Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 6: One-minute hands-on

Bit by bit Samsung’s foldables have become practical, powerful, and elegant devices that you might reasonably choose over a flagship that doesn't bend in the middle. The new Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 6 is no exception, and it’s a testament to how far Samsung has come since introducing its first foldable Galaxy in 2019. The Galaxy Z Fold 6 bears almost no resemblance to the original Fold, and the changes are all for the good, in the areas that matter.

Samsung unveiled the Galaxy Z Fold 6 at Samsung Galaxy Unpacked in Paris on July 10 alongside the new but perhaps less-altered Galaxy Z Flip 6 and a host of other new Galaxy hardware, including watches, earbuds, and the eagerly-anticipated Galaxy Ring.

Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 6 hands-on: price and specs

The Galaxy Z Fold 6 starts at $1,899.99 / £1,799 / AU$2,749, which is $100 more than the previous model. That model comes with 256GB of storage and an ample 12GB of RAM. I’ll have more to say on the price hike later. It’s on preorder as of today, July 10, and will ship on July 27. There are multiple color options, including Pink, and a few online exclusives including white and Crafted Black, though I think the Navy Blue may be my favorite.

Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 6 hands-on: design

While Samsung didn't completely throw out the previous Fold aesthetic, it’s substantially different in the Galaxy Fold 6. The handset is thinner and lighter than the previous model; in fact it's so light at 239 grams that it’s only seven grams heavier than the single-screened Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra. That itself is quite a feat (granted, there may be some material differences, like Armor Aluminum on the Galaxy Z Fold 6 versus the S24 Ultra’s Titanium body), and the Galaxy Z Fold 6 feels noticeably lighter than the Z Fold 5 that I brought with me to Paris for the sake of comparison.

The chrome edging is gone, and I do not miss it at all. Even though the button placement is unchanged and the fingerprint reader (power/sleep button) is the same, all the buttons look and feel better.

Unfolded, the Fold 6 is thinner than the Fold 5, and it’s also slightly shorter and slightly wider than the last foldable flagship. In a quick comparison with the Google Pixel Fold, though, the Fold 6 maintains the height advantage. The newly squared corners and visibly thinner bezels give the tablet-sized screen a more expansive and cleaner feel.

The main screen crease is still visible, but less so than it was on the Z Fold 5. It’s impressive how year over year Samsung moves the art of this technology a little closer to perfect. The crease-free Fold is coming – someday.

Samsung told me it's strengthened the hinge by adding more steel to the dual-rail system. That system by the way is more or less sealed, which means it doesn't need tiny brushes inside the hinge to push out debris. Still, while the phone is rated to survive 30 minutes in a meter of water, its ability to withstand a dust storm might be a bit less certain, which is why it has an IP8X rating and not IP68.

Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 6 hands-on: display

Both the main and the cover screens look bigger and better than ever. The cover screen benefits from a shrinking bezel that adds a tiny bit of screen real estate without making the phone much wider. The inside display, which is still AMOLED, does get some important updates. It’s now, at 2,600 nits, much brighter than the one on the Z Fold 5 (1,700 nits), and includes adaptive refresh up to 120Hz. There are also more software controls, including vibrancy (adopted from the S24 line).

However, the most notable folding screen update may be one you can't see (though you might say you can feel it). Samsung execs told me they added a new layer made of neodymium to the folding screen panel. The material has Newtonian qualities, which means it can act like cornstarch and water, which when mixed are soft if you're pressing gently, but harden when you hit it harder. It’s designed to be pliable, but if you were to hit the Fold 6 screen with a hard object, the layer would automatically meet it with stiff resistance. Naturally, we won't know the effectiveness of all this until I test the foldable fully.

Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 6: cameras

Samsung redesigned the camera housing to make it look, I believe, a bit more 'pro' and in line with the phone's more elegant overall appearance. However, it’s in this area where I worry Samsung didn’t go far enough. 

