I’ve reviewed every single Galaxy Z Fold model since the original, though we were a bit late with the Galaxy Fold review publishing in 2020. It’s interesting to see how each model looks like an iterative update, but once you actually use the phone for a decent amount of time, it turns out to be a much larger update. That’s the case this year with the Galaxy Z Fold 6.
On paper, it looks like the Galaxy Z Fold 6 is a very minor upgrade over the Galaxy Z Fold 5. What’s new? A more boxy and flat design, a new processor, a few millimeters wider and a millimeter shorter, and that’s pretty much it. But these changes do make a pretty big difference actually. As I mentioned in the disclaimer above, I’ve been using this phone for a little over a week so far, and I actually really like it. I like it so much that, for the first time in four years, my main SIM has been moved from my iPhone to the Galaxy Z Fold 6 – though that is not 100% because of the Galaxy Z Fold 6.
With a $100 price increase this year, many are upset at the lack of innovation and changes. But there’s an important aspect to remember here. The original Galaxy Fold was $1,980 when it debuted back in 2019. So, even at a starting price of $1,899, this is still about $81 cheaper than the original model. It’s always good to keep things like that in perspective. Let’s keep that in mind as we go through this full review.
Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 6 Review: Design and Build Quality
Recently, we’ve heard a lot from people that the new Samsung phone “looks the same as last year”, and honestly, I don’t know what’s so bad about that. Every smartphone company has its own design identity, plus it doesn’t make much sense to spend a ton of money on R&D just to change up the design every year. Making iterative improvements to the design each year is a much better approach.
Samsung has started to take the Apple approach to updates, and I think it’s the right way to go. Apple, Samsung, and other companies know that you are most likely not upgrading every year. You might not even upgrade every two years, it might be three, four or even five years in between upgrades. So, instead of throwing everything and the kitchen sink into the new phone every year, Samsung does iterative upgrades. So when you upgrade your Galaxy Z Fold 3 to a Galaxy Z Fold 6, it’s a much larger upgrade and worth the price to the consumer.
And that’s the case here with the Galaxy Z Fold 6. It’s a pretty iterative upgrade on paper, but I absolutely love the design changes on this phone. First off, it is now fully matte. The Galaxy Z Fold 5 had a glossy frame and hinge, which is cool. But after a little while, once it catches all of the fingerprints, it really starts to look pretty nasty. This year, Samsung opted for a matte finish on the Fold 6, which not only looks much nicer but also doesn’t hold onto fingerprints and other dirt and dust.
Speaking of the sides, the Galaxy Z Fold 6 is fully flat, this is good for a couple of reasons. It does add some durability to the phone, but it also adds a bit more space inside the phone. Now you might be wondering, just how much space can this provide? Considering how large the Galaxy Z Fold 6 is, quite a bit. Especially since Samsung did include a much larger vapor chamber this year.
The hinge is also more flat and matte this year. It’s also stronger. This is the new dual rail hinge that Samsung has been talking up, and honestly, I can notice a huge difference between this and the older hinge on the Galaxy Z Fold 5. It stays in position better when you are opening the phone partway, and it also snaps open. Unlike some other foldables, the Galaxy Z Fold 6 does open to a full 180-degrees.
With the more boxy design, the front display has also gotten a tad larger, now at 6.3 inches. This is also thanks to the phone being a tad wider and a tad shorter, overall. This also makes the Galaxy Z Fold 6 look more premium. I really don’t know how to explain it, but it’s almost like the Galaxy Z Fold 6 looks more grown up, versus the Galaxy Z Fold 5 with its curves. I’ve fallen in love with the design of this phone, and it’s been hard to put it down, because it’s just so good.
Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 6 Review: Display
Over the past few years, I’ve been pretty vocal about why I don’t like foldables. And it mostly comes down to the display. The front display is generally pretty skinny, and the main display is generally a square. Neither of which is really great for watching videos or using apps. OnePlus and Google sort of got the message, and used wider front displays on their foldables last year. Now Samsung finally appears to be catching up, sporting a 22:9 aspect ratio cover display, versus the 25:9 aspect ratio on the Galaxy Z Fold 2 (as the first Galaxy Fold was not full screen). Each year, it gets a little wider, and this is the first time that I can say it is actually usable.
