Which is just what's happened here with last year's Samsung Flip model. Thanks to Mark McAneny for sending it over for me to look at. Thanks goes too Steve Litchfield and others for chipping in and to Ben Wood of the Mobile Phones Museum for having long-term loaned me an original generation Microsoft Surface Duo, these two making the only pair of folding phones I've ever had hands-on with. These two are very different devices, of course, aimed at very different users, but it does at least give me some sort of comparison point to consider the world of folding phones.
I used to have 'flip' phones back in the old 'dumbphone' days - the Motorola Razr for example - but also a few Symbian (smartphone) powered Nokia devices too (N76 comes to mind) - and even KaiOS ones now, going back to dumb! It's something that had, until recently, simply gone away in the smartphone market. Anything with moving parts, it seems, fell out of favour with OEMs trying to minimise production and repair costs, presumably. I still think people wanted them, however - as is now being proved. There's nothing quite like being able to flip your phone closed to cut off your caller at the end of a call.
We've now got so used to the 'candybar' form factor as we expect all our apps and services to fit that mould. The trick, then, was to get to the point where that exact 'candybar' design could be retained, but also folded in half - whether sideways or longways. We all know that various OEMs have been producing 'fold' devices which open 'longways' (so the Samsung Galaxy Z Fold series, for example) but here, we're talking about folding the other way. Sideways. Flip. But it has to be good. It has to be as good as any 'fixed candybar' phone when open, same as the 'fold'. The 'crease' in the screen can't get in the way of using the phone.
First impressions out the box are a big WOW! It really is impressive to see the technology and hold it in one's hand. Unfolded it's a big phone with a 6.7" plastic panel with a factory-fitted screen protector on the front. It feels plasticky too. Normally, the first thing I do when I get a new phone is rip that off - but Samsung say not to. Unlike other phones which have glass underneath (to then take your chances with) there's just more plastic directly underneath this one. If you're going to scratch the screen, do it on the cover, not on what's underneath - which will be much more expensive and difficult to replace, is what they're saying. It seems to be a woolly area in terms of warranty as they are not saying categorically not to take it off, but that resulting damage won't be covered if you do. I think!
Maybe I'm being a bit hard on the screen (and not so much with a finger)! It is still very touch-responsive - it's just that ordinary glass is better and we have got used to how that works and how it is. It's not like you have to press hard to register a tap, nothing like that, it just isn't the same as glass. That's all. People will have to try it for themselves to decide. So that's the payoff here anyway until technology moves forward - and the question is about how much that will annoy the user over the benefits of having a folding device.
The phone is very slim, 6.9mm when open but the user can't really enjoy that too much as it's all made of slippery, shiny metal - so in practice, you really need to case it. Cases tend to come in two halves, one for top, one for bottom, with some having a hinge-protecting 'ribbon' between. Skinning is an option and much thanks goes to XtremeSkins in the UK for sending over a number of sample skins. Some are more 'grippy' than others, some are more pretty than others, but the White Waveform option, I find to be the most 'grippy' and helpful for those who want to take the risk. The skins are about a tenner each.
The hinge on the outside feels solid and as well made as the rest of the phone - it really is a delight to hold. You can stand the folded phone on its end (opposite end to the hinge) and it balances (just about) to face you. However, if you even slightly open the fold to try and sit it in front of you in 'tent' mode, the cover display extinguishes and the inside display activates. This is a shame as I'd use it in 'tent' mode a lot if it stayed on.
On the 'front' of the folded phone we have a 1.9" Gorilla Glass Victus protected Super AMOLED Cover Display, two circular camera lenses and an LED lamp/flash. There's a setting which can be thrown to force the LED lamp to shine on Notifications, which is just fabulous! I use that all the time (except during DND) and you don't miss a thing! The time, day, date and battery can be set to stay on all the time on the cover screen or when moved, lifted, tapped or whatever you want really. I have it on all the time and don't see any hit in my tests here on battery over it not being so. I guess there must be a hit of some sort, but it clearly isn't significant. I'll come to battery later though!
