Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 6, Galaxy Z Flip 6 Review: The Never-ending Quest for Perfection – Technology News

What is a foldable? In smartphone parlance, it’s a device that folds into two halves. There are two types of foldable phones on the market right now. Those that fold horizontally, like the Fold 6, and those that fold vertically, like the Flip 6. Both have different uses. While book-style foldable phones like the Fold 6 are designed to give you a 2-in-1 phone and tablet experience, devices like the Flip 6 are designed to do the exact opposite, folding into something even smaller so you can easily fit them in your pocket. Kudos to Samsung for making both.

Fold and Flip may seem like heaven and earth, but the mechanism is the same. Both rely on carefully designed rails, hinges, and flexible screens to open and close. The trifecta has to be absolutely precise for everything to work. More importantly, it has to be strong and durable enough to provide uninterrupted, trouble-free operation. That’s why they are nothing short of a marvel of engineering, these foldable devices. If technology and gadgets excite you, these foldable devices will give you an incredible ride.

And Samsung has held the keys to that ride for almost half a decade. Since 2019, it has produced a new Fold and a new Flip, year after year reaffirming its commitment to a category that few competing brands dare to touch even today. And it works both ways. Commitment builds trust among people and reviewers like us to be seduced by all the engineering and then — predictably — ask for more. Say, for a wider screen on the Fold, or the ability to run more apps on the Flip.

Fold 6, Flip 6 — Build quality

While concerns about long-term durability remain, the Fold and Flip are no longer seen as fragile items. At least not to people like us who had the privilege of reviewing these devices from the get-go. The Fold 6 and Flip 6 are rock solid. You can take them to the bank. Samsung has come a long way. With the Fold 6 in particular, the internal mechanisms have been fine-tuned and tuned to near perfection, reducing the weight and thickness to a more ergonomic 239g and 12.1mm.

The body is flat, with no curves at all, making it one with the Galaxy S24 series phones. (The sharp bottom edge can be a bit awkward for our left-handed friends, and the large camera bump makes it hard to live without a case.) The Flip 6 looks and feels largely the same as the Flip 5, though it holds more rigidly at more angles than before.

Their IP48 rating makes the Fold 6 and Flip 6 the first commercially available foldable devices to be dust-resistant in addition to water (which has been the case for these devices since the Fold 3). Any amount of protection, no matter how small or large, is appreciated. Even more so on a foldable device.

Fold 6, Flip 6 – View

The internal displays are an exact replica from last year. It’s a 7.6-inch 1856x2160p (QXGA+) 120Hz LTPO AMOLED for the Fold 6 and a 6.7-inch 2640x1080p 120Hz LTPO AMOLED for the Flip 6. The only major difference is that these screens can be brighter (2600 nits vs. 1750 nits). Like the protection, this update is also very much appreciated. As for the big old elephant, the bend in the middle remains as unstable as ever. You’ll have to learn to live with it. But in fairness, it’s definitely an improvement over the first few generations.

The Flip 6’s external screen is the same as the Flip 5’s — a 3.4-inch 60Hz Super AMOLED with a 720p resolution. It’s once again shaped like a folder, leaving a large portion of the bottom left corner unused. The Fold 6 has a slightly larger external screen at 6.3 inches (up from 6.2 inches on the Fold 5). Its LTPO AMOLED can also go as low as 1Hz (120Hz max), while the Fold 5 can only go as low as 48Hz at its lowest. The resolution is 968 x 2376p (HD+), and the peak brightness is 2,600 nits. It has a slightly more usable aspect ratio of 22.1:9 compared to the Fold 5 (23.1:9) — small steps toward a more user-friendly future.

Fold 6, Flip 6 – Camera

Samsung has introduced parity in both camera sets for the first time, and while the Fold 6’s setup is practically identical to the Fold 5’s, the Flip 6 gets a big spec bump as a result. Both have 50-megapixel main sensors with an optically stabilized f/1.8 lens. It’s joined by a 12-megapixel f/2.2 camera with a fairly wide 123-degree field of view (FOV). The Fold 6 also has a third 10-megapixel 3x telephoto lens (f/2.4/OIS), mostly for bragging rights.