Let’s face it, with a foldable, you don’t want to have to open it every time you want to doomscroll on X, or check out Facebook, etc. And with a super skinny front display like the older Galaxy Z Fold models, I would find myself wanting to open the phone way more often than I wanted too. Which is what kept me away from using a foldable outside of reviewing it. However, that changed with the Pixel Fold and OnePlus Open last year, and now with the Galaxy Z Fold 6. While I would like it to be a little bit wider, closer to a 20:9 or 18:9 aspect ratio, it is now usable.
But what about the brightness on these displays? Samsung says that both displays can reach 2600 nits of peak brightness. That’s nice and bright, and the same peak brightness as the Galaxy S24 Ultra released earlier this year. This peak brightness is especially useful on the folding display, since it is made of plastic and plastic does tend to reflect a lot more. Meaning it’s tougher to see in direct sunlight if it’s darker – a problem we all faced with the Pixel Fold last year. I’m happy to report that both displays are perfectly visible in direct sunlight. I’ve used the Galaxy Z Fold 6 a lot in direct sunlight already, and I had no complaints being able to see it.
As we do with every smartphone, we also tested the brightness on both displays here. Basically, we get a plain white screen, use a flashlight to shine on the light sensor above the display, and a luminance reader to find out how bright it is. Now keep in mind, we will not see anywhere near 2,600 nits in this type of testing, as that is peak brightness, aka the absolute brightest it can get. We did get up to 1700 nits, which is still plenty bright.
Finally, let’s talk about that crease. Another big complaint about Samsung’s foldables have been the crease. I mean, they hadn’t even closed the gap until last year with the Fold 5. The crease is still here, but it is less noticeable compared to the Fold 5. It’s getting closer to the Chinese rivals like the HONOR Magic V2 and OnePlus Open, however, which is good. To be honest, most of the time I don’t even notice the crease, unless the display is off. If I’m watching TikTok on it, you don’t really see it, unless there is light reflecting off of it.
Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 6 Review: Performance
Performance on the Galaxy Z Fold 6 isn’t anything out of the ordinary here. It’s sporting the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 for Galaxy, 12GB of RAM and (our unit has) 512GB of storage. Pretty similar internals to the Galaxy S24 Ultra, which I’ve used quite a bit this year. I’m happy to say that the performance on the Galaxy Z Fold 6 is top-notch. Of course, a good bit of that comes down to the new vapor chamber inside.
The vapor chamber inside the Galaxy Z Fold 6 is about 1.6x larger than that of the Galaxy Z Fold 5. And I have to say, I’ve really noticed a difference there. Typically when running a bunch of apps for a long period of time, the Galaxy Z Fold 5 would get quite warm, that’s not the case with the Fold 6. It does get warmer, but it’s barely noticeable. That’s even reflected in our temperature reading tests that we’ll talk about in a little bit.
Whether it’s multi-tasking, playing games, or what have you, the Galaxy Z Fold 6 lives up to its promise of being a performance king.
Samsung is also continuing to use a side-mounted fingerprint sensor, versus an under-display fingerprint sensor. That should come as no surprise, since the display is pretty fragile, particularly the main display. I do quite like having the fingerprint sensor in the power button, it just makes things so much easier and faster to unlock. The only real complaint I have here is that the power button is a little to concave, compared to some other foldables. Making it a little tougher to use versus the Pixel Fold, where you can just tap it and unlock it. Again, this isn’t a major issue, and it is something I’ve gotten used to, but I’d like to see it be a normal button like the volume rocker.
Benchmarks
With every phone (and tablet) we review, we run a few different benchmarks to truly test how good the phone is. Manufacturers will always tell us how much better their phone is compared to the predecessors and their competition. But we can’t always take what companies say at face value. So we have to benchmark them. In this series of benchmarks, we use a mixture of well-known benchmarks and one that we designed ourselves – so that OEMs can’t “cheat” on them.
The first of which is Geekbench 6. Many of you are likely familiar with Geekbench 6, it will test the raw performance of the CPU in single-core and multi-core tasks, as well as the raw performance of the GPU.
