Samsung Galaxy Z Fold6 Review – Samsung’s Hail Mary To Stay On Top?
Samsung tries to dazzle the foldables market with a 7.8-inch 120Hz LTPO AMOLED display, Snapdragon 8 Gen 3, 7 years of OS updates and Galaxy AI but is it enough?
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The Galaxy AI saga started on January 14th when Samsung launched the Galaxy S24 series with the S24 Ultra being its flagship proposition. The S24 Ultra was more than just a flagship. It was the best that Samsung had to offer in order to compete with some of the top guns of the smartphone industry. We witnessed features like a renewed telephoto lens, a better and stronger display with an anti-reflective coating, a titanium body and of course, the showstopper, the Galaxy AI suite.
Fast forward a few months and we have a similar product that is aiming to conquer the world of smartphones, only this time it is foldables. The Samsung Galaxy Z Fold6 was unveiled in front of the world on 10 July 2024 with people around the world hoping for a significant upgrade from the Galaxy Z Fold5. What happened in reality, however, is somewhat different. Yes, we received a slightly wider cover screen, we got a slimmer and lighter body, a new 12MP ultrawide camera for better low-light photos and of course, Galaxy AI. You can throw in the new Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 SoC in the mix to make this list beefier if you want to but that’s about it. The upgrade in this year’s Z Fold seems to be falling short of expectations.
We still have the very prominently visible crease and issues regarding durability and toughness still loom over this excessively pricey piece of technology. All of this put together compels you to think – Has Samsung dropped the ball in the foldable smartphone race?
The Samsung Galaxy Z Fold6 is a sturdy, chic and elegant-looking device that will grab your attention from the get-go. I must say that the phone feels good to hold in my hands. The alloy body is well crafted, the glass back is beautiful and the edges, which are flatter and pointier this time (inspired by the S24 Ultra) give the Z Fold6 a masculine look. The body weighs lighter this time at 239 grams compared to the Fold5’s 253 grams. Compared to the S24 Ultra, the Z Fold6 weighs seven grams heavier. The edges are more squared off for sure, especially the ones near the hinge.
The cover screen is wider this time around standing at 6.3 inches with a variable refresh rate of 120Hz (LTPO). The AMOLED display really brings out the colours and details in images (which is something we now expect from all Samsung smartphones). Despite the merits of this relatively wider cover screen, there isn’t much to see here. The phone still manages to look oddly similar to the Galaxy Z Fold5. The bezels appear thinner if you really look closely. The fingerprint sensor is located on the power button. The concerns regarding making the cover display wider have yet again not been addressed.
The main display is what was supposed to blow us away. It did not. The display is undeniably huge and the real estate on this thing cannot be ignored. The 7.8-inch LTPO AMOLED panel packs 2600 nits of peak brightness which translates to roughly 1200 nits of actual brightness in everyday use. The in-display 4MP camera is situated on the right-hand side. The hinge is quite rigid and gives confidence while unfolding the phone.
The bezels on this thing are digestible. The problem here is the abundantly visible crease which Samsung seems to be unable to fix even after six generations of iterations. You won’t be able to see it when using the phone nor will it cause any disruption during daily operations. As a matter of fact, you will tend to forget about it after a few days. You might see it every now and then when dealing with bright colours, though. However, that does not change the fact that Samsung’s competition is moving too quickly to resolve this thing. The display is highly responsive and works perfectly otherwise.
I’d have to say that the ability to use multiple apps on the main display is applaud-worthy. Users can use three apps simultaneously on the phone while putting a maximum of five pop-up windows.
The issue here, which sticks out like an eye sore, is the tedious nature of operating the phone. For starters, you’ll need both hands to open the foldable and use it and vice versa.
As far as performance goes, there isn’t much to complain about. The phone dons a flagship Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 system on a chip crafted by Qualcomm, especially for Samsung, similar to what we saw in the Galaxy S24 Ultra. The phone cuts through tasks like a hot knife through butter. No surprises here, whatsoever. Synthetic benchmark tests support these statements too. On AnTuTu, the Galaxy Z Fold6 scores more than 1,500,000 putting it among the best Android devices out there. Geekbench 6 scores go a step further and put the Z Fold6 higher than the Galaxy S24 Ultra. We tested in both OpenGL and Vulkan for GPU benchmarks and the results did not surprise us. With a score of 12,637 in Vulkan and 11,756 in OpenGL formats, the Adreno 750 GPU is as powerful as ever.
The CPU throttling tests were good as well but the stress test showed a lot of throttling.
While most of the features in the Galaxy AI suite are the same as the ones we saw in the S24 series, there are a few features that are novel and rather practical too, might I add. Features such as Note Assist, Interpreter, Transcript Assist, Browsing Assist and Photo Assist are classics. Some of the most utilitarian AI features in this phone are Note Assist, Transcript Assist, Browsing Assist and Chat Assist. For someone who travels abroad a lot or has a different profession, this list might vary.