It has retained last year’s 50MP main wide and 10MP 3x optical zoom cameras, and only upgraded the 12MP ultrawide, adding a sensor that's better equipped to handle low-light situations (it's adopted from the S24, and it can also help with focusing speed). Any other photographic improvements are due to upgrades in Samsung’s ProVision software.

In my limited hands-on time, I could see that the cameras work as well as what I experienced using the Galaxy Z Fold 5. The 3x zoom is useful, and you can go all the way up to a 30x space zoom, though I wouldn’t recommend it, mainly because space zoom relies a little too much AI image enhancement for my tastes.

What I was hoping for here was the adoption of the flagship-class S24 Ultra cameras. That handset’s 200MP main camera and better 5x optical zoom are the least we should expect from a smartphone costing nearly $2,000 (even one with two displays). That said there’s nothing wrong with this camera array, and it should please most casual photographers. The cover screen features a cutout 10MP selfie camera that I tried and liked, and there's also a 4MP main display camera (usually hidden by pixels) that you’ll mainly use for video calls.

I shot some test images both with the Z Fold 6 unfolded, in which orientation the main screen becomes a giant viewfinder, and with the handset closed, using the smaller cover screen as my viewfinder. The nice thing about using the large screen is that you can have a view that shows both the live camera feed, and a film strip of your most recent shots next to it.

Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 6 hands-on: Galaxy AI

Like most recent Galaxy phones, the Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 6 is bursting with Galaxy AI. It’s evident in, among other things, photography, image and video editing, and cross-language conversation.

One of my favorite integrations is in Notes, where I used the new Sketch to Image feature to turn rough doodles into fully-fledged pieces of art.

I drew a terrible crocodile, and it was transformed into a magazine-worthy illustration. The process is simple: you sketch in the app using either the Galaxy Fold 6-specific S Pen or your finger. You then select the image, and ask Galaxy AI to generate a more polished image based on it. It’s a cloud-based operation, so it takes 20 or so seconds, and most of the time I got not just one great illustration but a few to choose from. It’s the kind of technology that makes me worry for human illustrators.

If it’s any solace to those illustrators, the tool wasn’t foolproof. It didn't appear to like when I put too much detail in my sketches, but I could usually overcome this by marqueeing only part of my original sketch.

The same tool can also be used to add additional design flourishes to original images. In this case, you can poorly sketch something on top of a photo – say you want to make an image of your dog wearing glasses, you can sketch the glasses and Sketch to Image will make a realistic pair of spectacles for the dog.

The Fold 6 has also adopted Galaxy AI features that first appeared with the Samsung Galaxy S24. For example, I shot a short video with the Galaxy Fold 6 of our social editor Viktoria Shilets tossing her hair at normal speed. During playback on the phone, I held my finger on the screen and it automatically turned that portion of the video into a commercial-worthy slow-motion. It’s a fun little feature, and one that works even more effortlessly on the Fold 6 thanks to the slow-mo output now being downloadable right after creation – S24 users had to dig for that option.

Samsung told me that features like Generative Fill, which you can use to move a subject within a photo or remove a subject from a photo, also work on the Z Fold 6, though I didn’t have time to test them.

Circle to Search is now live on the Z Fold 5 and it worked equally well on a pot of flowers as it did on table decorations. In each case, I pointed the camera at my subject, held down the virtual home button for a second, and then circled the on-screen object in question. A second later, I had Google images and descriptions that made sense of the original. I’m not sure the long-press on home is the most obvious way to activate this, and some might forget it exists, but if you use it a few times I bet you’ll be hooked.

The Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 6 also has substantial on-device translation capabilities. I tried out Conversation mode and Listening mode. In the latter, you can set the phone to listen to a foreign language speaker and it will quickly display the transcription in the language of your choice. In Conversation mode, we set the phone in Flex mode, which means having the phone opened to 90 degrees so that someone speaking Russian could see the cover screen on which our English-spoken words were displayed in their native Russian. On the main screen facing us, we saw their Russian phrases displayed in English.

