Vertically folding "flip" phones have a decades-long history dating back to the Motorola StarTAC (a truly terrible phone), but the horizontally folding phone is something that's still shiny and new.
The new wave of flip-like phones, with screens that fold, date back to around 2018. In the years since, Samsung has pumped out four versions of both the vertical Flip model and horizontal Fold.
The Fold4 and its little sibling the Flip4. (Image: Samsung)The company has loaned me the Galaxy Z Fold4 to put to the test.
The new model retails on Samsung’s NZ online store at $2,849 for the 256GB version, stepping up to $3,099 for 512GB and then an eye-watering $3,549 for 1TB.
They all come with 12GB of ram. The external screen is 6.2in and the folded-out internal screen is 7.6in.
Let’s be real here. I can talk about the specs and numbers all day but the question everyone asks is: “How is it?”
Well, it’s kind of cool, but also not really.
The screens – part one
I’ve been using the Fold4 for about three weeks and I’m still not quite used to it.
The display is really nice, which is not surprising considering it uses Samsung’s cutting-edge Eco OLED Plus panel.
Clear and bright, the display quality really is a highlight of the phone.
That said, I do find that the external screen, the one I’ve ended up using most, is quite narrow.
Fold4 screens. (Image: Samsung)The 6.2in, as with all screen-size measurements, is the distance diagonally from corner to corner so doesn’t really capture that narrowness, which I do not enjoy.
When I type on this screen, my thumbs mash all kinds of letters and it’s a pain.
When you're reading online articles, you end up with one or two fewer words per line than on a standard-width phone. And forget about watching videos with your phone upright.
Even horizontally, videos are just too small to be comfortable, especially if there's any text you want to read in the video.
So just open/unfold it, right? OK, make sure you have two hands-free to lever the stiff hinge open and away we go.
The screens – part two
It is a bit of a trip opening your phone up to access the juicy inner screen.
Having grown up in the age of big cathode ray tube (CRT) screens that hummed and hissed, I find there's something just awesome about seeing the screen unfold the way it does.
Now, we have a large 7.6 inch screen that is square-ish, a little taller than it is wide.
Typing is still tough, though, because now your hands are far apart and so you have to use a split keyboard.
I did adjust OK to this but do still find it uncomfortable.
The split keyboard. (Image: BusinessDesk)Video is much better but does feel like there's a lot of wasted real estate, and the crease down the middle can be distracting – I found it hard not to notice.
If you slightly bend the screen, the video pops to the top, with the controls down the bottom.
This is quite cool and makes watching videos a little easier, but also does mean you only have that little bit of height on the narrow screen to work with.
Pattrick Smellie on the New Zealand Made YouTube channel. (Image: BusinessDesk)Where it does shine is reading, because you can fit a lot of text on that widescreen.
BusinessDesk’s excellent reporting and analysis are much easier to take in when full sentences fit more comfortably on the device.
A minor quibble is that most apps and mobile sites are designed more for a traditional phone screen, so sometimes there is some oddness that happens, like a homepage being in a single column list, where there's room for a double.
Design
We need to talk about the camera. Not the quality of the lenses – the images the Galaxy Z Fold4 captures are fantastic and befitting of a $3,000 phone.
No, what we need to talk about is the great honking lump sticking out of the back.
Someone shove some folded cardboard under there. (Image: BusinessDesk)The positioning of it, the size of it, the shape of it – whatever the reason, the phone doesn’t ever lie flat, instead wobbling like the last available table at Coffee Club.
This infuriates me. Sure, most phones have this issue in a small way – but it is very, very noticeable on the Fold4.
There are cases available that would likely solve or at least mitigate the issue, but this phone is also a real chonker, coming in at about 1.5cm thick when folded, so a case would only exacerbate that.
There is also something very displeasing about this.
One side closes flush but the other has a big gap, making the phone uneven. (Image: BusinessDesk)I don’t doubt there is a very good technical reason that this has to be this way, but I still don’t like it.
Yes, I’m fussy; no, you don’t have to be. If you aren’t bothered by asymmetry or bulkiness or wobbliness or a big crease down the middle of the screen, then truly I envy you.
Performance
Bloody brilliant – it’s a $3,000 phone and it feels like one.
Hopefully, by this point, you’ve learned not to expect me to go into minutiae, so let me put it this way:
You know how sometimes you tap an app and it’ll stutter? And then you tap it again but it has just loaded in the time it’s taken for you to get impatient - and so you’ve tapped something you didn’t mean to, but now something you didn’t want is loading so you have to wait for that to finish, which takes a while because now you’ve asked the processor to do too many operations at once, so you just try to hit the home button and start again, which is another operation... and so you’ve just wasted seconds of precious life? Well, that doesn’t happen with the Fold4.
Thumbs up.
Would I buy one?
Look, I’m not opposed to spending several thousand dollars on a phone. It’s easily my most-used computer and I want it to work well, make my life easier, and be kinda cool.
So let's consider three factors:
- Does it work well?
Tick. It is a high-performance phone and everything about it, from the great camera to the resilient hinge and the beautiful display, is nice, if not great. - Does it make my life easier?
Not really. Having that larger screen is fine but not great, and having the weirdly narrow one is just annoying. - Is it cool?
Ummm… yeah, a bit? But also: no. The idea of it is cool but actually using it really makes the cool factor drop away quite quickly.
But that’s just, like, my opinion, man.
If you do think it’s cool and if you would gain real utility out of it, then absolutely go for it – it’s not a bad phone.
In many ways, it reminds me of the Galaxy Tab S8 Ultra – it’s too specific to have mass appeal, but I could see some people really loving it.
