Hi, this is Wayne again with a topic “Samsung Galaxy Fold Review: We Gotta Talk!”.
So [ Applause ] – this has got to be the weirdest set of circumstances. I’Ve ever had to review a phone like little. In fact, i’ve i’ve dropped and scratched an unreleased phone before i even got to shoot any footage of it. I’Ve had software updates dramatically changed the way i felt about a phone in the middle of shooting. The review, so weird stuff has happened behind the scenes, but this is uh.
This is a lot, so i went hands-on with the phone for the first time. Then i dropped my video on the first impressions of it. Then i went home with one and then i broke it and then i got it replaced and then i found out other reviewers had theirs break for similar related reasons made a whole video about that. And now this device is getting delayed and samsung’s actually going to change it before it actually comes out and ships to people who bought it. So this is the samsung galaxy fold kinda it’s it’s the part, one, the pre-review there’s an official statement from samsung saying they’ll, be strengthening the display and it’ll be a little bit different when it actually comes out and gets released.
But until then this is more of a review of the rest of the execution on this whole foldable phone concept, so right off the bat. I love that this is it’s just so different. I mean we’re so used to the slab, the glass front and back that when you have a whole new form factor, there’s just so much more to talk about to think about. So let’s talk about it. So one of the earliest thoughts that’s floated around in my head about the galaxy fold. Is it’s more like a folding tablet than a folding phone? So you have this little baby 4.7 inch display on the outside. With i mean, let’s be honest, comically big bezels and even that number makes the screen seem bigger than it is with the rounded corners it even says, on the box: it’s basically a 4.6 inch display and then even with that, it’s much narrower than normal. So it feels like the same width as a 3.6 inch display, all that to say it’s small. So what you want to do is open it up and use the 7.3 inch 4×3 oled display that’s on the inside.
That’S where the magic happens. That’S the whole point of this foldable phone evolution is fitting a display this big in your pocket still so the galaxy fold. This version of it is definitely chunky like this is a thick phone with maybe three or four c’s. It doesn’t fold completely flat, as you can see, there’s a gap in the middle of mine with a hinge.
All of them have this sort of a triangle shape and then yeah, the more you look at it. The more it sort of reminds me of two narrow phones connected to each other from a lot of angles like it has the weight of two phones. It fits in your pocket like two phones, it’s really a lot of material, so it turns out.
This is a fragile phone and you can tell it as soon as you pick it up like it’s pretty fragile and that’s because of really two main pieces, the hinge and the soft plastic on the inside. So of course, glass doesn’t fold, make a folding phone. You need something other than glass, so you have plastic on this outside and then, of course you need a hinge somewhere, and this hinge from samsung is this crazy, complex mechanism with gears and this big cover over the back and it’s a scary piece, because there’s speculation That dirt and dust can slide its way into this hinge through the gears and all the way up into the phone behind the display, which may have caused a review unit to break which is pretty crazy, but that will hopefully change with the updated version. So i don’t want to spend too much time on that, but what i will say is even though it’s rated for 200 000 folds by a robot in a lab i mean you can literally wobble this thing with your bare hands like there’s give to this hinge. I am literally terrified for the jerry rig everything test when he finally gets his because i’d bet money.
It’S just gon na snap in half like i’d, bet real money on that, but you got ta have a hinge. So there is one here and then the other delicate piece is a soft plastic screen, and this is the part that samsung had the most difficulty with with all the review units. That is the part that they’re definitely changing on the updated version of this phone, but even if they do make it stronger, it’s still going to be just one of the weak points of this first generation folding phone. Just because that’s where material science and tech is right now, so one of the biggest questions about the galaxy fold unfolded is yeah. How bad is that crease? You know how bad is it? Can you see it pretty much? Everyone who’s watched, a video of the galaxy fold, has just stared at that crease, so something i’ve noticed about that. It seems like, and you can look this up.
It feels like pretty much everyone complaining about. The crease is people who don’t have one that are watching a video of the crease and just noticing it, and then people who do have one are mostly saying it’s not a huge deal. I fall somewhere in the middle because obviously like kind of like a notch, if you just stare at it, of course, it looks horrible and you’re gon na notice. It absolutely – and this phone has a notch too, but this crease like if you’re in a brightly, lit environment or if you have a light wallpaper, that’s something you’re gon na see.
