.
Samsung’s rumored August 5 Galaxy Unpacked event still appears to be on track, just not with the exact lineup of phones we expected. Rumors had also suggested this event would see the debut of Samsung’s Galaxy Watch 3 and Galaxy Tab S7, but it’s possible that these releases will also be spread out.