The translations, which happen locally and can be exported (otherwise they disappear) were good but not perfect – the system would usually get the meaning right but not always match the precise phrasing.

I also noticed that the only indication to the other speaker that it’s okay for them to speak is that a small microphone icon turns blue, so if you already have a language barrier, explaining to someone how to use this feature might be a problem.

Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 6 hands-on: under the hood

Samsung has made a few changes inside the phone. It now has a larger vapor chamber, which should help with heat dissipation, especially during intense activities like gaming. I didn’t get to game on the Galaxy Z Fold 6, but I confess that gaming is one of my favorite activities on the big-screen Galaxy Z Fold 5.

The phone should have some extra oomph thanks to the new Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 for Galaxy chip – and that 'Galaxy' at the end is more than just lip service for a favored partner. These chips have slightly faster main CPUs (3.39GHz vs 3.3GHz) and a faster GPU, and that this is backed by 12GB of RAM is even better news. The 256GB base storage, which is the same as last year, is also good news, and if you feel the need for more you can pay for up to 1TB of storage.

This is, naturally, a 5G phone, and Samsung told me that it supports WiFi 6e – there's no word on WiFi 7 though.

There are still stereo speakers, which I did not get time to test, but I noted how the chassis design has transformed them from grilles to thin slots, which is similar to the design on the Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra – Samsung execs insisted that this is not less safe for the internals.

There's a 4,400mAH dual battery, which is unchanged from the Galaxy Fold 5.

Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 6 hands-on: early verdict

The Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 6 seems better than its predecessor, the Galaxy Z Fold 5, in almost every way and should join our list of best foldable phones. Design-wise, I think this is a big leap forward – this now feels like a normal phone that just happens to split open to reveal a big main-screen wonder, and it’s a lovely screen even with that visible crease.

All the built-in AI isn't just fun, it has the potential to be genuinely useful for many people, assuming they can discover it (Samsung hides too many of these features under menus or non-obvious actions).

The cameras are good, though I would love a bigger zoom and more megapixels on the main camera.

My main criticism comes down to price. The foldable market remains tiny, and I think consumers will more quickly gravitate towards affordable foldables than they will full-featured ones (go figure). Asking for yet another $100 – even for a better device –seems like a mistake and, as I noted recently, probably won't help Samsung grow the tiny foldable market. Of course, there’s a good chance that you’ll pay less than $1,899.99 / £1,799 for the Z Fold 6 – I have yet to see a Galaxy phone launch that doesn't include significant deals and discounts.

Samsung Galaxy Z Flip 6: Two-minute hands-on

The best foldable phones are no longer considered the overly expensive, impractical cousins of the best phones around, but the number of clamshell foldables on the market continues to be dwarfed by the number of tablet-style foldables on offer in 2024.

Samsung, for its part, has long played both sides of the foldable field, with only Motorola for company in the flip-phone space (the Oppo Find N2 Flip proved a worthy foil to the Galaxy Z Flip 4, but the limited global availability of its successor, the Oppo Find N3 Flip, meant that last year’s Galaxy Z Flip 5 went up against the Motorola Razr Plus 2023 and little else).

The story is similar for the Samsung Galaxy Z Flip 6, which arrives with limited competition beyond Motorola’s new Motorola Razr Plus 2024. That’s not to say Samsung has been complacent with its latest clamshell foldable – the Galaxy Z Flip 6 brings plenty of worthwhile upgrades over the Galaxy Z Flip 5 – but it certainly has a lower bar to clear than the Galaxy Z Fold 6, which finds itself in competition with the Google Pixel Fold, OnePlus Open, Honor Magic V2 and Xiaomi Mix Fold 3 (not to mention their respective imminent successors).

I bore this context in mind when handling the Galaxy Z Flip 6 for the first time ahead of Samsung Galaxy Unpacked 2024. Visually, it’s exactly the same phone as the Galaxy Z Flip 5 – save for some color-matched rings around the rear camera lenses and a nice satin finish for the frame – with most of this year’s upgrades coming either under the hood or in the durability department. The Galaxy Z Fold 6, by contrast, looks a lot more premium than the Galaxy Z Fold 5, but Samsung clearly hasn’t felt the same pressure to drastically overhaul the appearance of the Galaxy Z Flip 6 given its current position atop the clamshell market.