That’S why samsung has a black wallpaper by default on this phone. But for me, when you’re looking at the phone straight on and you’re focused on the content, you know whatever game or video you’re in and what you’re watching. I don’t see the crease at all. So then i’m super immersed and it looks fantastic. But then i’ll look at it off axis for like a second or i’ll catch, my finger running over it too many times like even when the phone’s flat, you can feel it, and then you remember it’s there and it’s not so hot.
So the mild crease is just one of those things that you’re gon na have to accept in a first generation folding phone, that’s just part of the tech. The galaxy fold shares a lot of things with the galaxy s10, a lot of the good parts actually which make it feel a little less first gen. So it has the same high-end, specs, snapdragon, 85, 12, gigs of ram and then materials, of course.
So the glass and the metal everywhere and the speakers are actually a bit better than the s10, so you have the ones at the bottom and the ones at the top, and it actually creates a sort of a stereo speaker separation. So there you go a hidden advantage of having a gigantic device. Is the speakers are so far apart and can have so much room that they’re actually better than normal, closer to a tablet? Speaker, that’s cool and then, of course you have mainly the same software as the s102. One ui is still doing a good job as far as reachability and organization, responsiveness, etc. It’S pretty good. I have had a couple random weird bugs with the fold, though like spotify lock, screen.
Music controls haven’t worked at all for me, which is kind of weird, because i use them all the time, and i had this weird app drawer overlap, bug that only a restart of the device fixed other than that, though it’s been pretty solid and then there are Two main software features added to the fold multitasking, which is a little adjusted and continuity multitasking for me, wasn’t a huge deal mainly because i’ve had multitasking on big phones. Before on this huge screen on the fold, you can have three apps side by side in this triple window, and then you can keep adding floating windows up to eight apps open at once, and the 12 gigs of ram handles it. Fine but again, like i’m a person who will probably just stick to two at once, and i feel like it’s great in this nearly square format, because now it’s feeling like two full-size phones next to each other again. But continuity, though, that is a core feature of a folding phone going from the small to the large and back to the small again, and it’s worked in the galaxy fold better than i’ve seen in any other folding phone demo. So i was impressed by continuity and it was fast, so you have an app open on the small screen you want to get into it. So you open up the fold it opens up and it picks up right where you left off.
So the apps that are supported best, basically, the ones from google and samsung right now, will be the best at remembering everything about your small screen state and transferring it perfectly and then with some other apps. There will be a kind of a reset timeline or scrolling which can be kind of annoying and then in the very few apps that don’t support it at all. Going from the small screen to the big screen will give you a blown up version of the phone screen and then you’ll have to hit this button in the corner to restart the app to get the new aspect ratio. From my experience, it was a surprising amount of apps pretty much all the apps i use, except for youtube studio, worked in some way with continuity, which was cool so by default. When you close the fold, it just goes to sleep just because that’s usually what you’re doing when you close it you’re going to sleep and you’re done using it, but there’s a setting that will allow you to continue using apps from the big screen to the small Screen so in the display settings it’s called continue apps on front screen, so you can turn that on too.
If you go in there and check like google maps or accuweather for example, then you have an app open on the big screen. You close the fold and it’ll wake up where you left off on the smaller screen. This will also continue to get better with android q, as google and samsung continue to work on it. But it’s already pretty impressive to me. It’S already miles better than the barely functional royal flex pi i saw at ces okay.
So the rest of my thoughts on the galaxy fold are uh. I guess pretty random, but let’s talk about it so opening the fold in general is clumsy with these magnets and these buttons and how thick the phone is. It’S constantly a bit of a battle for me closing. It is easy.
You just slap it shut and it’s fine, but opening it always like you have to pry it apart and i feel like i just never got used to that. It’S always a two-handed action, the bezels on the front screen yeah. They are super ugly, but i’m also pretty sure. Samsung knows this too, like this is not what they would have wanted to make. They would have rather made it bezel-less if they could. So that leads me to believe they were kind of forced to make it like this. Maybe the tech and the hinge and other parts shrink the front screen down pretty bad there’s an ifixit tear down, but that’s suddenly gone, but that’s what i believe uh the battery of the fold is fantastic. It is split in half like i’ve said so, there’s a cell in each half of this phone that add up to 4 380 milliamp hours and i’ve had great battery life on the fold, which is really impressive, considering something with so much screen. And then i got ta say this phone might have been even more awesome with an s pen right up the side. Obviously, since it can’t fold, of course, but i’m guessing there isn’t enough space for that, and it’s not even a galaxy note fold, but i’m just you know imagining how dope would it be to pop it open, take notes on that huge screen and then just close It just a thought: the samsung default keyboard is actually split when you open the phone.
