Why would you want a smartphone that you can “fold”? This is the question I ask every time I see a new tablet that costs a lot more than it should. People might call me a “foldable cynic” because I don’t think the technology that makes it possible for smartphones to fold in half is useful in the big picture.
Why is it new to go back to a style from the early oughts? How does it make my life better? Better for you? Motorola and Nokia made folding phones back then, which were smart because one half of the phone was the screen and the other half was the number pad. Do you remember those? But the iPhone, a smartphone with only a screen and no number pad, pretty much made this design choice useless, right?
until Samsung brought it back. This company makes two lines of folding phones: the Galaxy Z Fold (read our review of the latest Fold5) and the Galaxy Z Flip. The Galaxy Z Fold is the company’s best-selling line.
Samsung sent us a model of the Galaxy Z Flip5 to study, and I saw it as a chance to see if I could change my mind about how I felt about technology.
TLDR? The Z Flip5 is a great smartphone, but it’s way too expensive when you take away the foldable feature and compare it to the best phones that its maker has made.
The Galaxy Z Flip5’s looks and screen
The Galaxy Z Flip5 is without a question a lovely little gadget, even if you disagree with what technology should be and do. The back is silver and the screen folds out sharply. The Samsung logo pops out from the flex hinge, which is a feat of engineering and design in and of itself, finishing off what is basically an “ooh” machine.
Families will want to hold and touch it, and people will look. A Samsung folding phone looks brand new and is very fancy, so you want to show it off. Everyone can see that it says “This is the newest smartphone!”
Until you tell them how much it costs and they pull back their mitts.
The main screen that folds out is a beast of an AMOLED 2X HDR10+ monitor. You can look at anything through the window of this dynamic folding screen, and it will look great. You can choose from colors that are deeper and more colorful.
The Flex Window, which is now much bigger than the Z Flip4, has brand-new and better ways to get to it. These show up as widgets, like the weather app, the schedule, and all of your messaging needs. The Flex Window lets you text, read emails, and make calls all at the same time. Samsung South Africa marketing told the media that some users may not even have to open the device in their daily use because this extra small screen does so many things. So why should the smartphone be able to fold? Possibly a question above our pay grade.
The main screen and the Flex Window both pop with color, and you can use them to change how your phone looks even more. For me, it was one of the best things about the Z Flip5.
Details and show
- Galaxy Z Flip5 from Samsung
- The screen is a foldable dynamic AMOLED 2X HDR10+ 120Hz
- Adreno 740 GPU and Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 CPU
- 7GB of RAM
- 256GB of storage
Battery 3: A 700mAh Li-Po that can charge to 50% in 30 minutes, according to Samsung.
Picture cameraThere is a wide-angle 12MP camera and an ultrawide 12MP camera.
The Gen 2 Snapdragon engine in the Galaxy Z Flip5 makes it move very quickly. This phone has one of the best Geekbench scores we’ve seen, with a score of 5,241 in multi-core tests and 2,018 in single-core tests. It’s just not as good as its bigger brother, the Galaxy Z Fold5. Other smartphones we’ve looked at don’t even come close.
This cosmic power is clear right away. You don’t have to wait for the Z Flip5 apps to start. The videos will load soon. The Adrena 740 graphics card makes the ZFlip 5 a great device for playing games. When put through 3DMark tests, the Z Flip5 did better than both Wild Life and SlingShot Extreme. It got 3,582 points on Wild Life Extreme, an app that many iPhones can’t even run.
It’s clear that Samsung has given its foldable phones flagship-level speed, on par with the Galaxy S23 series.
It folds up!
The Z Flip5 can end calls by closing like the old-fashioned clamshell phones, which makes it even more fun to ghost telemarketers. The marketing for the gadget is based on nostalgia in order to attract Gen-Zers who love millennial pop culture.
What else do you get when you fold? Well, you can fold down half of the screen to sit the phone down, and YouTube will automatically adjust. Then there’s a small YouTube player at the top of the screen that you have to watch. You could just lay the screen flat on something and prop it up that way. The video will fit on a bigger screen.
YouTube is one of the few apps that really makes use of the folding feature. In fact, during the review time, I couldn’t find another good example.
A group of 12MP cameras might not seem like enough, especially when compared to what Samsung puts in its top-of-the-line phones. Even the Z Fold5 has a lot more high-definition cameras to choose from.
Photographers and people who love cameras might want to check those out if they want to take great pictures. But the Z Flip5’s 12MP sensors do a good enough job for what it is. High contrast lets you see the beautiful colors clearly, and AI software adds Gaussian depth of field to the background automatically, which makes the subject stand out.
Its macro shot skills aren’t as good as those on the Galaxy A54, but they’re good enough if that’s what you’re looking for. I also need to talk about the Flex Window and how it can be used to take selfies. In its unfolded state, the phone has a selfie camera, but most people will do what Samsung says and take selfies with the Flex Window, which uses the main camera setup.
When the Flex Window is in picture mode, all you have to do to take a selfie is tap the screen. The selfies you get are usually better than those on modern smartphones because this mode gives you access to a higher-definition camera.
A battery
Before I talk about how I liked the Z Flip5’s 3700mAh battery, I need to address the big problem that nobody wants to talk about. In the box, the phone only has a USB Type-C to Type-C charging cord. There is no charger. This is really annoying.
Regarding the battery, it’s a bit sad that the Z Flip5 doesn’t have a 5,000mAh battery like that found in cheaper smartphones. It doesn’t matter how powerful your gear is if you use it for long periods of time at high speeds, like doing games. It will also be clear that the phone is getting hot to the touch.
During testing, it took about two hours for the nearly full Z Flip5 to drain to about 60%. According to Samsung, it can charge from 0% to 50% in 30 minutes. However, the short battery life was more obvious to us than the fast charging (probably because IK couldn’t use its charger). When you get home from work, you will have to charge your Z Flip5 every night.
Review of the Samsung Galaxy Z Flip5
The Samsung Galaxy Z Flip5 is a pretty and eye-catching smartphone with speed that is among the best in its class. However, it has a battery that doesn’t last long and cameras that could have been better. You can get it for R29,999.
Yes, it costs the same as the S23 Ultra, which is the top-of-the-line Galaxy phone.
But this phone has a much worse camera setup, a smaller battery, no stylus, and the same performance powers as the Z Fold5. I don’t understand where this price comes from since it doesn’t have any of the Z Fold5’s innovative design and work features. It’s clear that the answer is that it can fold up and has an extra screen in the Flex Window.
You should expect the best from a smartphone that costs R30,000, but the Z Flip5 isn’t at all that. Not even close. For how beautiful it is and how little the Flex Window gives in the long run, I don’t think it’s worth the price.
If you have the cash, I think you should buy the Ultra and leave the Z Flip5 where it is. When you fold the other phones shut, the call ends. Back in the year 2005.