Samsung Galaxy Z Flip Review: temper your expectations – The Verge

The all new Samsung Galaxy Z Flip is the third foldable screen phone I’ve reviewed. It turns out that it’s also the best folding screen phone I’ve reviewed – but make no mistake about it. As with the Galaxy Fold and Motorola Razr, the Z Flip is more of an expensive experience than a real product that anyone should buy.

Although Samsung claims that this phone has a glass screen, it turns out that glass in this context has fewer advantages than previously thought. Excuse the pun, but temper your expectations.

The Z Flip costs $ 1380, and the biggest praise I can give it is that after five days of use, I found myself thinking that the Z Flip was a bit normal. I have complaints and I have many, many concerns. But after a while, the Z Flip stopped looking like a special foldable phone and just felt like my phone.

This is an important step for folding phones, but the reality is that there are still many other steps to take before you can recommend one.

There are two main things to do with folding phones: the screen and the hinge. These two parts are so important because they are things that have not yet solved the problems in the world of the telephone. This is where the experiment takes place, and it is also where the biggest points of failure are found.

So far, the three folding phones have experienced a kind of fully predictable sustainability drama right after their launch. For the Z Flip, it is double. First of all, the screen is much more susceptible to scratches and bumps than its glass material suggests. Second, the new hinge design, which is a little more resistant to debris, is not foolproof.

Let’s start with the screen because it’s the most worrying thing. Yes, it does use bending glass, which is an engineering feat. But as The edgeSean Hollister explained earlier this week, there is actually a relatively simple explanation of how Samsung has succeeded: “practically anything can be folded if you make it thin enough.”

Samsung’s so-called “ultra thin glass” is 30 microns thick, on the order of a very thin human hair. This has consequences. Most important of all: any squeak or nick in the glass could be catastrophic.

To solve this problem, Samsung covered the glass with a second layer of plastic. This layer is quite soft, which is why it picks up nail indentations if you press too hard and why it gets scratched so easily under Zack Nelson’s metal picks in his classic JerryRigEverything test. And because the glass under this layer of plastic is so thin, it can be pierced relatively easily. The perforation of the Z Flip’s glass screen completely destroys the OLED screen below, while on an ordinary phone, you could just have a cracked screen for living.

So what’s the point of having a glass screen if it is just as fragile and vulnerable as a plastic screen? Well, Samsung can say that it shipped the first foldable phone with a glass screen. I think that is probably the main reason.

But there are more subtle advantages. It really feels firmer under my thumb than other folding screens. It’s like having a plastic screen protector on a regular phone. I would also like to think that it will end up being a bit more durable than plastic in the long run, but we won’t know if this is true for a while. Samsung will provide a one time replacement for $ 119 in the event of a breakdown.

Then there is the fold in the middle of the screen. It is there, we cannot get around it. I can see it when I am looking for it, but I do not see it when I am not. It also seems a little strange to me, but not so much to put me off like on the Razr. The screen is also surrounded by large, raised plastic glasses. I don’t like them, but I also understand their necessity and I don’t find them particularly boring.

As far as screen quality goes, I think it’s a step above other folding screens, but I can’t resist a direct comparison to a Galaxy S10 or iPhone 11. I don’t not really complaints about quality, brightness, color, and resolution, and I can’t say enough. This is, as I mentioned at the top, completely normal. However, it’s a very large and narrow screen, which can make most videos a little annoying due to the black bars on each side.

On the hinge, the other source of anxiety for folding phones. There are four things to know about this.

First: it is quite rigid. This stiffness of the hinge adds to the general feeling of confidence and durability, but it is also difficult to deploy the phone with one hand. I can do it, but it takes a little more strength than I feel comfortable, as if it could fly out of my hand.

Most of the time, it’s just a little more comfortable to open the Z Flip with both hands. This is doubly true, because if you place your thumb to start the flipping action, you risk damaging the plastic of the screen below with your thumbnail. Snapping him with one hand, however, is deeply satisfying.

The second thing is that Samsung explains this rigidity of the hinge by pointing out that you can place the phone on a table ajar like a laptop. It’s called “Flex Mode” for some reason, and the idea is that you can use it to make video calls or take photos. Currently, only a few applications support it. Above all, I think it’s a gadget: support your phone so that the camera points where you want it, it’s not a problem that requires a solution of $ 1380.

Third, there is a small gap when the phone is closed. It’s a little scary because, again, the screen is quite fragile, and it’s a space where debris could get stuck. (The Motorola Razr, for its many flaws, has managed to fold completely flat without any gaps.) The gap also means the Z Flip is just a little thicker than it would be otherwise when closed, but we’re talking about a millimeter or two here, so it’s not a big deal to me.

