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Folding phones are still a new category in smartphones with its introduction in 2018. In fact, there are only a handful of companies that make phones with Motorola re-making the Razr brand and Google making their first foldable with the Google Pixel Fold in 2023. Heck, Samsung only started making folding phones in 2020. The South Korea-based tech company’s newest release is the Samsung Galaxy Z Flip 6 and it’s the best foldable you can buy in 2024.
Equipped with a Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 (Gen 3), the Z Flip 6 — which starts at $1,099.99 at Samsung.com, Walmart and Amazon — is very fluid and smooth with Android 14, which provides zero lag from touch to swipe. In our testing, we found that firing up apps is quick and responsive, while multi-tasking and app-switching is a breeze. Samsung’s One UI makes using the foldable easy to understand and get started, but maybe a little too hand-holdy, if you’re switching from another Samsung phone or Android smartphone. However, if you’re switching from the Apple iPhone, then having a guided tour from everything Samsung has to offer might be helpful.
At 6.7 inches, the foldable display is sharp, crisp and vibrant with buttery smooth scrolling at 120Hz. We experienced no hiccups of slow downs when scrolling through Google News or Instagram, while the phone doesn’t have the same filmy textures as other folding smartphones, like the Motorola Razr+. However, since it is a folding phone, there is a crease in the middle of the display, which is part of the hinge. You can hardly notice it though when you’re scrolling through apps. It’s there and you can feel it, if you’re searching for it. But it doesn’t feel as aggressive as other folding smartphones though.
The cover display is smaller at 3.4 inches. It’s great for checking the time, news updates and notifications. There’s also quick access controls for apps, like music controls, if you don’t want to open the phone itself. The cover display is clear and colorful, but not as bright as the main display. It would be nice if you could add widgets from other apps, but as it stands, Samsung apps and Spotify get top priority. We listened to podcasts during our testing and a cover display for Pocket Cast would’ve been appreciated. This may be an app issue, but there is a Pocket Cast widget for the main display. To be fair, you could access quick controls for Pocket Cast on the cover display, if you’re already using the app, so that’s a happy compromise.
In our time with the phone, we found that the Samsung Galaxy Z Flip 6’s battery life to be more than solid with up to 15 hours per charge. We took it off the charger at 7 a.m. and placed it back on the wireless charger around 10 p.m. It’s long enough to get you through a work day and then some, but you’ll have to give it a re-charge overnight to get it back to 100%.
Aside from Z Flip 6 speediness and battery life, it’s the only folding smartphone that we used that we could successfully open and close with just one hand. It might sound like a small thing, but one of the reasons you’d get a foldable phone is its compact size when folded (it fits comfortably in a shirt pocket) and its usability when it’s unfolded.
Being able to open and close it with one hand is reminiscent of flip phones from the late ‘90s and early 2000s, which is why, we believe, is one of the biggest appeals of the Samsung Galaxy Z Flip 6. And thanks to its sturdy and flexible hinge and lightweight size (at 6.60 ounces, or 187 grams), the foldable smartphone is comfortable for one-handed use. It even turned a few heads when we used the phone on a subway car full of people in New York City.
And unlike the Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra, the fingerprint reader is quick and consistent. It’s one of the fastest of any smartphone we tested in 2024. The reader itself is located on the power button, as opposed to the more premium S24 Ultra, where the fingerprint reader is underneath the display.
Rudie Obias
Rudie Obias
As far as photos and video, the Samsung Galaxy Z Flip 6 is more than serviceable. Although it doesn’t have a pro-level camera, it does have an impressive system with a 50-megapixel wide, a 10-megapixel telephoto and 12-ultrawide cameras on its rear. The photo quality is sharp, detailed and natural for social media, like Instagram and Facebook, while video quality is also crystal clear and smooth at up to 8K quality at 30 frames per second, which is ideal for TikTok and Reels.
The camera’s zoom features are also in-depth and clear, but the more you zoom in, the less detail appears in the photos. The images below were taken at the Stephen A. Schwarzman Building at the New York Public Library on 5th Avenue at 41st Street during an overcast morning in Manhattan. You can see that the camera can pick up the hanging lamp over the entrance, but the subjects underneath are not as clear or full. Check out all of the photos and videos taken with the Samsung Galaxy Z Flip 6 here.
Rudie Obias
Meanwhile, the Z Flip 6 has the same AI features as the Samsung Galaxy S24 models, including Live Translation for real-time language translation, Circle to Google for faster image search, Notes Assist for comprehensive summaries of emails and recordings, and Photo Assist for easier photo editing. The AI features, as a whole, are very useful for work and play, while the process was fast and easy to learn in our testing.
Overall, the Samsung Galaxy Z Flip 6 is a fantastic foldable smartphone and the best clam-shell foldable from Samsung yet. It’s a very good pick for casual and lite-productivity. It’s speedy enough to comb through apps, snap brilliant photos and smooth videos for Instagram, browsing the web on Google Chrome, listening to music on Spotify and podcasts on Pocket Cast, watching YouTube and TikTok and other online activities. Its unique form-factor and folding design is compact, easy to open and head-turning.
The phone comes in four colors; blue, mint, silver and yellow; and three Samsung.com exclusive colors; crafted black, peach and white. The Samsung Galaxy Z Flip 6 is available at Samsung.com, Walmart and Amazon starting at 256GB of on-board storage at $1,099.99.
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