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The good news is that this tried-and-tested design still very much works. The Galaxy Z Flip 6 boasts the same 3.4-inch, 60Hz AMOLED cover display (720 x 748) and 6.7-inch, Full HD+ AMOLED main display (2640 x 1080) as its predecessor, with the larger of these two screens boasting an adaptive 1-120Hz refresh rate. The phone itself measures 72 x 85 x 15mm when folded and 72 x 165 x 7mm when unfolded, and it weighs just 187g, which again is the same as the Galaxy Z Flip 5.

The functionality of the 'Flex Window' (i.e., the cover display), as Samsung calls it, has been further expanded with interactive wallpapers and ambient weather animations, but you’ll still get the usual smorgasbord of clock, calendar and timer widgets to choose from.

As with the Galaxy Z Flip 5, the Flex Window on the Galaxy Z Flip 6 skirts around the phone’s rear cameras, which leaves a bigger bezel than you’ll find on either of Motorola’s latest flip devices. For me, though, this dented square shape brings a nice retro vibe to the Galaxy Z Flip 6, especially now that the rear camera lenses have been made more eye-catching with color-matched rings. The combination results in a cute, retro robot-like look, which works particularly well with the phone’s (mostly) new colors: yellow, blue, mint and silver.

So far, so similar; but as mentioned, the meaningful upgrades come under the hood. For starters, the Galaxy Z Flip 6 boasts a 4,000mAh battery, where the Galaxy Z Flip 5 and Galaxy Z Flip 4 both use a 3,700mAh cell. Samsung has also squeezed a vapor cooling chamber – the first ever in a flip phone – into the Galaxy Z Flip 6, so the new foldable should offer improved heat dissipation as well as longer battery life (we haven’t yet been able to test either metric). These upgrades are made more impressive when you consider the phone’s unchanged 187g weight. So, where did Samsung shed the pounds?

One answer could be in the materials protecting the Galaxy Z Flip 6. According to Samsung, the Armor Aluminum frame encasing its latest foldable is 10% stronger than before, while the hinge and edges have been toughened up, too. 

Most welcome of all is a new IP48 dust- and water-resistance rating, which betters the water-only IPX8 rating of the Galaxy Z Flip 5 and Motorola Razr 2024, but falls just short of the Galaxy S24’s totally dust-proof IP68 rating. In layman’s terms, this means the Galaxy Z Flip 6 is protected against particles over 1mm in size (i.e., large bits of dust).

On paper, at least, this combination of durability features makes the Galaxy Z Fold 6 the most practical flip phone of the lot, and I certainly felt more comfortable about repeatedly opening, closing and repositioning the device as I photographed it for this hands-on review.

The Galaxy Z Flip 6 is powered by Qualcomm’s top-end Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 chipset (i.e., the chipset inside almost all of the current best Android phones) and 12GB RAM instead of 8GB, so I highly doubt that you’ll be left wanting for performance with this phone.

The 8 Gen 3 brings the Galaxy S24’s impressive ProVisual photography engine to Samsung’s latest foldable, too, and you’re also getting the same main and ultra-wide cameras as on the Galaxy S24 Plus – specifically a 50MP main lens and a 12MP ultra-wide lens. That’s a marked improvement over the Galaxy Z Flip 5’s 12MP primary and ultra-wide combination. On the front, the phone’s 10MP selfie snapper is unchanged. 

Given my short handling time, I wasn’t able to do much testing with either rear lens – and I wasn’t permitted to extract any camera samples, either – but I can tell you about a handful of new camera-focused features that make the process of actually taking photos much easier. 

