Review: Samsung Galaxy Z Flip 6 - Predictable Foldable

When Samsung launched its first Galaxy Z Flip in 2020, phones with foldable screens were a completely new product category, and it seemed certain that there would be a lot of experimenting with form and size to find the perfect application for foldable phones. Therefore, it is almost astonishing that Samsung has left its Flip and Fold phones virtually unchanged since then. The Samsung Galaxy Z Flip 6 has exactly the same size screen in the same format as the first Galaxy Z Flip, and even the other dimensions are almost the same. Ironically, the Samsung Galaxy S series has undergone significantly greater changes during the period than the Z Flip has.

With last year's Galaxy Z Flip 5, the phone got rid of its gap in the folded position, and the outer screen became larger and covered almost the entire outside. This year, the news, apart from the usual performance increase, is a slightly more angular design and a new main camera. Which is not so new, as it is the same main camera that was introduced on the Samsung Galaxy S22 two and a half years ago.

New AI Features

This year, Samsung has decided to go big on AI in mobile, as most have probably experienced, and this also applies to the Galaxy Z Flip 6. Here we find the features that were introduced with the Galaxy S24 series last winter and a few new ones. These features are driven by the increased computational power that the new top chipsets provide rather than any specific characteristic of the Galaxy Z Flip 6, and the innovations will surely benefit the S24 series eventually.

To briefly summarize Samsung's AI features, they involve both language functions and image editing functions. Regarding language functions, text on web pages and in emails can be summarized, you can get message suggestions, and both text and speech can be translated in real-time in various ways, but most of these functions are not yet in real-time. For image editing, it involves, among other things, removing distracting objects or moving items or people and filling in the background so it looks natural.

The most important AI feature in the Z Flip 6 is the ability to draw something freehand and have the AI create a nice image of what it perceives you have drawn. If you do this in the notes app, it becomes a nice drawing, and if you do it in the gallery app on a photo, a realistic object is created that blends into the image.

The result is often impressive. Drawing buses, dinosaurs, and lightning strikes into photos you just took works perfectly fine, and the result is often very good. Other things the AI has more difficulty recognizing, a motorcycle becomes a giant fish, and a fox becomes a small red dinosaur.

Overall, this is both fun and fascinating, but it cannot be denied that it has the character of a party trick rather than something you have actual use for.

If you are reading this and see the pictures, you probably already know what kind of phone the Galaxy Z Flip 6 is, but for clarity, it is a reasonably normal-sized phone, the screen is a bit more elongated than usual, which can be folded in half thanks to the screen being bendable. This also makes the screen more fragile than on a regular mobile, and it is partially recessed in the frame and has a pre-installed screen protector that must not be removed. Compared to older generations, the folding mechanism itself has improved, so that the phone actually folds without leaving a gap, and the crease in the middle of the screen is a little less visible. However, the screen is still not completely smooth where it folds, but gets a slight bumpiness. I also think the screen becomes more reflective and more easily gets fingerprints than on a regular mobile without a screen protector, but the Galaxy Z Flip follows the trend with brighter screens, and thanks to that, I am not so bothered by it and can use the mobile even in full daylight.

Foldable actually a disadvantage

Since you have to unfold the phone to use it, this becomes an extra step for almost everything you do on your phone, which might be an argument for the Z Flip 6 if you feel you've become too dependent on your phone, but otherwise it's a disadvantage. An outer screen is intended to reduce this disadvantage, and it has gone from being a small strip for notifications and selfie-seekers to covering the entire front, but it doesn't seem like Samsung knows what to do with it.

Because with the phone folded and the outer screen on, you practically have a small compact phone in your hand. But Samsung doesn't want to let you run apps on that screen, only information widgets. You can enable an experimental feature in the settings to run apps on the outer screen, but nothing has happened here for a year, and even with the feature enabled, the only apps Samsung lets me run are Maps, YouTube, Netflix, and the two SMS apps on the phone.

Since this is under Labs and needs to be turned on, it would be logical to think that this is the only way to get apps on the outer screen, but Samsung actually has another way, an app called Good Lock. If you install it, then the Multistar module, you can get an app drawer on the outer screen. It's cumbersome and the feeling is really that Samsung is uninterested in letting us run apps on the outer screen. I understand that many apps wouldn't work on a small square screen, and others wouldn't be enjoyable, but if you still have Labs where you flag that apps are an experimental feature, can't Samsung let me and the app developers play with it ourselves and thus drive development forward?

If I don't want to hassle with Samsung Good Lock, what I can put on the outer screen is mainly widgets where some can run as apps, like a calculator and photo gallery, while others just provide information on the screen. The outer screen can be used to take selfies with the main camera since you have a screen on the same side as the camera. If you fold the phone halfway, you can use the phone to, for example, film yourself without needing to support the phone against something, but otherwise, Samsung has stopped trying to claim that it adds functionality to use the phone half-folded.

The main camera is thus new for Samsung's Flip series, more than two years old for Samsung's top phones, but it is still a good all-round camera. The sharpness is good and it takes good and fast night photos. The resolution of 50 megapixels is reduced to 12 megapixels, either by combining more pixels into one, or by cropping the image so that you get two times optical zoom with greater sharpness than if you zoomed in digitally. The colors in the camera are not as oversaturated as they usually are in Samsung's phones, which I thought I would like, but the result feels a bit cold without giving the sense of reality that I think Oneplus and Xiaomi's cameras can provide. Maybe it's time for Samsung to follow them and hire a well-known camera manufacturer for color calibration?

The wide-angle camera, on the other hand, is noticeably worse than the one in Samsung's Galaxy S24, and lacks its own zoom camera.

Samsung's interface both simple and messy

Samsung's user interface One UI on Android 14 is partly a refined and more thoughtful interface compared to Google's own, partly a real mess of duplicate apps and hard-to-explain Samsung-specific features. If you're coming from Samsung before, you're probably used to having two browsers, two SMS apps, two email apps, and two photo gallery apps. If not, you'll have to deal with some mysteries in the system, at least initially. It's not difficult to use, but it's filled with apps you might never use, and not just Samsung's own, even Microsoft's apps come pre-installed. Samsung promises seven years of system updates for the phone.

The battery has become a bit larger since last time and both in our battery test and in practical use, the Z Flip 6 performs well in terms of battery life, it doesn't feel like something you have to compromise on for choosing foldable. The phone has the latest top chipset from Qualcomm and feels as fast as one could expect. In performance tests, you notice that the format presents some challenges with cooling. When the load is high, only the upper half gets warm, and during longer periods of high load, such as when playing graphically intense games, the Galaxy Z Flip 6 loses more performance than, for example, the Galaxy S24.

Samsung Galaxy Z Flip 6 is not the phone that takes the foldable mobile segment further. It is a very conservative mobile that does not surprise, but it probably does not disappoint anyone either.

Questions & Answers

Are there protective cases for the mobile? Samsung has a two-part rubber case that also has a loop on the back, which is really nice.

Is the mobile waterproof? The mobile has an IP rating of 48, which means it is waterproof, but it is a bit more sensitive to dust and sand than other waterproof mobiles, which seems reasonable.

Is the crease on the screen very visible? Significantly less than a couple of years ago, but it is still hard to miss.

An alternative

If 15,000 kronor feels too much, the Motorola Razr 50 costs about 5,000 kronor less and doesn't feel any less well-built or luxurious. But you get mid-range performance rather than a top chipset.

Camera example

The color reproduction can sometimes feel a bit pale without necessarily feeling more true to life.