Review: Samsung Galaxy Z Flip5 and Galaxy Z Fold5

It’s hot fold summer; there have never been as many folding phones on the market as now. Not only did Motorola just reintroduce a folding Razr smartphone (its first since 2020), but Google recently debuted its first-ever Pixel Fold too. OnePlus is also expected to unveil a folding phone later this year. And that's just in the US.

Samsung has long had skin in the bendable-device game and is back with its fifth generation (!) Galaxy Z Fold5 and Galaxy Z Flip5. Samsung should have an easy lead with so many years to perfect its two folding phone designs. But while the new Flip5 and Fold5 show even more polish than ever, I find myself slowly gravitating to the competition instead.

The two distinct folding phone designs companies seem to have landed on are the clamshell style, which is almost like a normal smartphone that can snap in half, and the book style, which opens along a vertical hinge to offer a small tablet-like experience. I'll just say it now: Folding phones have proven their utility.

Folding flip phones are much more compact than the ever-growing traditional smartphone, and you can prop up the top half the screen to face you so you can have a video chat without holding the phone or improvising a kickstand. Book-like folds have a much larger display that lets you quickly put two apps side by side for full-screen multitasking. Apps that are optimized for the larger screen also show more information and are much more desktop-like as well.

Notably, the two new Samsung Galaxy Z phones both fold up fully without leaving a visible gap between the halves of the screen. This has been a problem for the first few years of folding screens, and now it's been solved here and in the devices made by the competition. So now the question is: Which company does foldables the best?

Photograph: Samsung

With the clamshell-style Flip5, Samsung has introduced a much-needed larger cover screen on the exterior of the phone when it's closed. Older versions used a tiny sliver of a display that showed notifications and a clock, but the new model has a 3.4-inch screen that can offer up a lot more information. Swipe to the right to see notifications and respond to them via the full-size virtual keyboard, or swipe to the left to scroll through a handful of full-size widgets, like the calendar, weather, step counter, and timer. There are a lot of ways to customize this screen to your tastes too.

The problem? You can choose from only a very limited number of widgets for the cover screen. You can also open only six apps on this screen—apps that have been optimized for its tight dimensions include Google Maps, WhatsApp, and Messages—and you need to manually toggle on the ability to open these apps in Samsung's settings menu. There are ways to add more apps to this list (you need to install another Samsung app called Good Lock), but why can't I just open whatever app I want by default? Motorola's Razr+ has a larger cover screen (3.6 inches) and you can open any app on it. The Razr+ also has a lot of fun time-killing games that work perfectly for this display; I wish you didn't have to jump through hoops to get the most out of the Flip5.

The Razr+ is the nicer-looking flip phone (especially in its ruby red color) and the texture on the back is more pleasant than what you get with the glass on the Samsung. But there are a few key areas where Samsung wins out. The first is software updates. Samsung's policy of four OS upgrades and five years of security updates remains one of the best in Android land. Next is build quality. The Razr+ makes an annoyingly gross creaky cracking sound when you open it, but the Flip5 opens silently, and its hinge design is cleaner. It also has a brighter 6.7-inch main screen when unfolded.

But most important, the Flip5's dual-camera system is just more capable at delivering sharper photos with more pleasant colors and is much more adept at handling high dynamic range. (I've seen more blown-out photos on the Motorola.)

The cameras on folding phones allow for more varied uses. You can snap a quick selfie on the external screen without opening the phone, which also utilizes the superior rear cameras. Or you can use the external screen to show a preview of the photo to the person you're capturing so they know exactly what their pose looks like. Whether it's on a Fold or Flip, I've taken so many group selfies hands-free by propping the phone on a table (no tripod needed) and using the external screen to make sure everyone is in the frame.

I love all these little things you can only do with a folding phone. Using the Flip5 for voice or video calls is awesome. Just put the screen at a 90-degree angle so you can see the screen as the phone rests on a table, with access to call controls at the bottom. It's how I voice-chat on WhatsApp with friends during our weekly game of Super Smash. I've also taken calls with the phone closed (it defaults to speaker mode when you do this). It's so much more pleasant to use the speakerphone on a smaller device.

Battery life sadly remains disappointing. The 3,700-mAh cell delivered around four hours of screen-on time and will get you through a full day with light to average use. On a day when I used the music streaming and GPS for navigation, it hit 18 percent by 8 pm. It was comparable to my experience with Motorola's Razr+.

Photograph: Samsung

The Fold5 feels a little more stale this year, largely because the Pixel Fold exists and showed me what Samsung's approach is missing: a wider front screen. On book-like folding phones, I use the external screen about 75 percent of the time and only open the phone to expose the larger screen when I need to multitask and look at two apps at once, or when I want to enjoy the extra real estate while watching YouTube or Netflix. I've also found myself opening it up when I show someone else what's on my screen.

The Pixel Fold has a wider exterior screen that feels like a normal phone screen. However, Samsung's Fold5 uses a much skinnier display, so apps that appear on it feel squished. This is especially a problem with the keyboard, and I feel like I make more typing errors than usual. There are other quirks, like how the only way to access Gmail's two-pane view is by rotating the phone to landscape mode (you don't need to do this on the Pixel Fold). And because of the protruding camera bump on the back of the phone, the Fold5 rocks a lot when you tap it while it's sitting flat on a table—either open or closed. This isn't a problem on Google's Fold.

There are some nice multitasking improvements on the Fold5 that make using multiple apps at the same time really easy. When I have two apps open side by side, I love using the pop-up app function to open a third app, like when I need to respond to someone on Telegram but don't want to disrupt my split-screen view of two other apps. I can then collapse the third app down to a floating bubble and move it to the side of the screen, ready to be accessed whenever I want. It's truly a multitasker's dream.

The Fold5's triple-camera system has also improved over the Fold4. Photos are sharp, sometimes even sharper than results from the Pixel Fold. It's a pretty reliable and versatile system, but overall, I think Google's folding phone delivers photos with more accurate colors and better white balance. I also prefer the 5X optical zoom on the Pixel over the 3X on Samsung’s phone.

As for battery life, the Flip5's 4,400-mAh battery cell easily lasted me more than a full day with average use—I usually had around 30 percent by 1 am.

I think Samsung has an edge on durability over the likes of Motorola and Google. These Galaxy phones have IPX8 ratings, which means they're fine being submerged in water but are not tested for dust resistance. Despite the lack of a rating, Samsung says the Fold5 has fared well against dust in its tests, which is one of the biggest failure points of a folding phone.

The biggest barrier hasn't changed: price. I'd have hoped that five generations in, we'd see some kind of a price drop on Samsung's folding phones, but they're still expensive. Sure, you can take advantage of various offers like trade-ins or free storage upgrades to bring that MSRP down, but these high prices will still make you think long and hard about whether you really need a folding phone right now.