Fourth and finally, Samsung added brushes and caps to the hinge to better protect it from debris getting inside. This is the problem that probably destroyed the screen of my very first Galaxy Fold review unit last April. Will these new brushes work? Who knows! They couldn’t resist a dust test from I fix it, but it was a very aggressive test. All I can say is that I have more confidence in this hinge than I did in the original Razr or Fold.

Add these four together, and it’s the best hinge ever made on a foldable phone. Likewise, it’s also the best screen I’ve ever tested on a foldable phone. It means … what exactly? The best foldable phone is still too fragile and too expensive, so the “best” in this category doesn’t really count as a victory.

Surprisingly, on a daily basis, I have above all been able to put aside concerns for sustainability. This does not mean that I have no problems with the hardware. The power button and the combined fingerprint sensor on the right side are too hard to reach, and if you are left-handed it will be particularly troublesome.

I also think the Z Flip’s tiny outside screen isn’t as useful as Samsung thinks. It’s a nice clock and it’s somewhat useful to see the notification icons, but as a selfie viewfinder, it’s especially useless for framing a photo.

This brings me to the cameras, which are disappointing. I assumed that Samsung’s progress over the past year with the Galaxy S10 and Note 10 would be reflected in the Z Flip’s two 12-megapixel sensors (one wide and one ultra wide). I should not have.

They’re not bad cameras, but they don’t stand up to close comparisons with Samsung’s own Galaxy S10 a year ago. It seems to me that Samsung overcompensates by increasing the smoothness, which turns too much detail into a smear when you zoom. I would have preferred something that seems a little less treated.

You can take selfies with the main cameras, which is great. Strangely, however, you cannot choose your aspect ratio for these photos; they are always square. Likewise, you can use this Flex mode to configure the phone to take a photo with a timer, with a small preview on the outside screen. It’s good, but the phone is so slippery that I feared it would slip right away.

I’m almost disappointed with myself assuming the cameras would be at a flagship level. Presumably, they suffer from reduced costs or a need to store everything in a phone case that must devote at least a quarter of its internal volume to a hinge – or both.

I don’t want to give the impression that these cameras are terrible. But for the context, you should know that an iPhone 11 Pro – which costs less than the Z Flip for the same storage – beats it every time, especially in low light.

As for the rest of the traditional “phone stuff” like speed, battery life, etc., the Z Flip is really cool. The performance is excellent, thanks to a Snapdragon 855 Plus processor and 8 GB of RAM. It’s not top notch for Android, but it was last year’s flagship specs, and that’s a lot. The 256 GB of storage is not expandable and there is no headphone jack, but this is also normal for today’s phones.

I am relatively satisfied with the life of the battery. I can spend a day of regular use – about four or five hours of screen time. It’s better than the Razr, but it’s not quite up to par with similar-sized Android phones that don’t fold. Still, I’m moderately impressed that Samsung has gone this far given space constraints.

I am also delighted to see wireless charging. This makes Z Flip my new favorite bedside clock. (Or, it would be if he didn’t continue to slide from my charger.)

The aesthetics of the Z Flip is also very normal. Unless you get purple, the shiny black model is as close to anonymity as I could imagine.

On the software side, the Z Flip performs Samsung One UI customizations in addition to Android 10. Samsung highlights the split screen capabilities of One UI by placing a sliding widget that makes it easier to open a second application . That’s good, but I prefer the more traditional on-board screen function that is available on other Galaxy phones.

For the most part, I think Samsung has made smart interventions, but there are still places where Samsung is trying to generate additional revenue at the expense of the user experience. The phone pushes you to services like Microsoft OneDrive, pop-ups for Samsung Pay, and it even places ads in a section (luckily, easy to ignore) of the phone dialer. It’s a lot.

Is the Galaxy Z flip a normal phone? Of course not! It folds and has a glass screen 30 microns thick and an additional layer of plastic. It’s much more fragile than any phone you have right now. It costs $ 1,380 for a phone with a camera which is a little more, especially for the price.

But after using it for almost a week, it felt pretty normal. This is an important step for these folding phones. The goal is to make them just another reasonable choice among hardware designs, something that actually allows people who wear clothes with small pockets to carry a bigger phone. This objective is the reason why I refuse to immediately reject folding phones. It seems interesting to me to have more diversity in the design of phones again.

If folding phones stop being expensive curiosities, they should start to look normal. I need to be able to talk to you about the screen, the performance and the camera, not spend the majority of my time explaining why this time maybe – may be – the screen and the hinge will not explode. They also obviously have to start getting much more normal prices.

At the end of the day, the Samsung Galaxy Z Flip is still an expensive curiosity that you shouldn’t buy. But it is a sign that something much less curious and much more normal is actually possible.

Vox Media has affiliate partnerships. These do not influence editorial content, although Vox Media may earn commissions for products purchased through affiliate links. For more information, see our ethics policy.