Aside from the occasional tendency to overexpose, these cameras take decent enough photos in a variety of lighting conditions, as long as you don’t make a habit of peeking at pixels. The selfie cameras (the Fold 6 has two of them: a 4MP inside and a 10MP on the lid. The Flip 6 only has one, a 10MP one on the outside) are mere spec fillers, but the good thing is that you may not need them all that much, since the form factor allows the more powerful rear cameras to do all the hard work for you.

Fold 6, Flip 6 – Performance, Battery Life

Speaking of heavy lifting, the customary annual chip update brings the latest Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 inside the Fold 6 and Flip 6. The parity also extends to memory. Both come with 12GB of RAM by default. Storage goes up to 1TB in the Fold 6 and 512GB in the Flip 6. Performance is in line with what we’ve come to expect from these devices over the past few years. They perform well enough for everyday use, but not so well in benchmarks, especially stress tests like CPU Throttling and 3D Wildlife Stress. The Flip 6 does surprise you a bit in terms of its agility over extended periods of time. Samsung has done a good job with cooling.

All of this performance bodes well for battery life. The Fold 6, and especially the Flip 6, last 2-4 hours longer than their predecessors, as confirmed by real-world testing and use. The Flip 6’s larger 4,000mAh battery (up from 3,700mAh in the previous model) also has something to do with it. The Fold 6 settles for the same 4,400mAh capacity as the Fold 5. Samsung’s continued reluctance to move away from 25W charging is becoming increasingly difficult to justify at this point.

The silver lining—if you can call it that—is that these devices are built for the long haul. Samsung is committing to an industry-leading seven years of Android and security updates, and the hardware needs to last to deliver on that promise. The battery is a key component that degrades over time, especially with fast charging. Perhaps the slow charging is a feature, not a bug.

Fold 6, Flip 6 – Software

The One UI 6.1.1 software on both of these phones is chef’s kiss. Honestly, it doesn’t get any better than that. Samsung is just showing off at this point. This year, the focus is on AI. Another commitment it confirms is the introduction of several brand new Galaxy AI features (first introduced in the S24 series) on the Fold 6 and Flip 6.

Note Assist now supports real-time transcription, translation, and summarization right in Samsung Notes, streamlining note-taking during meetings or lectures. The Composer feature in Samsung Keyboard generates suggested text from simple keywords, making it easier to compose emails and social media posts. Interpreter mode lets both parties in a conversation see translations on the home and title screens, while Live Translate now supports real-time translations of phone conversations in third-party apps. On the creative front, Photo Assist and Portrait Studio streamline content creation, and the new Sketch to Image feature generates works of art from simple sketches. Additionally, Google’s Gemini and Circle to Search are now more deeply integrated, further enhancing the AI ​​capabilities of devices.

Not everyone will fall for these features. Not everyone needs them. But they’re conveniences nonetheless. You’ve got two screens, so you might as well use them sometimes. For better or worse, these features also prove — or at least make it seem like — that Samsung isn’t standing still. It’s constantly working. The hardware may not iterate as quickly as we’d like (or even expect), but these devices get better year after year. One year it’s about adding water resistance, another it’s about closing the gap, another it’s about AI, and so on.

Fold 6, Flip 6 – are they worth buying?

If you ask me, I would love to have a foldable phone with the physical dimensions of the OnePlus Open, the camera of the Vivo X Fold 3 Pro and the software of the Fold 6. (Then again, the Moto Razr 50 Ultra’s screen crushes the Flip 6’s in terms of size and app scale, but I can’t say the same about the rest of the package.) That’s the dream. But that’s wishful thinking and we all know it. Or is it? Maybe the upcoming Google Pixel 9 Pro Fold will end our suffering. Samsung has already crossed the Rs 2 lakh price barrier with its new foldable phones. Let’s hope Google sees an opportunity here and doesn’t mess up the pricing.

But that’s all in the future, assuming the Pixel Fold actually turns out to be any good. Until then, Samsung is the undisputed king of foldables, and its Fold 6 is the most complete and compelling case in the category, even if its price tag may sting a bit. The Flip 6 does a bit better at justifying its price increase with an improved camera and a bigger battery.