Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 6: The Small but Significant Evolution

The Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 6 is the company’s flagship of 2024, attempting to outdo Google, OnePlus, and more by being the lightest around, with improved displays and the finest Android silicon money can buy.

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Positioned as the ultra-premium device of choice, this hybrid phone tablet faces formidable rivals, many of which are more budget-friendly than the South Korean titan. The sixth version of this avant-garde device commands a jaw-dropping £1,799 (€1,999/$1,899.99/A$2,749) — outdoing even last year’s model and Samsung’s top-level laptop in price. Definitely one for the wealth-flaunting, at a price designed to replace several gadgets in one fell swoop: your tablet, your phone, and your PC.

Elegant Design with Subtle Enhancements of Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 6

Samsung took a pretty big step up with the fifth generation of the Fold series, and the Fold 6 is another small but impactful update. It’s 14g lighter, hence only 7g heavier than the S24 Ultra.

This weight loss is due to more portability; it is easier to take in your pocket or bag. The matte aluminum sides of the Fold 6 now make it easier to open with your thumbs. In contrast, the wider external screen becomes much more accommodating for messaging and whatever else you do on the phone. Unfold the Fold 6, and the tablet screen lights up with a larger-than-ever 7.6-inch panel that’s also notably brighter for better reading under the sun. HDR movies pop, and while you can still see the crease under some light, you generally don’t notice it when you are in use.

Power and Strong Battery Life

Like the S24 Ultra and Z Flip 6, the Fold 6 has the top-tier Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 chip and 12GB of RAM to help you multitask. It easily handles up to eight apps running simultaneously and breezes through artificial intelligence tasks, gaming, and other work. It outdoes most competitors in raw power and manages to stay smooth when connected to an external monitor, keyboard, and mouse for use as an Android PC. The battery life lasts about 48 hours using outer and inner screens for about seven hours, which is about as good as the best traditional phones and better than most folding rivals.

Samsung does not quote a specific expected lifespan for the battery. Still, it should endure over 500 full-charge cycles before dropping to retaining less than 80% of its original capacity. Generally repairable, £514 fixes the internal screen. Samsung provides a self-repair scheme and Care+ insurance for accidental damage at the cost of £139, which lowers the general repair expense in any event. Fold 6, in its design, includes recycled aluminum, cobalt, copper, glass, gold, plastic, and rare earth elements. Other customer opportunities are trade-in and recycling of old devices and annually published sustainability reports. Still, there are no impact assessments of single products.

AI and Multitasking Capabilities

The Fold 6 runs on One UI 6.1 over Android 14, with up to seven years of promised software and security updates from release. There’s no current phone better at using the extra size and flexibility of a folding screen than one running One UI. Users can run up to eight apps on-screen simultaneously, use a host of partly folded modes no different from those on a mini-laptop, or access scores of other tools. In fact, everything that is done on an Android tablet is exactly what is done on the Fold—and much more.

Features of AI found in the Fold 6 are all also found in the S24 series and Flip 6, which include Google’s Gemini AI chatbot, Circle to Search, Voice Transcriptions and Translations services, AI Summarizations of notes and websites, plus numerous proofreading, grammar, and rewriting tools that are built into the keyboard.

Photo Assist Tool

Much more user-friendly now with that larger screen compared to the Flip 6, the new photo assist tool allows for freehand sketches turned into real-looking objects in photos, providing a little bit of fun.

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Camera

The Fold 6 uses the same five-camera configuration as previously, with a 4MP selfie camera underneath the internal display, which is useful more than anything else for video calls. The back cameras include a 50MP main sensor, a 12MP ultra-wide lens, and a 10MP 3x telephoto camera. They shoot great photos in bright light, good portraits, and do pretty well in low light. The only letdown is that this 3x optical zoom reaches farther than newer 4x or 5x zooms. The cameras on the Fold 6 are only about the level of detail Samsung’s regular S24 models were putting out back in January.

The external selfie camera is decent but bested by the ability to shoot self-portraits with the main cameras and use the cover screen as a viewfinder. This is one of many fun tricks the Fold has up its sleeve, which includes propping up the device for hands-free photography if you show the camera your palm. All in all, while the cameras of the Fold 6 are quite good, they aren’t what you call the best ones available on foldable or regular phones.

At the end

The Z Fold 6 is the most polished version yet. It is inching closer to being the perfect regular phone that switches into a tablet. It is still somewhat thick but only slightly heavier than the S24 Ultra. Now, the outside screen adds to the thinness perception of other phones like the iPhone 13 mini. The screen inside is bright and smooth, rivaling the best non-folding devices. The central crease is still visible but rather hidden when used. Components still seem quite delicate for that foldable screen and require the most careful treatment since repairs are expensive.

Many niggling tweaks and refinements Samsung has made are welcome but feel a bit like one step forward, two steps back. Then there’s the massive price hike over an already ridiculous sum that makes this so difficult to recommend. This model is among the most powerful and flexible pieces of technology at present, but, at the same time, it can be classified as a niche luxury product. Significant innovation needs to take place for this tablet-phone hybrid to become a mainstream choice.

Pros

• Combine phone and tablet functionality
• Extraordinary multitasking capabilities
• Phone-like external screen
• Excellent tablet screen
• Excellent performance
• Excellent battery life
• Water resistance
• Lighter than previous models

Cons

• Prohibitively costly
• More easily broken than regular devices and expensive to fix
• Thicker than standard phones
• Marginal improvement over the previous generation
• Cameras outperformed by cheaper devices

Thank you for reading.

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