Hi, this is Wayne again with a topic “Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 5 Review”.
This is the Samsung Galaxy Z, fold 5, and I’ve been using it for about five days now, and I realize it’s easy to dismiss it as a minor upgrade. It’S an incremental Improvement, yes, but one of an already solid, well-established foldable, the Z fold four and the z-fold 4 when it came out last year and well this year even proves how far ahead Samsung is in terms of making a phone that folds open into a Tablet now that doesn’t mean others haven’t done better. In part, I mean Google’s pixel fold has better cameras, but in terms of the complete package the z-fold 4 had a. This is as good as it gets right now moment and that’s where the Galaxy Z fold. 5 comes in now it doesn’t bring a sweeping giant, design, change or radical new cameras, but instead tries to improve upon the z-fold 4 in three areas: the durability, battery life and the cameras, and the z-fold 5 gets two out of those three right. Well, mostly so the basics of the z-fold five are well essentially the same as the z-fold four in terms of the overall design screen sizes, buttons, USBC, Port S, Pen, support and well, of course, that eighteen hundred dollar price tag, the camera bump, is a little less Bulky but the individual lenses stick out more.
The main screen is brighter, which I found easier to see Outdoors, which I think is a significant upgrade, even if it’s a minor one in terms of a year-over-year update, but I found the Z fold. 5’S new hinge changes things, as you might remember, with the previous defaults. The main screen experience is excellent. It’S a Wonderful mini tablet, but when it’s closed the z-fold is an awkward phone. It’S bulky and the previous hinge didn’t allow it to close completely flat, leaving an actual wedge-shaped opening between the folded sides, but the default 5’s new hinge solves that and can close completely shut.
Well, the review unit I’ve been testing. There is the tiniest thinner than paper Gap that you can see through when the phone is closed. In fact, looking back at how Samson described the way the fold 5 closes at the launch event, it adds up and it reduces the folds Gap to almost nothing and that’s almost something. In the time I’ve been using the z-fold five, it’s much less awkward to hold and more enjoyable to use when it’s in phone mode. It still has the same tall, thin, Xperia phone aspect, ratio that will still be hit or miss for some people. Samsung says the new hinge has less mechanical parts and is more durable than previously folds holding it it’s hard for me. To tell I mean it does feel more solid, but that might just be because it closes flat. Now an added benefit is that the z-fold 5 is 10 grams, lighter well according to Samsung specs, then the z-fold 4, and about 11 grams lighter according to my coffee scale, and that is definitely noticeable and welcome, and then there’s also a new processor which addresses battery Life so we’ve seen the Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 in a lot of phones this year and it’s excellent in terms of performance and efficiency.
The z-fold 5 and z-flip 5 have the Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 for Galaxy. Now. This is a customized version of the chip that debuted in February, with the Galaxy s23 series, it’s CPU and GPU get slightly higher speeds than the regular tip, but it’s the efficiency gains that are welcome here and well needed, because the z-fold 5 has the same dual 4400 milliamp hour battery as the full three and the fold four so to get better battery life out of a phone with the same battery, especially the one that has a brighter main screen. We’Re going to need an efficient processor. Now, over my five days with the z-fold 5, I found it lasts about an hour or two longer on a single charge than the Z fold 4, which again is significant on probably the day I used it. The most was during a photo and video shoot and at 7am it had a full battery and by 9 pm it still had 14 left, and that was with the screen set to 120 hertz variable, refresh rate and being at full brightness for most of the day.
Now, over the weekend, it made it a day and a half on a single charge, obviously, depending on how you use the z-fold five, especially the main screen. Well, it’s going to change how long the battery lasts. For example, I had back-to-back Zoom calls over Wi-Fi with the z-fold five and the battery went from a hundred percent to 76 percent over 75 minutes.
This definitely won’t best a regular slab phone in terms of battery life, but it’s better than before. Even just a little bit now I have more battery tests to run so check out CNET for my full writ review for all those results, and then there are the cameras, and this is the bit where I’m disappointed just a little bit. You see the cameras on the z-fold. Five are the same cameras, the same lenses, the same sensors as the ones on the previous z-fold model, but, as we know with other phones, Hardware is only half the equation. When it comes to cameras. The z-fold 5 gets a new image sensor, processor ISP, and that allows it to do all the computational photography that we’ve come to expect on any phone that gets released today. But let’s take a look at some of my favorite photos and videos that it took with the Galaxy Z, fold 5.. In my time, with the z45 photos and videos look nearly identical to those on the z-fold 4..
I mean it’s really hard for me to spot any meaningful differences. I do think the z-fold 5S photos look a skosh crisper and that might be because of the new ISP, allowing the full 5 to have longer shutter speeds under mix and medium light and shorter shutter speeds under bright light compared to the z-fold four. So yeah not a significant upgrade and a couple weeks ago I did a camera comparison between the z-fold 4 and the Google pixel fold and found that the pixel cameras were better and while they do plan to do another comparison with the pixel fold and z-fold five. I don’t see anything here that tells me that the z-fold five’s cameras have made up any ground on the pixel fold.
Is the z-fold 5 worth upgrading from the z-fold 4? No way I mean don’t do it, maybe the z-fold 3, but if you’re contemplating upgrading from the original fold or the z-fold 2. This is a substantial upgrade. Now, if you’re going to buy a z-fold 4 a week ago, you’re basically getting a better version of the same phone at the same price and like other expensive phones that offer a niche appeal like the Sony Xperia one Mark V, that’s fourteen hundred dollars.
There are people willing to pay a premium to have a phone that is unique and, in this case, turns into an amazing mini tablet, and even if it isn’t for most people, that’s where the z-fold five still leads the pack. Now I want to hear from you: what do you think about the z-fold five? Are the upgrades significant or is this the case where the specs were right all along? Let me know in the comments and for more on the z-fold five check out my full written review. It has more tests, it has more comparisons and it’s at CNET and thank you for watching. .