The first is Auto Zoom, which automatically adjusts the camera’s zoom length when you’re not operating the phone manually. Say, for instance, you’re out at the park and want to capture a picture of you and your surroundings; you can now set up the Galaxy Z Flip 6 on a perch, trigger a timed photo, and let the phone do the framing for you. This is a nice example of Samsung optimizing its software for foldable phones, specifically, and it’s far from the only one. 

Another is the improved Camcorder Mode on the Galaxy Z Flip 6, which has been optimized to feature an old-school, thumb-based zoom toggle. I took it for a spin during my hands-on session, and it really does make the new phone feel like a 90s video camera.

Samsung has added foldable-specific optimizations to certain Galaxy AI features, too. Interpreter, for instance, now lets you conduct live, two-way translated conversations using the internal and external displays. This meant I was able to ask, in English, a Korean-speaking Samsung representative about a particular regional dish, and they were able to view and answer my question, in Korean, via the Galaxy Z Flip 6’s cover display. It’s a truly impressive – and, crucially, useful – upgrade to an already impressive feature.

As for Samsung's update commitment to the Galaxy Z Flip 6, you'll get seven years of software updates and seven years of security updates, which should ensure Apple-level longevity.

One note I would add about all this great Galaxy Z Flip 6 software is that I don’t think these optimizations will remain exclusive to the Galaxy Z Flip 6 for long. I highly doubt that they’re dependent on the power of the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3, and if they aren’t, then I expect Samsung to roll out similar optimizations for the Galaxy Z Flip 5 – and potentially even the Galaxy Z Flip 4 – in the months following the Galaxy Z Flip 6’s launch.

Samsung took a similar approach with the first set of Galaxy AI features, which launched as temporarily exclusive to the Galaxy S24 before becoming available at a later date on selected older-generation Samsung phones. And while this is by no means a bad thing (quite the opposite – good on Samsung!), it may be hard to recommend the Galaxy Z Flip 6 on the basis of excellent software alone. By the time we publish our full review of the device, perhaps we’ll know more about Samsung’s plans for the future rollout of these features.

All told, then, the Galaxy Z Flip 6 represents an iterative but welcome upgrade over the Galaxy Z Flip 5. It isn’t likely to be a must-own device for anyone who’s already using a relatively recent Galaxy Flip phone, but if you’ve been hesitant to try a foldable due to concerns over practicality, then the Galaxy Z Flip 6 could be the perfect place to start.

Specs comparison

Here's how the Galaxy Z Flip 6 stacks up against the Galaxy Z Flip 5 in terms of specs.

Samsung Galaxy Z Flip 6: Should you pre-order?

Samsung Galaxy Z Flip 6 pre-orders are now open, with the phone set to begin shipping on July 24. In Australia, shipping will begin on July 31.

The Galaxy Z Flip 6 starts at $1,099.99 / £1,049 / AU$1,799 for the model with 12GB RAM and 256GB storage, rising to $1219.99 / £1,149 / AU$1,999 for the model with 512GB of storage.

For context, that starting price is $100 / AU$150 higher than that of the Galaxy Z Flip 5, though you do get 12GB RAM instead of 8GB with the Galaxy Z Flip 5. UK pricing remains unchanged across both storage variants.

So, should you pre-order the Galaxy Z Flip 6? Well, that depends on what phone you're currently using, as well as how much you value mobile photography.

In a straight shootout between Samsung's newest foldable and the Galaxy Z Flip 5, the former wins out – on paper, at least – in several departments. It's got a better main camera, a faster Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 chipset, a bigger batter, improved durability and, in my opinion, a slightly more premium-looking design.

That said, I don't think any of these new features will warrant a direct generational upgrade, unless you're particularly disappointed with the Galaxy Z Flip 5's 12MP main camera, and are clamouring for a more powerful 50MP snapper.

Mind you, if you're not reading this hands-on review as an existing Galaxy Z Flip owner, and are considering whether to dive into foldable phones for the first time, then the Galaxy Z Flip 6 looks certain to rank alongside the best foldable phones (and indeed the best Samsung phones) we've ever tested.