I actually prefer this google keyboard and i’ve been using it and it’s not split, but i suspect that people with smaller hands will appreciate the default split keyboard, design and the galaxy fold is super awkward as a gps in your car. So you don’t want to use it with the tiny four point, whatever inch screen, but when folded open it’s way too wide for any of those clamping, car mounts or even a cup holder or anything so yeah, someone’s gon na, have to make a sort of specialized Car mount for this thing that holds it unfolded, so you can use the nav as a big screen. The bixby button, underneath the fingerprint reader is the worst i’m convinced samsung was like.
Oh, we can just put the bixby button in there quietly and they won’t even notice it because they’ll be so focused on the fold. Uh yeah. No i’m talking about it.
Samsung, it’s not it’s not the move. It’S straight up rude, just the form factor of the galaxy fold unfolding it so many times you’re going to accidentally press that button constantly, and you know we don’t want to use bixby but hey they dropped it in there. So at least you can turn it from being a single press to a double press to open bixby.
So there are less accidental triggers of your favorite voice assistant and then i actually agree with a lot of what dieter from the verge was saying in his review about the front screen. Of course it’s super small and because it’s so bad looking most people won’t want to use it most of the time. I’M doing something quick on it like taking a phone call or music controls or messing with podcasts, or just something quick that you can use on. The small screen and then put it back away, but you know those times where you just take out your phone to do one quick thing and then suddenly it’s 15 minutes later and you’re, just mindlessly scrolling through instagram yeah. That doesn’t really happen on this front screen. So it doesn’t really happen on this phone. The screen is so small.
You don’t really want to do anything on it. So anytime, you want to really get into something or get some work done. You have this intentional opening the fold action and then you’re using it. Then you’re getting work done or whatever you’re going to do and when you’re done you close it up and you don’t really ever have those like getting lost moments of wandering around on that small screen.
It’S interesting. So, at the end of the day, like i said in that broken video, i was never really gon na recommend people go out and buy the two thousand dollar generation one galaxy fold why you may ask well for a two in one or a convertible, whatever you Want to call this to actually be worth it in any category. It generally needs to either be better than or cheaper than having to get both things in that category, so for all those crazy laptops that fold backwards and have a touch screen and they’re these two in one convertibles, those are trying to be both a laptop and A tablet and a lot of those are specialized at being a better laptop than most or being a better tablet than most or they’re just straight up, cheaper than buying both a laptop and a tablet. The galaxy fold is trying to be a phone and a tablet, but it’s not a better phone than most and it’s not a better tablet than most and at 2000 bucks.
It sure, as hell isn’t cheaper than just buying a galaxy s10 and a tablet so yeah. I’M not gon na tell you to buy it, but what i will tell you to do is when these actually do start showing up in stores go into a store and try it like pick it up. Hold it unfold. It close it like get that feeling of actually having this huge screen that you can fit in your pocket as a concept folding your tablet and being able to put it in your pocket.
That’S that’s the main advantage. That’S what will make these better than most tablets and then the fact that it can be a phone on top of that, too, is a nice bonus, so i like the concept, but this is of course generation one of what i too now believe after using it That this will be the future of smartphones or the future of tablets, or both you know what this clamshell design reminds me of this is this right here is everything the lg voyager ever wanted to be like this. This right here with the all touch screen uh and if phones can get as good as they did in the last 12 years from the lg voyager. Until now, then, i’m pretty excited for what smartphones are going to turn into from this first gen folding phone over the next couple years. So i’m thankful for samsung willing to jump in early and get it started to everyone hitting on the galaxy fold. I get it.
It’S so easy, it’s really easy to see a phone like this come along and it’s 2 000 bucks, and it’s got this hinge down the middle, and i know it’s been tough to like find real big flaws with phones lately. So when you see something like this, oh you got to dive in this is your time to shine. This is this is the one to hate on, but for those of us that actually get excited about new technology. This is one of the few truly new form factors and and new first gen concepts in a long time, and for it to have this much promise. This early is actually pretty exciting. It’S pretty cool, there’s gon na have to be a part two of this review with final hardware, when that’s eventually a thing, but until then i’m gon na send this back to samsung, i’m gon na. Let them work on it. I’M gon na cross my fingers until it gets good and until then thanks for watching catch, you guys later peace, .