Hello, everyone! I hope this review can provide some insight and inform some people coming from iPhone or upgrading from another android device. Let’s get to it! I would consider myself an uber nerd when it comes to consumer electronics.
I’m one of those people who take complete advantage of my carriers upgrade service and move to a new phone every year like clockwork, granted trading in my old device each time. For the last several years I’ve loyally stuck with Apple’s iPhone.
This isn’t brand loyalty as much as it’s personal preference and ecosystem related. The main things I’ve looked for in a phone up until now has beenbuild quality, OS, photo and video capture quality, display quality, resolution and refresh rate, processor strength, ease of use, battery life, and most important to me, consistency.
This wasn’t the first, or even the first few times I’ve switched to an android phone. Prior to my last few iPhone’s I’d owned several Samsung Galaxy devices. I always choose the flagship of any make as I don’t want to miss out on any potential features at the top of the spec list.
For example, being able to capture Pro Raw footage only at a certain sku on the latest iPhone 13 line. This was a HUGE decision for me to switch back to Samsung/Android after having my expectations on iPhone/iOS exceeded for many years at this point.
What better way to write this review than sitting here with my Z Fold 4 unfolded, using the split keyboard, allowing me to comfortably write an in-depth review on a mobile phone. The unfolded, tablet-like display is truly a treat to interact with.
That’s the perfect place to start, considering the novelty of a folding display is what got me thinking to begin with. If you’re wondering why I waited until the fourth generation, well, we all know what happens when we adopt brand new technology early.
I had to let most, if not all of the kinks be ironed out. Display/Build Quality/S Pen The Z Fold 4’s main display (tablet mode) is a 7. 6″ QXGA+ 2176×1812 AMOLED with 374 Pixels Per Inch (ppi) with HDR10+ and a Variable Refresh Rate of up to 120hz.
The VRR display allows the phone to dynamically lower the refresh rate, where it makes sense, to save on battery life. If you’re wondering what QXGA+ means, just know it’s in between a display resolution of 1440p(QHD) and 2160p(UHD) and has an 21.
6:18 aspect ratio. In other words, it’s pretty **bleep** crisp. The 120hz refresh rate is immediately recognizable as someone coming from the 120hz Pro Motion Super Retina XDR display on the iPhone 13 Pro Max.
For general navigation, web browsing, scrolling, and multitasking they’re both near identical in terms of snappiness, but the Z Fold’s animations seem to be ever so slightly shorter, edging it out as a win for me in overall responsiveness at my fingertips.
We can’t leave out what’s arguably the most handy part of the Fold’s display configuration, and that’s the cover display that allows you to easily use the Fold as a conventional, regular sized smartphone, that is if you’re willing to overlook the almost obnoxiously chunky feel while in that mode.
This is further exacerbated by a particular phone case, but more on that later. The cover display is what you’ll likely use the majority of the time you’re out and about once the initial excitement for the main display wears down a bit.
Both of the Fold’s displays get bright enough to easily see what’s going on, even in direct sunlight. Text is easily legible, and texting is easy work, especially on the main display. One of the most enjoyable experiences on the near tablet sized display, besides being able to comfortably watch all your favorite content from any streaming service, believe it or not, is the extra S Pen functionality.
I highly recommend buying the Samsung Fold Edition Case with S Pen included for $90. Normally, a quality case will run you $50 and the Fold Edition S Pen costs another $50, so that’s a $10 saving for something that’s almost half the reason you’d buy this phone to begin with.
The other upside to this particular case is the satisfying soft but sturdy material that is a pleasure to touch regularly. It also has a protruding hump on the back that holds the S Pen in place, but also acts as a handle that makes the Fold much easier to hold onto.
I can’t emphasize quite how much this truly improved my experience holding the phone, but I can say, without a dount, I’d NEVER use it any ither way. The S Pen technology in general has come a long way, with very precise stroke detection, as well as being able to detect pressure for light or dark strokes.
Personally, as somewhat of a mediocre artist, I truly enjoy drawing and coloring in the built in PenUp app. Handwriting messages and notes in Samsung Notes is also satisfying, and offers up a criminally underused feature introduced with the earliest Samsung Note series phones back in the day, and that’s the scrapbooking feature that allows you to drag and drop pictures or excerpts from web pages directly from a browser with the URL embedded into the note.
There’s tons of hidden S Pen features I highly recommend watching a YouTube video on. Also, keep in mind, you want to purchase the S Pen Fold Edition ($50) or S Pen Pro ($100) because the Note series S Pen has a tip designed specifically for that phone and could damage the Fold display much easier.
Panel Type: Fold – AMOLED HDR 13 Pro Max – OLED HDR Resolution: Fold – 7. 6″ 2176×1812 @374ppi 13 Pro Max – 6. 7″ 2778×1284 @458ppi Fold Cover Screen – 6. 2″ 2316×904 @402ppi Refresh Rate: Fold – 120Hz 13 Pro Max – 120Hz Peak nit Brightness: Fold – 1200 Nits 13 Pro Max – 1200 Nits SoC/OS/Sound/Battery Life Next order of importance for me is the Sytem on a Chip (SoC); the processor running the operating system, gaming, multitasking, cameras, and inevitably what it’s all wrapped.
up in, the User Interface (UI). Samsung has opted for one of themost powerful processors in an Samsung phone, and one that’s used in the majority of recent gaming phones, the first generation 4nm Qualcomm Snapdragon 8+ (SM8475).
The chip has an octa-core CPU with variable multi core clock speeds, and an Adreno 730 GPU. I chose the base model with 256GB of storage and 12GB of RAM which is the standard across all storage capacity configurations.
What this means for real world performance is absolutely breezing throughmultitasking,which is better than ever on the main display, where you can now have three, and technically even four applications open at the same time.
With three application windows open, you have one taking up half of the main display vertically, and two other applications, square shaped, taking up the other half of the display. So two squares and one vertical rectangle.
Picture having a YouTube video in one square, a text box in another, and Samsung Notes in the vertical rectangle. As far asgaming goes, there’s not a single mobile game,whether it be on the Play Store or an external APK that this device can’t completely max out at its highest supported frame rate.
Games that run at 60FPS are a cake walk and the few supported 120FPS games are a near flawless experience as well. One thing I underestimated was just how much of a delight gaming would be on the large main display and just how many games and applications “just work” and fill up the entire display.
Out of 75 or so applications I’ve tested on the Fold, only one of them had to be manually adjusted to fill the entire display, and even then, it somehow just magically knew how to translate into the display’s odd aspect ratio.
Unfortunately, Samsung’s arguably most interesting phone has only received Android version 12L, while some of the other latest Android devices have received the brand new Android 13. I imagine this wouldn’t matter as much given Samsung is still opting for itsproprietary secondary overlay UI, One UI 4.
1. 1, which is likely necessary to tie in the seamless multitasking and S Pen features, as well as some other niche features like DeX. I won’t get into DeX much in this review because it’s an impractical feature if you ask me, allowing for a user to use their Fold somewhat like a laptop.
“Google it. ” Hands down, one of the best features of this device is the extremely reliable and consistent fingerprint reader built into the side power button, below your volume rocker. I am truly blown away by how fast an unlock is.
There’s also a fairly quick and somewhat consistent facial recoginition unlock that you can use in conjunction with any other unlock method, if that floats your boat.