Samsung Galaxy Z Fold4 review

introduction

From feasibility to refinement, Samsung’s natural shift in priorities for its flagship foldable smartphone only took a couple of years. The 2022 Galaxy Z Fold4 focuses on much-needed camera upgrades and brings some subtle physical finishing touches, while retaining the basic concept of the productivity-based phone-tablet form factor.

The Z Fold3’s camera setup used relatively old hardware, and the new model changes most of it. Having in principle the same arrangement as the wide-angle telephoto lens, the Z Fold4 gets a greater reach on the long end and a larger sensor main camera, while the ultrawide remains intact. Mind you, it’s not yet a state-of-the-art setup – it is almost the same as that of the Galaxy S22 (+) with some fine print in the autofocus section.

In the physical touches, we’re seeing that the bezels have been reduced, the external screen has adopted a slightly less tall look (always taller than pretty much anything) and the whole thing now weighs slightly less – all evolutionary changes that can or can be spotted in the practice. It’s certainly not the gapless folding that we’ve all been buzzing about that Samsung should be making, while Chinese manufacturers, in fact, are making.

Other things you won’t get in this iteration include adequately fast charging, Samsung instead keeps things at 25 watts of PPS-boosted USB PowerDelivery. Battery capacity remains at 4,400mAh, but this has never been a sore point in the past, so we won’t be making a big deal out of it now.

If nothing else, further advances in display technology (Samsung has advertised a more energy-efficient panel for this Fold generation), along with the Snapdragon 8+ Gen 1 chipset, itself not coming from Samsung’s chipmaking division but TSMC , could actually mean longer battery life – we’ll get to that.

Speaking of the display, the foldable inner panel keeps the numbers from the older model: the diagonal is 7.6 inches with a 120Hz refresh rate, and it’s an adaptive granular refresh rate, as befits the high-end status of the Fold. The outer panel matches the large one for refresh rate capabilities, and while the diagonal remains unchanged from the 6.2-inch predecessor, the new look should make it slightly more convenient by even marginally increasing the usable area.

Of course, you’ll get stereo speakers, the side-mounted capacitive fingerprint sensor, an IPX8 rating (no dust, just water), and a couple of selfie cameras, one outside and another under the flexible display. Those appear to have been inserted now with no apparent reason to change them.

The specifications of Samsung Galaxy Z Fold4 at a glance:

• Body: 155.1×130.0x6.3mm (open), 155.1×67.1×14.2-15.8mm (folded), 263g; IPX8 water resistant (up to 1.5m for 30 minutes).
• Screen: 7.60 “2X Dynamic Foldable AMOLED, 120Hz, HDR10 +, 1200 nits (peak), 1812x2176px resolution, 10.8: 9 aspect ratio, 373ppi; Coverage Display: 6.20” 2X Dynamic AMOLED, 120Hz, 904x2316px, 23 , 1: 9, 401ppi.
• Chipset: Qualcomm SM8475 Snapdragon 8+ Gen 1 (4 nm): Octa-core (1×3.19 GHz Cortex-X2 and 3×2.75 GHz Cortex-A710 and 4×1.80 GHz Cortex-A510); Adreno 730.
• Memory: 256GB 12GB RAM, 512GB 12GB RAM, 1TB 12GB RAM; UFS 3.1.
• Operating system / software: Android 12L, a 4.1.1 user interface.
• Rear camera: Wide (main): 50 MP, f / 1.8, 23 mm, 1.0µm, Dual Pixel PDAF, OIS; Telephoto lens: 10 MP, f / 2.4, 66mm, 1.0µm, PDAF, OIS, 3x optical zoom; Ultra wide angle: 12 MP, f / 2.2, 123˚, 12 mm, 1.12 µm.
• Front camera: Under-exposure: 4 MP, f / 1.8, 2.0µm, under display; Camera coverage: wide (main): 10 MP, f / 2.2, 26 mm, 1/3 “, 1.22 µm.
• Video capture: Rear camera: 4K @ 60fps, 1080p @ 60 / 240fps (gyro-EIS), 720p @ 960fps (gyro-EIS), HDR10 +; Cover camera: 4K @ 60fps, 1080p @ 30fps, gyro-EIS.
• Battery: 4400 mAh; Fast charging 25W, 50% in 30 min (advertised), Fast wireless charging 15W, Reverse wireless charging 4.5W.
• Various: Fingerprint reader (side mounted); NFC; stereo speakers; Samsung DeX (desktop experience support), Samsung Pay (Visa, MasterCard certified), Ultra Wideband (UWB) support; stylus holder.

Unboxing Samsung Galaxy Z Fold4

The unboxing experience of the Galaxy Z Fold4 holds few surprises. The phone comes open in a large square black box with “Fold” written in bold. And when we say that the box is “big”, it is only so in the footprint: it is at half height since it lacks a charger, as has become the norm. There’s still a bundled USB-C cable, yet.

But the barebones retail package is easily forgotten once you manage to actually hold the Fold4, so let’s talk a little bit.