The all new Samsung Galaxy Z Flip is the third foldable screen phone I’ve reviewed. It turns out that it’s also the best folding screen phone I’ve reviewed – but make no mistake about it. As with the Galaxy Fold and Motorola Razr, the Z Flip is more of an expensive experience than a real product that anyone should buy.

Although Samsung claims that this phone has a glass screen, it turns out that glass in this context has fewer advantages than previously thought. Excuse the pun, but temper your expectations.

The Z Flip costs $ 1380, and the biggest praise I can give it is that after five days of use, I found myself thinking that the Z Flip was a bit normal. I have complaints and I have many, many concerns. But after a while, the Z Flip stopped looking like a special foldable phone and just felt like my phone.

This is an important step for folding phones, but the reality is that there are still many other steps to take before you can recommend one.

There are two main things to do with folding phones: the screen and the hinge. These two parts are so important because they are things that have not yet solved the problems in the world of the telephone. This is where the experiment takes place, and it is also where the biggest points of failure are found.

So far, the three folding phones have experienced a kind of fully predictable sustainability drama right after their launch. For the Z Flip, it is double. First of all, the screen is much more susceptible to scratches and bumps than its glass material suggests. Second, the new hinge design, which is a little more resistant to debris, is not foolproof.

Let’s start with the screen because it’s the most worrying thing. Yes, it does use bending glass, which is an engineering feat. But as The edgeSean Hollister explained earlier this week, there is actually a relatively simple explanation of how Samsung has succeeded: “practically anything can be folded if you make it thin enough.”

Samsung’s so-called “ultra thin glass” is 30 microns thick, on the order of a very thin human hair. This has consequences. Most important of all: any squeak or nick in the glass could be catastrophic.

To solve this problem, Samsung covered the glass with a second layer of plastic. This layer is quite soft, which is why it picks up nail indentations if you press too hard and why it gets scratched so easily under Zack Nelson’s metal picks in his classic JerryRigEverything test. And because the glass under this layer of plastic is so thin, it can be pierced relatively easily. The perforation of the Z Flip’s glass screen completely destroys the OLED screen below, while on an ordinary phone, you could just have a cracked screen for living.

So what’s the point of having a glass screen if it is just as fragile and vulnerable as a plastic screen? Well, Samsung can say that it shipped the first foldable phone with a glass screen. I think that is probably the main reason.

But there are more subtle advantages. It really feels firmer under my thumb than other folding screens. It’s like having a plastic screen protector on a regular phone. I would also like to think that it will end up being a bit more durable than plastic in the long run, but we won’t know if this is true for a while. Samsung will provide a one time replacement for $ 119 in the event of a breakdown.

Then there is the fold in the middle of the screen. It is there, we cannot get around it. I can see it when I am looking for it, but I do not see it when I am not. It also seems a little strange to me, but not so much to put me off like on the Razr. The screen is also surrounded by large, raised plastic glasses. I don’t like them, but I also understand their necessity and I don’t find them particularly boring.

As far as screen quality goes, I think it’s a step above other folding screens, but I can’t resist a direct comparison to a Galaxy S10 or iPhone 11. I don’t not really complaints about quality, brightness, color, and resolution, and I can’t say enough. This is, as I mentioned at the top, completely normal. However, it’s a very large and narrow screen, which can make most videos a little annoying due to the black bars on each side.

On the hinge, the other source of anxiety for folding phones. There are four things to know about this.

First: it is quite rigid. This stiffness of the hinge adds to the general feeling of confidence and durability, but it is also difficult to deploy the phone with one hand. I can do it, but it takes a little more strength than I feel comfortable, as if it could fly out of my hand.

Most of the time, it’s just a little more comfortable to open the Z Flip with both hands. This is doubly true, because if you place your thumb to start the flipping action, you risk damaging the plastic of the screen below with your thumbnail. Snapping him with one hand, however, is deeply satisfying.

The second thing is that Samsung explains this rigidity of the hinge by pointing out that you can place the phone on a table ajar like a laptop. It’s called “Flex Mode” for some reason, and the idea is that you can use it to make video calls or take photos. Currently, only a few applications support it. Above all, I think it’s a gadget: support your phone so that the camera points where you want it, it’s not a problem that requires a solution of $ 1380.

Third, there is a small gap when the phone is closed. It’s a little scary because, again, the screen is quite fragile, and it’s a space where debris could get stuck. (The Motorola Razr, for its many flaws, has managed to fold completely flat without any gaps.) The gap also means the Z Flip is just a little thicker than it would be otherwise when closed, but we’re talking about a millimeter or two here, so it’s not a big deal to me.