The 260 x 512 cover screen is really very useful, you can also control the specific brightness independent of the inside screen. It's true that to do most useful things you need to open the phone, but you can also take on-the-fly decisions about whether or not you want to do so, or deal with stuff later if it's not urgent. You can control phone calls from the outside, too, making (via the quick-call) or answering via swipes and hanging up, the same. I'm sure that I've missed some of it too, but knowing Samsung they will continue to roll in more features going forward.
When closed, the volume-rocker (which is on the right-side of the half nearest you) switches the up/down around smartly, so whether the phone is open or closed, up is up and down, down. The capacitive long-pill fingerprint scanner/power button is above it (so below it when open) and works perfectly of course. First time, every time. What joy. On the other side there's a SIM Card Tray with pokey-hole and a tool in the box to open it. Incidentally, the box is minimalist. No power-brick and just a USB-C to USB-C cable.
When the phone is open, it's a little bit taller, but a little less wide than the Samsung Galaxy S20 FE which I have here for comparison, but of course, significantly thinner. So yes, it's a big phone when open. The Armour Aluminium frame apparently is built with tough drop and scratch resistance, so maybe those taking the chance with no case would be OK after all! The phone has IPX8 water resistance, but significantly no guarantee against dust. They're not daft! Because dust may well get in, even though I can't actually see a 'gap' across the hinge mechanism (like you could on the first generation Motorola Razr) and certainly with a plastic screen it's likely to scratch up with pocket debris. By the nature of how the phone is, it is likely to be closed up a lot of the time, so only time will tell about the impact of this.
One handed use with any 'tall' phone is tricky but Samsung provide a very good one-handed mode, which shrinks the screen into either corner by a quick swipe down on the navigation gesture hint-bar. The panel can also be resized with no limitations - just drag the corner. Opening the flipped phone with one hand is tricky too, but with practice it can be done. Closing it down is easier of course, handy at the end of a phone call to cut the line. Those going without a case will find opening it with one hand even trickier, just because it's so slippery. I still find it harder work to try and open with one hand after 3 weeks, so just use two!
There are very small bezels around the panel - again, a marvel of engineering really. There's a central punch-hole selfie camera at the top of the screen, but as usual (with me at least) one doesn't see it after a while of using the phone. The Always on Display is brilliant, as usual with Samsung, and the Face Unlock works perfectly too, supporting the fingerprint scanner when needed.
I won't drill down into One UI too much as I've done it so many times before. It can't be denied that the Samsung skin, love it or hate it, is jam-packed full of options, tweaks, settings, adjustments, controls and personalisation opportunities like no other system. It's incredibly well thought out with oodles and oodles of fun and functionality improvements which can be made. And that's before you start with the likes of Good Lock, theming, third-party Samsung developers and more. It's a veritable playground.
One or two random examples are the control of the Status Bar, Navigation controls, keyboard, clock faces and the aforementioned control of the torch. There's sound assistant to control the audio, deep screenshots control, notification adjustments beyond the standard, Routines to tinker with and if you fancy delving into it, Bixby! It's great to see the Google Discover feed as an option on the left of the home screen, incidentally. This is the first Samsung I've had which has this and it's a great move by the firm.
Not all is good, however, as for some reason Samsung have excluded HDMI-Out support and provide no access to DeX. I've no idea why they might have left this out and it's not something that can be fixed in updates because of the USB-C port specification. Still, Smart View is present for hooking up to a TV to get content out to a bigger screen and there's always Microsoft's Phone Link for those of us who want to use a PC in conjunction (though not a patch on Dex).
The SnapDragon 888 (5nm) is driving the show here and I've experienced no slow-down even when testing with various games. My test games tend to be car-racing ones rather than 'serious' gamers' titles, so pushing it hard may give different results. This year's Z Flip4 got the 8+ Gen 1 (4nm) but given that I see no issues with the 888, I'm not sure it was needed. Talking of which, comparing the 3 with the 4, it looks very much like an evolutionary upgrade and the impression I get is that anyone who already has the 3 would be nuts to shell out another grand to 'upgrade'. But I haven't used one, so just going on specs.
The battery supplied with the Flip4 is bigger than the Flip3 by 400mAh. So an increase from 3,300 to 3,700. I'm not sure that this will make a huge difference, day-to-day. The battery performance is not great and I don't see that slight increase making a big difference. The saving grace is that the phones have Qi Wireless charging. Depending on a person's lifestyle, having Qi chargers dotted around the place may or may not work. For someone out and about sightseeing or attending business meetings, jumping on planes and trains, they would need some backup arrangements in place. Carry a powerbank or be sure that there is power where you go.
