Samsung has consistently been refining and releasing more foldable phones into the market, with the Galaxy Z Flip 4 being the latest take on the clamshell folding design. It's upgraded with a better processor and better cameras, a more durable design, cool colors, and a few other tricks, but is it enough to finally get the masses on board with folding phones?
AT&T was kind enough to loan us a Galaxy Z Flip 4 unit so we're taking it for a spin to see if the product matches the hype. Let's find out.
Folding design
The first thing you're going to notice about the Galaxy Z Flip 4 is, obviously, the folding screen. When it's folded up it's very compact, almost the size and shape of a good MP3 player from yesteryear. This makes for a very compact device to put in your pocket or bag, and with the screen being totally protected by the shell you don't have to worry quite as much about keys or something scratching its screen up.
You still get some access to the device thanks to a screen on the front of the Flip that will let you see notifications and scroll through a couple of widgets, allowing you to briefly check your calendar or control music playback with a few taps. It feels like an integrated hardware solution to an always-on display feature, honestly, albeit much much smaller.
Unfolding the Flip 4 turns it into a pretty standard phone with a slightly taller-than-usual aspect ratio. It's a skinny phone to accommodate that foldable form factor, but honestly, this phone would otherwise pass for another slim 6-inch smartphone. Except, of course, for the crease right in the center of the screen, horizontal and always present.
Part of this is the pre-installed screen protector; you can remove it this year with minimal risk of damage, but that makes the crease significantly more apparent (and distracting, depending on your opinion). Even without that screen protector, you're still going to notice that crease. It comes with the territory, and at least for now it's just part of the compromise of a folding phone, but it's more of a distraction than a minor issue to me, especially feeling it while actually using and scrolling the phone.
As far as buttons and ports go, you'll find a USB-C port along the bottom of the phone, with the volume button and hybrid power button/fingerprint scanner on the right side. The back of the phone houses the two camera lenses in its two-tone color scheme, right above a small LED flash.
The specs sheet from Samsung says the Flip 4 is very slightly differently shaped from the Flip 3, but we're talking about half a millimeter in some measurements. It's nearly identical otherwise.
The foldable display
The Galaxy Z Flip 4 boasts a very tall 6.7-inch display. That 22:9 aspect ratio makes for a very skinny phone as we mentioned earlier, which can be a bit unwieldy to use one-handed. It's great for movies, though, and social media apps that rely on a lot of scrolling work very well here.
It's a 120hz display that feels incredibly smooth, and you know Samsung wouldn't leave you hanging without full HDR10+ support and nearly 800 nits of peak brightness. The colors pop, and it's overall a very good screen, assuming you can get past the crease.
Samsung has said they've refined the folding part of the Z Flip 4, but it's still noticeable. If it weren't for the crease I'd enjoy the phone much more, but as it is you'll have to actively overlook it, both in tactile feel and visual aesthetics.
Steady performance
Samsung has upgraded this iteration of the Flip 4 with a Snapdragon 8+ Gen 1 for every so slightly better performance over the Flip 3's Snapdragon 888 CPU. Is it better? Yeah, probably.
Flagship phone processors are generally all going to handle things as well as they possibly can these days. Whatever games you're playing will run at maximum settings for a few years to come, and the 8GB of RAM and high-speed flash storage will knock out all of your productivity demands.
I will say that the phone does tend to run a little warmer than some other flagship devices, which could just be due to space constraints, but I never experienced thermal throttling.
One UI stands out
Samsung has spent the better part of the last few years leaning on One UI as the standout feature on its phones. The latest versions of very refined and for many people offer one of the best flavors of Android on the market.
Everything you'd expect is here, from Samsung's own themed apps and interface, the one-handed UX, the Galaxy App Store, Microsoft/Google integration, and so on. If you've used a Samsung phone in the last few years, you know what's here.
What's different, however, is the Flex Mode specific to this phone. If you fold the phone in half so it makes a 90-degree angle instead of fully opening or closing it, you'll get a special view that allows you to interact with apps in a slightly different way. Doing this on the built-in calendar or gallery app, for instance, gives you almost a second-screen experience. The calendar will show your monthly view on the “top” screen and an agenda view on the “bottom” screen. The gallery allows you to manipulate photos with a trackpad-esque functionality to zoom in and scroll around the image, and the camera app puts your controls on the bottom of the display.
It's kind of neat, and definitely not something that makes sense on other phones. It may not be particularly useful, but it does stand out. Additionally, Samsung has a setting that lets you force this mode on for any app on your phone with the bottom screen showing a trackpad that works just like a laptop trackpad, plus sliders for brightness controls, a screenshot button, and a couple of other things.
Is it a selling point on its own? I don't think so, but it does make your folding phone a little cooler.
Decent battery, decent charging
Battery life on smartphones has gotten drastically better lately, but Samsung's Galaxy Z Flip line hasn't shown up to the party yet. With just a 3700mAh battery, the Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 Plus CPU doesn't manage to offset the small size with efficiency gains. It's not terrible battery life by any stretch, but it's not great either. Heavy usage is going to have it dead by 5 PM, and even light users probably won't pull two days out of this phone.
Many OEMs have picked up very fast charging methods for their phones to counteract battery life concerns, fully juicing your device in less than an hour. Samsung has also decided to not join that bandwagon, and the Galaxy Z Flip 4 can charge at 25W, which is something you'd expect to see on an Apple spec sheet and a far, far cry from the latest iterations of 80W charging from the likes of OnePlus.
Is that a huge deal? Samsung still promises you can get 50% of a charge from 30 minutes of charging with their Fast Charge 2.0 spec, which isn't bad. You can still use your phone while it's plugged in, and 30 minutes isn't that long to wait, but this is somewhere that Samsung is getting shown up by the competition time and time again.
Good Enough Photography
Samsung has delivered a few crucial upgrades to the Galaxy Z Flip 4, including a better low-light sensor, and they've kept the ultrawide and front-facing cameras from its predecessor.
Images do tend to come out a bit over-saturated at times, but that's very likely intentional; these shots pop and look pretty, especially on social media and in group chats. But in good lighting and outdoors, you're going to get some very good pictures.
Surprisingly the phone holds its own pretty well in low light this time around. This still isn't a given on any smartphone, but it's a big plus to see Samsung handling that with priority.
But as you can see below, the lack of a telephoto lens is noticeable. At just 3x zoom, which a telephoto lens in 2022 handles very well, you're quickly losing a lot of detail.
Worth it?
So is the foldable revolution here? Is this going to be the phone that everyone wants in their pocket that's not $2000?
Maybe.
I think the Galaxy Z Flip 4 is a very fun phone, with cool colors, an expansive ecosystem of matched devices and accessories, and features that will absolutely impress your friends and start conversations. But once you're past those things, as a phone it's just… okay.
At $1000 this phone has serious competition, including Samsung's own cheaper Galaxy S22 and Galaxy S22+. But with mediocre battery life, a middle-of-the-road camera, and no killer feature to go along with that folding screen, you won't actually have a better phone experience with the Flip vs a standard Galaxy S phone. Sure, the folding is cool, but functionally the small front screen actually does less than Samsung's AOD implementation, aside from looking sleek and fitting better in your pocket.
If that's what you're after, it's great! As I said earlier, the Galaxy Z Flip 4 is a fun phone, even if it loses out against comparable phones in other ways. You're probably not buying this because you're chasing value or the best bang for your buck, and that's alright. Just keep it in mind when making your comparisons.