The wild card here is the sketch-to-image feature which lets you draw a rough caricature of anything and turns that into an image. Surprisingly, this ‘image’ is not just your boilerplate generative AI razzle dazzle pasted on the photograph you sketched on. In fact, everything including the shadows, the positioning and the size is just too good. These photorealistic additions to images are not done through prompts. All you need to do is sketch. The accuracy of the AI perceiving what you actually draw might vary.
In the examples below, notice how the AI cat is placed on top of the things that are already on the table. Notice the shadows that are formed because of the studio light. Galaxy AI is very perceptive of dimensions, depth and lighting and this makes it a very cool feature. Ignore the horrendous sketch if you can.
Remember the utterly useless slow-motion video feature that was in the S24 series? Well, now Galaxy AI lets users save the slow-motion video in the gallery making it not so useless. Overall, many features in Galaxy AI are still gimmicky and have a long way to go to prove if they are worth paying money for (once Galaxy AI becomes subscription-based in 2025).
The triple camera set-up in the Samsung Galaxy Z Fold6 looks a tad bit different from what we are used to seeing in Samsung smartphones. The camera rings get thicker which gives the lenses a bolder appearance but that’s where its utility ends. The primary shooter is a 50MP sensor with an f/1. 8 aperture. The new 12MP ultrawide camera promises better photos in low light conditions which it succeeds in doing. Lastly, the 10MP 3x telephoto is like a good soldier. It accomplishes the task at hand without asking for much and takes acceptable photos with enough details and bokeh (background blur).
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Foldables have a long way to go in general if they wish to reach parity with traditional slab phones. The Galaxy Z Fold6, however, really impresses me with its battery life. Despite the fact that it is a pain to charge this phone to a full 100 per cent, especially if you’re short of time, once fully charged, it does have enough juice to last a full day regardless of the degree of usage.
There are two sides to this. On the software side, Samsung has made it very easy for people to decide whether this is a long-term smartphone or not. With seven years of OS updates, the Galaxy Z Fold6 is practically future-proof. This phone will stay updated till 2030.
On the hardware side, however, there is a huge question mark looming above the phone. Yes, the Galaxy Z Fold6 is completely water resistant, but it is not protected against dust. The IP48 rating makes sure the phone is safe till up to 1.5 meters for about thirty minutes underwater but carelessness with excessive dust particles and you might have to visit the service centre sooner than later.
Despite its flaws, the Galaxy Z Fold6 is a prime example of what a foldable smartphone should look and feel like. There is a gravitas in its design that provides confidence to users. It feels like a flagship phone, if there’s even such a thing. The display is top-tier, multi-tasking is effortless and it is a reliable machine. I used the phone for one full day as a PC for writing tech stories and scripts using a keyboard. The display is wide enough for me to comfortably see what I was typing and accessories like keyboards can easily be connected for a hassle-free experience. Apart from this, the build quality is solid and, without a doubt, can give any top foldable smartphone on the planet a run for its money.
At the end of the day, the Galaxy Z Fold6 is a marvel of engineering and design but at the same time, it is also pricey, underwhelming and feels like a task to operate. As is the case with all book-style foldable smartphones, the journey of opening the screen up, using the phone and closing the screen shut is a task that feels a bit arduous after a while. You never quite get used to it. This might have to do with the fact that foldables are indeed luxury items that nobody ever asked for. Samsung has tried really hard to portray the Z Fold6 as the epitome of foldable smartphone design and to be completely honest, it did succeed in multiple aspects.
With a four-year lead in the foldable smartphone space, expectations from Samsung will always be higher. However, it seems like the Korean tech titan is not in the mood to reiterate the Galaxy Z Fold blueprint. The company is strictly adhering to the long-narrow form factor (while folded) rather than making it more like slab phones. Not only thing, the phone falls miles behind the competition in the camera department. Exhibit A, the Vivo XFold3.
With the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 in the mix along with some really useful AI features, the Z Fold6 offers a mixed bag of features that make this device a really effective everyday companion. Does it feel comfortable, though? I won’t say so. Given the Indian price tag of Rs 1,64,999, we don’t get a 5x telephoto camera, we don’t get the S pen inside the box nor do we get a complementary screen repair. For this price, I’d rather go for the Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra. In the off chance you do like flaunting a smartphone that folds in half and show it off at the school reunion and do not mind the quirks that the phone carries with it, the Samsung Galaxy Z Fold6 is a good choice.
Things are bound to get interesting as Google recently announced that it will be launching the Pixel Fold 2 in India. This will be the first time Google will launch its foldable smartphone in the country. Rumoured to be priced at Rs 1.8 Lakh, the Pixel Fold 2 will fall in the price bracket of the Galaxy Z Fold6.