Fourth and finally, Samsung added brushes and caps to the hinge to better protect it from debris getting inside. This is the problem that probably destroyed the screen of my very first Galaxy Fold review unit last April. Will these new brushes work? Who knows! They couldn’t resist a dust test from I fix it, but it was a very aggressive test. All I can say is that I have more confidence in this hinge than I did in the original Razr or Fold.

Add these four together, and it’s the best hinge ever made on a foldable phone. Likewise, it’s also the best screen I’ve ever tested on a foldable phone. It means … what exactly? The best foldable phone is still too fragile and too expensive, so the “best” in this category doesn’t really count as a victory.

Surprisingly, on a daily basis, I have above all been able to put aside concerns for sustainability. This does not mean that I have no problems with the hardware. The power button and the combined fingerprint sensor on the right side are too hard to reach, and if you are left-handed it will be particularly troublesome.

I also think the Z Flip’s tiny outside screen isn’t as useful as Samsung thinks. It’s a nice clock and it’s somewhat useful to see the notification icons, but as a selfie viewfinder, it’s especially useless for framing a photo.

This brings me to the cameras, which are disappointing. I assumed that Samsung’s progress over the past year with the Galaxy S10 and Note 10 would be reflected in the Z Flip’s two 12-megapixel sensors (one wide and one ultra wide). I should not have.

They’re not bad cameras, but they don’t stand up to close comparisons with Samsung’s own Galaxy S10 a year ago. It seems to me that Samsung overcompensates by increasing the smoothness, which turns too much detail into a smear when you zoom. I would have preferred something that seems a little less treated.

You can take selfies with the main cameras, which is great. Strangely, however, you cannot choose your aspect ratio for these photos; they are always square. Likewise, you can use this Flex mode to configure the phone to take a photo with a timer, with a small preview on the outside screen. It’s good, but the phone is so slippery that I feared it would slip right away.

I’m almost disappointed with myself assuming the cameras would be at a flagship level. Presumably, they suffer from reduced costs or a need to store everything in a phone case that must devote at least a quarter of its internal volume to a hinge – or both.

I don’t want to give the impression that these cameras are terrible. But for the context, you should know that an iPhone 11 Pro – which costs less than the Z Flip for the same storage – beats it every time, especially in low light.

As for the rest of the traditional “phone stuff” like speed, battery life, etc., the Z Flip is really cool. The performance is excellent, thanks to a Snapdragon 855 Plus processor and 8 GB of RAM. It’s not top notch for Android, but it was last year’s flagship specs, and that’s a lot. The 256 GB of storage is not expandable and there is no headphone jack, but this is also normal for today’s phones.

I am relatively satisfied with the life of the battery. I can spend a day of regular use – about four or five hours of screen time. It’s better than the Razr, but it’s not quite up to par with similar-sized Android phones that don’t fold. Still, I’m moderately impressed that Samsung has gone this far given space constraints.

I am also delighted to see wireless charging. This makes Z Flip my new favorite bedside clock. (Or, it would be if he didn’t continue to slide from my charger.)

The aesthetics of the Z Flip is also very normal. Unless you get purple, the shiny black model is as close to anonymity as I could imagine.

On the software side, the Z Flip performs Samsung One UI customizations in addition to Android 10. Samsung highlights the split screen capabilities of One UI by placing a sliding widget that makes it easier to open a second application . That’s good, but I prefer the more traditional on-board screen function that is available on other Galaxy phones.

For the most part, I think Samsung has made smart interventions, but there are still places where Samsung is trying to generate additional revenue at the expense of the user experience. The phone pushes you to services like Microsoft OneDrive, pop-ups for Samsung Pay, and it even places ads in a section (luckily, easy to ignore) of the phone dialer. It’s a lot.

Is the Galaxy Z flip a normal phone? Of course not! It folds and has a glass screen 30 microns thick and an additional layer of plastic. It’s much more fragile than any phone you have right now. It costs $ 1,380 for a phone with a camera which is a little more, especially for the price.

But after using it for almost a week, it felt pretty normal. This is an important step for these folding phones. The goal is to make them just another reasonable choice among hardware designs, something that actually allows people who wear clothes with small pockets to carry a bigger phone. This objective is the reason why I refuse to immediately reject folding phones. It seems interesting to me to have more diversity in the design of phones again.

If folding phones stop being expensive curiosities, they should start to look normal. I need to be able to talk to you about the screen, the performance and the camera, not spend the majority of my time explaining why this time maybe – may be – the screen and the hinge will not explode. They also obviously have to start getting much more normal prices.

At the end of the day, the Samsung Galaxy Z Flip is still an expensive curiosity that you shouldn’t buy. But it is a sign that something much less curious and much more normal is actually possible.

Vox Media has affiliate partnerships. These do not influence editorial content, although Vox Media may earn commissions for products purchased through affiliate links. For more information, see our ethics policy.