Samsung Galaxy Z Flip 5 review 2024: a more stylish folding phone

The Samsung Galaxy Z Flip 5, now available. It is a lot more sophisticated foldable device, finally getting rid of that unpleasant gap when closed, and it is easily the most powerful foldable device with the unique Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 Samsung Galaxy chipset. The issue is that it has not nearly progressed as far as it needs to in order to compete with other high-end foldables in 2023, like as the Motorola Razr 40 Ultra and the Oppo Find N2 Flip. Take for instance the cover display; it has increased in size from a puny 1.9 inches to a more respectable 3.4 inches, but it is still inadequate in comparison to those of the other products on the market.

It also boasts the same dual 12MP camera configuration as its predecessor, as well as the same 3,700mAh battery and the same 25W charging, which would have been fine in prior years, but not in 2023 – especially considering that the price has jumped to £1049 in the UK. In the United States, on the other hand, the pricing remains the same at $999, which is the same as its predecessor.

Samsung Galaxy Z Flip 5 Specifications

Galaxy Z Flip 5 from Samsung. It’s the most powerful foldable by far, thanks to the proprietary Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 Samsung Galaxy chipset, and it’s also the most polished.

Samsung Galaxy Z Flip 5 review: Design and build

The Samsung Galaxy Z Flip 5 looks just like you would expect a current flip phone to look. When it’s closed, it has a 3.4-inch screen with widgets that make it easy to see if you have any new messages. Then, when you open it, it turns into a full 6.7-inch HD AMOLED display with a size of 2,640 x 1,080. If you saw that quality and thought it looked like a long phone, you were right. When the phone is open, it is 6.5 inches long, which makes it a great gadget for scrolling through social media.

The phone is only 0.59 inches thick, and it folds fully flat thanks to a new hinge design with less moving parts. This means there is no annoying gap.This should make it less likely that your phone will get damaged from being in your bag or pocket, and it should also make it easier to use in general. On the front of the phone (or the back when it’s open), the front screen is below the cameras. This means you can use the smaller outer display to take pictures with the 12MP rear camera instead of just the 10MP front camera, though the phone does have both.

Samsung Galaxy Z Flip 5 review: Displays

The main new thing about the Galaxy Z Flip 5 is its big screen on the outside. It’s 3.4 inches long and looks like an upside-down folder. It’s not quite as long as the Razr 40 Ultra version, which is 3.6 inches. It’s a huge step up from the Z Flip 4, which only had a 1.9-inch screen. It went from a small screen for messages to something much more useful.

Of course, usefulness is the most important thing, and the Z Flip 5 is ready to go. Samsung has made a lot of cover screen widgets that can be accessed by swiping left or right from the main screen. These widgets include the weather, recent contacts, calendar, stocks, now playing, and more.But it’s not just widgets. With notification quick reply support, you can quickly reply to incoming messages using the full QWERTY keyboard.

Samsung Galaxy Z Flip 5 review: Cameras

The twin camera setup hasn’t changed much this year, unlike the cover display. It still has the same 12MP main and 12MP ultrawide lenses as the Z Flip 4. Samsung says that the main lens is now less likely to have lens flare, but other than that, the sensors are the same. Because of this, the picture quality is very similar to that of the foldable phone from a year ago.

Even though it doesn’t have pixel-binning technology, the main 12MP camera can handle well-lit outdoor scenes and capture a lot of information. The colors are bright and lively, almost to the point of being unnatural. This is a trait of almost every Samsung phone, and they look great on the AMOLED screen.

Samsung Galaxy Z Flip 5 review: Performance

The Samsung Galaxy Z Flip 5 is the most powerful flip phone on the market right now. This is because, like the top-of-the-line Galaxy S23 series, the Z Flip 5 has a Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 for Galaxy chipset that is only found in Samsung products. When compared to the regular 8 Gen 2 found on flagships like the OnePlus 11, the Samsung-only version has faster CPU clock speeds and an extra GPU core to get the most out of the chipset, which is clear in everyday use.

This is paired with 8GB of faster LPDDR5X RAM and either 256GB or 512GB of UFS 4.0 storage. The 128GB entry-level model from last year seems to have gone the way of the Dodo. There is no place for a microSD card, though, so make sure you get enough storage for your needs.

Samsung Galaxy Z Flip 5 review: Software

Samsung’s top-of-the-line phones and even some of its mid-range phones have almost unbeatable software support for the long term, especially in the Android camp. This means that the Z Flip 5 will get four years of OS updates and an extra year of security patches after it comes out. That’s more than almost all of the best Android phones and means that buyers will get better long-term value and usability.

Samsung Galaxy Z Flip 5 review: Battery life

The Flip 5’s main screen and camera sensors seem to be the same as those in the Galaxy Z Flip 4, and the battery tech seems to be the same as well. It’s a 3,700mAh cell that allows up to 25W fast wired charging. Even though that seems bad at first, you have to give Samsung credit for making its latest clamshell foldable 2mm thinner without reducing the battery capacity, which is usually one of the first things to go when the size of a device changes from one generation to the next.

This, along with the more efficient processor, RAM, and storage, should make it last longer than the Flip 4, which, even though it lasted all day, only gave us four hours of screen-on time per charge in our tests, which was not very good. Because foldables have two screens, they are more likely to have bigger differences in how they are used and how much power they use than regular candy-bar smartphones. On the one hand, the cover screen is bigger than it has ever been on a Z Flip.

Final Words

The Samsung Galaxy Z Flip 5 is awesome! It’s the best clamshell flip phone, hands down, and that includes the great Motorola Razr 40 Ultra. The real draw of the Z Flip 5 is its new, bigger cover display, but it also has new features that are a step forward for the line. Still, at the time I wrote this, I thought Samsung could add even more features and make changes in this area, which is very likely to happen through updates.

Samsung Galaxy Z Flip 5 review: The good and The bad

The Samsung Galaxy Z Flip 5 has a design that is spot-on for what one could imagine a contemporary flip phone to look like. When it is closed, you have access to a screen that is 3.4 inches in size.

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