Luxury foldable smartphone just gets better

Samsung’s latest Fold phone is packed with superb technology and features but can it improve on its predecessor? PAT PILCHER walks you through the user experience. 

 

If you’re considering buying a foldable phone, there’s a strong chance that Samsung’s highly-touted Galaxy Z Fold 6 is already at the top of your list. But is it any good? I spent a few weeks with one, and here’s what I found.

Having been an owner (and a fan) of the Z Fold 5 for some time, I was pleased to see that the Fold 6’s outer screen is wider, sporting a 22.1:9 aspect ratio. This is a big deal. For daily use, there are plenty of situations where you’ll pull the Z Fold 6 out of your pocket to check notifications or knock out a quick reply, and using its outer screen is simply faster than unfolding it. Considering this, the slightly bigger outer screen feels less constricted and more usable, especially when typing on the on-screen keyboard.

Light and comfortable

When Samsung says the Z Fold 6 is lighter, they’re not kidding. It weighs 239g (compared to the 253g of the Z Fold 5) and is just 12.1mm thick when folded. Weight and waistline are one thing, but added design tweaks add to its look and feel. 

Its corners have been squared off, and its sides are flattened. It also has a matte finish to keep smudges and fingerprints at bay. Overall, the Z Fold 6’s design feels sharp and crisp. Most importantly, given its size, it doesn’t feel uncomfortable in the hand. 

The casing also has IP48 resistance. This means that it can handle a dunking in water and is resistant to objects larger than 1mm, which annoyingly doesn’t quite make it dustproof, so taking it to the beach probably isn’t a good idea unless you want to get grit inside its hinge and internals.

 

Snappy performance

Under the hood and powering the show sits a Snapdragon 8 Gen 3. It’s a veritable powerhouse of CPU and sports NPU (neural processing unit) cores for faster and smoother AI processing. Aside from being quicker it’s also more energy efficient. It also comes with an improved vapour chamber for cooling. This means the Z Fold 6 isn’t as prone to mid-game overheating and throttling as with other comparably priced foldable devices. 

Storage ranges from 256GB and 512GB to 1TB, but as with earlier Folds, there is no Micro SD card support, which is bit of a bummer. That said, even with the base model, there’s more than enough storage for most typical media collections, apps and photos. Thanks to 12GB of LPDDR5 RAM, multitaskers can rejoice, with all that RAM translating into no noticeable stutters or slowdowns when running multiple apps. You’re also well catered for on the connectivity front with support for Wi-Fi 6E, 5G, and Bluetooth 5.3. As with the previous model, the Z-Fold 6  supports dual SIMs, which allows you to have both work and personal numbers on the same device, and e-SIM support is a real boon when roaming.

Displays for days

The Z Fold 6’s outer 6.3-inch display is an OLED beastie and is HD+, translating to 1600 x 720 pixels. A 120Hz refresh rate keeps everything smooth, and aside from the pin-sharp contrast and vivid colours you’d expect from OLED, you also get an impressive 2600nits of peak brightness, making it easy to read, even under direct sunlight. 

The exciting bit comes in the form of the 7.6-inch foldable display. It’s a 120Hz LTPO OLED screen capable of 2600 nits of brightness, running at 1856 x 2160 pixels (374 ppi) to deliver crisp and peeper pleasing visuals. For gaming, surfing, YouTube videos or social media/email, it really is the business, transforming the candy bar form factor of the Folded Z6 into a mini tablet. With foldable devices now an entrenched part of the Android ecosystem, developers are supporting the 20.9:18 aspect ratio, so apps look great with the extra on-screen real estate you get with Fold 6. 

The only niggle some will have with the Galaxy Z Fold 6 isn’t a really biggie. This comes down to the crease running down the middle of its foldable screen, which is a given with any foldable phone. While the crease has been reduced significantly compared to earlier models, it is still there. To be fair, the only time it was visible was when the foldable display was unfolded with the device powered off, which is hardly ever.

