That's one more major Unpacked event under the belt for Samsung. As has become a pattern - the summer event was used to highlight the new flagship foldable smartphones, new smartwatches and new tablets. Most were quite incremental updates on their predecessors, but there's plenty to be excited about.

What was announced at the 'Join the Flip Side' event?

Samsung used its summer Unpacked event to unveil a host of new products across a range of categories, involving smartphones, tablets and smartwatches. It's clear from the presentation and focus, however, that there is one 'hero' category: its foldable Galaxy Z smartphone range.

For 2023, the running theme for both the Galaxy Z Fold 5 and Galaxy Z Flip 5 was refinement. Both devices have had their hinge and screen designs revamped, getting rid of the gap that has appeared on all previous versions of the two phones. That means, when shut, there's no easy space for dust and fluff to get into and means the phones are slimmer when closed than they have been until now.

With the Z Flip 5, specifically, it's the new cover display that has become the biggest talking point. Where previous Flip models had a small colour display near the bottom - which was essentially a ticker display for basic information and widgets - the new model has a large screen that takes up nearly all the space on the front.

This screen can be used for large, colourful and data-rich widgets, and can even run a select few optimised full-screen apps. You can reply to messages using the onscreen keyboard and choose from a huge selection of wallpaper and clock styles.

Otherwise, both Z Fold 5 and Z Flip 5 are similar to their predecessors. They're built from sturdy aluminium, feature IPX8 water resistance and are powered by the Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 processor.

As well as those, Samsung unveiled two new versions of the Galaxy Watch. The Samsung Galaxy Watch 6 is very much an evolution of the Galaxy Watch 5 which is thinner and has a larger display and skinnier bezels than the last model. The Galaxy Watch 6 Classic has the same specs and features but is built into a stainless steel case and has a rotating bezel for controlling elements of the interface.

Both come in large and small sizes, and both run the latest version of Wear OS software with Samsung's own One UI skin on top.

Lastly: tablets. Samsung has launched three new flagship tablet models which make up the Galaxy Tab S9 range: the Tab S9, Tab S9+ and Tab S9 Ultra. All feature many of the same specifications, but with the main difference between them being size. It's a case of regular, large and extra large, respectively.

You get big, bright, colourful displays, flagship-powered internals and a lot of useful tablet-optimised inclusions in software like compatibility with the S Pen, the computer-like DeX interface, and powerful loudspeakers for immersive audio.

All products are available to pre-order from now, and will be on shelves by 11 August.

When was the Samsung Galaxy Unpacked event?

The Samsung Galaxy Unpacked event took place on Wednesday 26 July 2023, and was broadcast from Korea, starting at 7am EDT.

  • US West Coast: 04:00 PDT
  • US East Coast: 07:00 EDT
  • United Kingdom: 12:00 BST
  • Central Europe: 13:00 CEST
  • India: 16:30 IST
  • Japan: 20:00 JST
  • Korea: 20:00 KST
  • Australia East Coast: 21:00 AEST

How to re-watch the Samsung Galaxy Z Flip 5 and Z Fold 5 launch live stream

There are a couple of ways to watch the Unpacked event back. You can either watch the video right here on this page (we've embedded at the top and just below for convenience), but you can also watch it on a dedicated web page published by Samsung.