For this review, we are comparing the Galaxy Z Fold 6 to the HONOR Magic V2 RSR, OnePlus Open and the Galaxy S24 Ultra. All of these, with the exception of the OnePlus Open, run the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3, so scores should be relatively similar. The Galaxy S24 Ultra did marginally beat the Galaxy Z Fold 6 in both the CPU single-core and multi-core test. However, the Galaxy Z Fold 6 did beat the Galaxy S24 Ultra quite handily (by about 2,000 points) in the GPU test. And that, we believe comes down to the much larger vapor chamber this time around.
The next benchmark we run is the 3D Mark Wildlife Extreme Stress Test. This puts the phone through a pretty extreme stress test, getting it to about the highest temperature it’ll ever hit. It runs a loop of the same 60-second long benchmark, 20 times. And from that you get a score from the best loop, the lowest loop and then the stability score. Among the four phones we are comparing here, the Galaxy Z Fold 6 had the lowest scores, but had the highest stability, which is definitely more important. This means the Galaxy Z Fold 6 can withstand better performance for a longer time before needing to cool down.
Finally, we do a benchmark with Capcut. This is a pretty popular video editing app from TikTok. What we do here is, load up the exact same 60-second video into the app, make zero edits and export it at 1080p30, and time how long it takes to export. A pretty simple test, with wildly different results, we’ve found out. The Galaxy Z Fold 6 did marginally better than the Galaxy S24 Ultra here, exporting at 7.68 seconds, whereas the Galaxy S24 Ultra was 7.75 seconds. The HONOR Magic V2 RSR was at 12 seconds and the OnePlus Open was 16 seconds.
It looks like Samsung’s claims on performance for the Galaxy Z Fold 6 do hold true. It has handily beat most other Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 devices, and is basically on par with the Galaxy S24 Ultra which uses the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 for Galaxy.
Thermals
Now let’s talk thermals. This is probably one of the more interesting parts of these tests, and will really show us if that vapor chamber is doing what it should.
To test out the thermals, we run three (technically four) tests. The first is done with the benchmarks, and that’s the 3D Wildlife Extreme Stress Test. As mentioned before, this benchmark really heats the phone up, usually more than any other test we do. So once it completes, we use our temperature gun to get a reading. For the Galaxy Z Fold 6, we’re looking at a temperature of 100.4 degrees Fahrenheit. That is pretty good for phones, but with foldables where there’s more space for heat to dissipate, we generally see slightly lower numbers. The HONOR Magic V2 RSR was only 98.9 degrees Fahrenheit.
Next up, we will play Genshin Impact for an hour straight, at full brightness and max settings. Since Genshin Impact is such a demanding game, this is a pretty good way to test out the thermals. After an hour of gameplay, the Galaxy Z Fold 6 was at 99.6 degrees Fahrenheit, less than a degree higher than the HONOR Magic V2 RSR.
Finally, the third test is video recording. As most of you probably know, video recording particularly at 4K resolution can be very demanding and heat up the phone. So we record a video at 4K30 (since not every phone has an option for 4K60 yet, to keep things fair in comparisons), and check the temperature at 5 minutes and again at 10 minutes. These readings were 92.8 degrees and 95.5 degrees Fahrenheit, which is actually lower than the HONOR Magic V2 RSR.
Overall, it looks like that larger vapor chamber in the Galaxy Z Fold 6 is really doing a good job at keeping the phone cool, even in the most demanding instances. On most phones that we’ve tested, all of these numbers are above 100 degrees Fahrenheit, so this is looking good for Samsung.
Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 6 Review: Battery life and Charging
This is probably the most disappointing aspect of the new Galaxy Z Fold 6, the battery capacity and the charging speed. Both are unchanged once again. So the Galaxy Z Fold 6 has a battery capacity of 4400mAh – which is the same battery capacity as the Galaxy Z Fold 3. And the charging speed maxes out at 25W wired and 15W wireless.