Of course, everyone uses a phone differently, but if I was considered a 'light' user (outside of phone reviews) then even a 'medium' user would struggle. let alone 'heavy'. I guess there's only so much Samsung could do to keep the phone slim enough to sensibly fold (and make it too much of a chunky brick). Reverse wireless is present, incidentally, should you dare to offer any of your precious charge to anyone/anything else! For the record, my 10% Reading Test returned 1 hour and 15 minutes, which is not great (much like the Samsung Galaxy S10)
One of the specific features related to the phone's design is the Flex Screen mode. This is a feature which is available in 'Labs' on the phone, so kind of Beta I suppose, but seems to work well. You can select individual applications to automatically split their UI between the different halves of the screen when you fold the phone into 'laptop' mode - so 'L-shaped' sat facing you on a desk. Different apps put different UI elements on each half, but typically, you'd get controls or keyboard on the 'flat' with the content facing you. Works really well and I've not caught any app not playing ball with this, so I guess it'll soon be out of Labs. Some apps are built to just work with this, such as YouTube.
The Samsung Galaxy Z Flip3 arrived with Android 11 last year. Incidentally, it was just updated to 12L (though it can't really benefit hugely from the 'tablet' enhancements to that like the Duo will and Fold does) and is currently on September 2022 Google Security - so bang up to date. They have promised that this phone will indeed be a part of the new wave of Samsung support, being 4 OS updates, taking it to Android 15 in autumn 2024. This makes it 'good' for use with the latest software up to autumn 2025 (when Google roll out Android 16) and presumably then quarterly Security Updates to autumn 2026. Whether the screen fold lasts that long is another matter! They say it's been tested for 200,000 activations. Autumn 2021 to autumn 2025 is, let's say, c.1,300 days. That works out at 153 folds per day. In a 16 hour day then, that's c.10 fold per hour. Sounds good to me!
The two camera lenses I mentioned earlier facing the front when the phone is closed, obviously face outwards from the rear-top when the phone is open, so in the usual kind of place for a candybar smartphone. There's two 12MP units, one f1.8 with OIS and the other, a wide-angle, f2.2. The Selfie (inside the phone - all very complicated) is a 10MP f2.4 unit (and is obviously out of action if the phone is closed! When the phone is closed, going back to the cover screen, the power button (by default) can be pressed twice to get the main camera looking at you. You can then swipe down (on the cover screen) to change it to the other lens, giving a wide view. Swipe left and right to switch between Photo, Portrait and Video and double-tap to switch between portrait and landscape orientation for your photos. Then you can press either of the volume buttons (or wave at it if you throw the switch in settings) to take a photo/shoot a video. Good use of the outside cover screen.
There's nothing particularly standout to talk about otherwise with the camera. No exciting zooms, 200MP sensors or periscopes. The usual plethora of Samsung modes and software are present though to tweak and play with, which we've covered before mostly. If you want a drill-down with samples, verdict and test bench analysis, I suggest heading over to GSMArena via this direct link who do just this and give you the lowdown.
Connectivity is good on all counts with GPS locking quickly and hanging on, phone call quality is excellent in my tests over the last three weeks, bluetooth range seems good enough without any dropped connection, WiFi seems solid enough tested on a few routers and cellular data seems fine as well, which I use via a 4G Router all the time at home. NFC works fine, tested with other equipment to hook up and also at Tesco to use Google Pay. Yes, all seems good.
These devices are not cheap (even second-hand, a year later) so people must be sure that they want this, being far from perfect. You can buy a non-folding Samsung with more functionality and less compromises (like no DeX, for example) for significantly less money and certainly speakers and cameras with many more features and capability. I've really enjoyed my time with the Samsung Galaxy Z Flip3. It's very different to the Microsoft Surface Duo, in that it can be taken seriously as a phone too. There's loads of good stuff in Samsung phones to tweak, optimise and focus one's experience and they've now got onboard with very long support and update windows. I am, for now, happy to go on using the phone as my primary, still enjoying the great fun-factor and UX.