The extra screen real estate makes a huge difference. The Kindle app was something I’d long avoided using on traditional slab form factor smartphones as the cramped screen aspect ratio and teensy tiny font sizes made reading an unpleasant experience. The Fold 6 quickly became my e-reader of choice when I was on the move. Similarly, web-browsing emails and social media became significantly more doable simply because there was plenty of space for everything to breathe. As with my Z Fold 5, getting the usage benefits of a mini tablet and having the sheer pocketability of a candy bar phone still feels magical. 

That solid Samsung camera

The other niggle might give some pause for thought. There’s no disputing that Samsung makes some of the best phone shooters around, as demonstrated on the Galaxy S24 Ultra , so expectations were high that their new flagship foldable would bring an equally impressive leap in digital photography to the market. Unfortunately, that hasn’t quite been the case.

It isn’t so much that the Fold 6 cameras are not good (they’re great). But the shooters are largely the same as last year’s model, and considering the sticker price is north of $3K, it’d be fair to expect upgraded cameras. The main shooter is a 50MP wide (f/1.8), a 10MP telephoto with 3x optical zoom, and a 12MP ultrawide snapper. Under the foldable screen, it also has a 4MP under-display camera along with a 10MP selfie shooter on the front.

Its cameras proved very capable, even if their specs are not startling. Optical image stabilisation on the main 50MP shooter is excellent, especially when shooting video. For low light or night shots, it also helped to keep photos crisp by minimising camera shake. Captured colours are vibrant, and images popped on the foldable display. And as you’d expect from Samsung, the camera app is excellent, offering a bevy of shooting modes. The weak spot in the camera line-up (as with the fold 5) remains the under-display 4MP shooter, which is best left for video calls. That said, the 10MP front screen snapper delivered consistently good selfies, and using the foldable display as a selfie viewer proved very handy too. 

AI goodies

The Fold 6 packs the same clever AI goodies as the S24, plus a few other fun bits. As with previous models, you can get real-time language translation in phone calls, the incredibly handy circle-to-search function, an interpreter, a clever object removal tool for photo editing, and grammar/style checking for messages. The Fold 6 adds a fun sketch-to-image tool that allows you to draw crude images onto photos you’ve taken and the AI will convert them into photo-quality additions. The results were often super realistic. I drew sunglasses and a hat on my Greyhound, Blaze, and thanks to Galaxy AI, he looked like a super suave character straight out of The Godfather. AI portrait studio is also a cute feature and allows you to generate different image styles from portraits. Are they a must-have? Probably not, but they’re a lot of fun.

A slick and intuitive interface

As you’d expect from Samsung, the user interface is slick and intuitive. This is thanks to One UI 6.1.1, overlaid on Android 14 which has been optimised for a foldable display. Anyone already familiar with Samsung phones will be immediately at home. Like previous Galaxy devices, there are customisation options for every aspect of the Fold 6. My favourite is Adapt Hearing, which can customise audio output to your specific hearing abilities, allowing music and media played through headphones to sparkle. Additionally, Samsung has committed to an impressive seven OS upgrades, which gives the Fold 6 a solid amount of future-proofing.

Charging

A 4400mAh cell powers everything. While that is smaller than what is used on competing foldables, it delivered a solid day’s use and some with moderate to light use. With heavier use, I did notice that the Fold 6 sometimes demanded quality time with a charger later in the day.

When it comes to charging, the phone supports 25W wired charging, which translates into just shy of an hour and a half for a full charge. It also supports 15W wireless charging and 4.5W reverse wireless charging (for slowly topping up earbuds, etc). While wireless charging is slow, it is super convenient for overnight charging.

Samsung’s Galaxy Z Fold 6 – A solid recommendation

If you want to dive into the foldable end of the flagship phone pool, Samsung’s Galaxy Z Fold 6 has a lot going for it. The beautiful design and flagship-level components deliver a slick user experience. Add 7 years of OS updates, and there’s lots to like. It’s a trickier choice for existing Galaxy Z fold 5 owners who may want to do some more research given the similar camera spec and lack of compelling new features beyond the photo sketch and AI Portrait Studio apps. Either way, the Galaxy Z Fold 6 is a device I’d have no trouble recommending for those that can afford it.