When it comes to battery life, it’s okay. I’ve been able to get between six and eight hours of screen on time, depending on what I’m doing that day. On the weekend, I got a good bit more screen on time, since I wasn’t on my laptop all day working. And I generally did not need to charge the phone during the day – the only time that happened was after running all the benchmarks and thermal tests mentioned above. So it’ll get you through a day, but this is by no means, a two-day phone.
In our battery rundown test, the Galaxy Z Fold 6 lasted for 15 hours and 35 minutes. That is quite comparable to most other foldables we’ve tested – most are in the 14 to 15 hour range. But most other smartphones are well over 20 hours in this test. With this test, we play a 24-hour long video on YouTube at full brightness from 100% to about 1% to record how long it took.
On the charging side of things, seeing this cap out at 25W wired charging is pretty sad. I’m pretty sure I know why Samsung is not pushing the envelope on charging speeds; it all comes back to the Galaxy Note 7. But come on, Samsung, 25W? In 2024? OnePlus Open, which is sold in the US, offers 67W charging, and the OnePlus 12 (also available in the US) does 80W in the US and 100W in Europe. At least give us 45W like the Galaxy S24 Ultra has. That being said, in our charging test, we were able to fully charge from 1% up to 100% in about an hour and twenty minutes. While not terrible, it could be much better.
The battery capacity here is more puzzling since we now have flip-style foldables with larger capacity batteries, like the new Xiaomi Mix Flip that was just announced. Even the new HONOR Magic V3, which will make its global debut at IFA in September, has over 5,000mAh capacity. Samsung, it’s time to up the battery capacity. We’re not asking for much, just a larger battery. You’ve already upped the price by $100.
Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 6 Review: Software
The Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 6 launched with Android 14 and One UI 6.1.1, which is a slight update over what the Galaxy S24 series launched back in January. There are some minor changes here, but the bigger changes will come with One UI 7, which is expected later this year with Android 15. It’s also important to note that the Galaxy Z Fold 6, along with the Flip 6 and the S24 Series, will all get 7 years of software updates. Only the Pixel 8 series is matching that right now.
With the Fold 6 this year, Samsung’s not really focusing much on new features exclusive to foldables. Instead, it’s more about AI. Which, surprise, surprise. Obviously, Samsung announced a slew of Galaxy AI features with the Galaxy S24 series back in January. But with the new foldables, Samsung is adding onto that with a few more features. You can even force all of the processing to happen on the device, which is a really good security feature.
One of the changes that Samsung made in One UI 6.1.1 that I really like is adding a section in Settings for Galaxy AI. Honestly, I forget about a lot of these very useful Galaxy AI features. There are toggles for a lot of them, along with a few more options too. Here are all of the Galaxy AI features available on the Galaxy Z Fold 6: Call Assist, Chat Assist, Interpreter, Note Assist, Transcript Assist, Browsing Assist, Photo Assist, Drawing Assist, Photo Ambient Wallpaper, and Health Assist. We’ll touch more on the Health Assist feature when we review the Galaxy Watch 7 and Galaxy Watch Ultra.
There are a handful of Galaxy AI features that I do use quite often. One that I’ve used a few times but expect to use more the next time I travel to another country is Interpreter. I’ve tried this out with a few friends who speak Spanish, of which I don’t speak a lick. And it was pretty quick, and accurate. What’s great about using this on a foldable is that you can see each language on each side of the phone. So you can hold up the back of the phone to someone, and they’ll be able to see and hear what you’re saying once it is translated. I can see this coming in handy when I go to Berlin for IFA next month.
Transcript Assist is another super handy one, especially as a journalist, as we are a part of loads of Q&A sessions and briefings. With Transcript Assist, you can have your recordings transcribed into text, making it easy to find a specific portion of the briefing or meeting. It can also summarize the recording for you if it’s a long one. Speaking of summarizing, with Samsung’s Internet, you can do summarization of webpages. This is really helpful for articles like this one that are well over 4,000 words long and will take a while to read. Google Gemini powers it, so it’s going to work the same as the summarization feature in the Google app and in Chrome. But Samsung Internet is just so much faster than Chrome these days.
Finally, an AI feature that I use a lot now but suspect I won’t use as much after this review is Photo Assist. This allows you to use Generative AI to change up your photo. It’s especially fun with the Sketch to Image feature. Just sketch something that you want to add to the image, then tap on “Generate,” and it’ll give you a few options to choose from. This actually works a lot better than I thought it would. I took a picture inside Moynihan Train Hall in Manhattan, and I thought it’d be funny to have a train going through the main level. I drew something that was close to a train – my drawing sucks, though – and Samsung added a van. It looks cool, but the van is comically small compared to the people around it. Other than it does look realistic.
With Photo Assist, you also have the Portrait Studio option. This lets you turn pictures of people into a sketch, watercolor, cartoon or comic. Some of these have come out really well, in my opinion. I especially like the sketch and watercolor options. With this being Generative AI, it’s only going to get better as it learns more about what people are doing with it. Here are a few examples of what Photo Assist is capable of:
As mentioned before, the software on the Galaxy Z Fold 6 runs insanely well. I’ve never had it slow down or really heat up other than when I’m editing a video in Capcut or playing games for a long period of time. It’s what you expect with this type of hardware, but always good to see.
Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 6 Review: Camera
There’s been a lot of talk about how Samsung is still sticking with the same cameras as the Galaxy Z Fold 4. Which normally, I wouldn’t mind. However, where the Galaxy Z Fold cameras were already a few generations behind its flagship phones like the Galaxy S24 Ultra, and Samsung raised the price by $100, it is a lot harder to justify.
These cameras are not bad by any means. They will take some really good pictures on your Galaxy Z Fold 6, especially with that 50-megapixel primary camera. But they could be so much better. After using the OnePlus Open for many months, it’s hard to go this far backwards in terms of cameras. Samsung, please just slap the Galaxy S24 Ultra cameras on the Galaxy Z Fold 7 next year. Even it if makes the camera bump larger, we don’t care.
Like I said, the cameras aren’t bad. That 50-megapixel primary sensor has provided me with some pretty good images over the past week. They are still pretty sharp, mostly because they are pixel-binning the image down to a 12.5-megapixel image. But even when you opt to take a shot at the full 50-megapixels, it’s still really sharp. The colors look great, mostly true-to-life, with a tad of saturation. They aren’t overly saturated like Samsung phones used to be, back in the day.
The 12-megapixel telephoto sensor is a 3x optical zoom camera, which is a bit weird to see these days, with so many offering 5x, 6x or even 10x telephoto lenses. But It’s still taking some good pictures, though remember this only goes up to 30x and not 100x like the Galaxy S24 Ultra.
Finally the ultrawide. It’s really hard to mess up an ultrawide camera unless it’s a 3-megapixel or lower lens. It’s also a camera that I don’t use all that often. But on the Galaxy Z Fold 6 here, it has cranked out some really good-looking photos too. You can find images from all three lenses down below, none of these have been edited, and all shot at “auto” the only changes we made was the focal length.
My conclusion on the camera here is that it’s okay. It could be better, we know Samsung can do better. The $100 price increase does sting a bit since we’re now on our third-generation of the same camera sensors on this phone. While the Chinese competitors are putting crazy camera modules on their foldables, and selling them for less.
Should you buy the Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 6?
For me, it’s always hard telling someone whether they should buy a phone that costs $1,899. That’s a lot of money to spend on a phone. I will say, however, if this is your first foldable and you can get a good deal with trade-ins and other promos, then yes definitely switch to the Galaxy Z Fold 6. If you have a Galaxy Z Fold 5, I don’t think it’s worth switching yet. Even though Samsung is offering $1,500 trade-in credit for it.
I feel that foldables are still mostly niche products. Because not everyone wants to carry a phone that unfolds into a phone in their pocket all the time. But heavy users like myself love products like this because you have a 7.6-inch screen in your pocket to use for navigation, seeing desktop versions of websites, and much more.
You should buy the Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 6 if:
- You want a phone that unfolds into a tablet.
- You want one of the best foldable software experiences out there.
- You can get a good deal from Samsung or your carrier.
- You want to try out a foldable phone for the first time.
You should not buy the Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 6 if:
- You have a Galaxy Z Fold 5.
- You are turned off by the crease.
- You like having a small and/or lightweight phone.
2024-07-22 15:04:59