Samsung Galaxy Z Flip Prices On Vodafone Plans

Samsung Galaxy Z Flip Review

Consumer technology is the endless pursuit of making smalls things big, and big things small. When it comes to smartphones, we've reached a breaking point. They started as cute 3-inch or so babies that have now more than doubled in size. 6.5-inch displays are very much the norm now, and for the most part, smaller handsets have gone the way of the dodo - especially when it comes to the Android world.

Samsung's Galaxy Z Flip feels like a direct response to this; an acknowledgement that maybe smartphones have gotten too big. It takes a big device - a 6.7-inch smartphone - and makes it small again, by folding it in half. It's built for anyone who loves large displays, other than the part where they try and carry them.

As such, the Galaxy Z Flip complements the Galaxy Fold, rather than succeeds it. Instead of trying to replace both your phone and tablet, the Z Flip is simpler. It's just a big phone that wants to be smaller.

What's old is new

At first, the Galaxy Z Flip is a nostalgia inducing bundle of joy, reminiscent of your favourite 90s clamshell after a glow up. It's the sci-fi successor to the flip phone, trading in a clunky T9 keyboard for one long seamless screen. It's how you'd imagine E.T should actually be phoning home.

The Galaxy Z Flip is the fourth foldable phone I've got my hands on, and there's still a certain novelty to the form-factor. A sense that phones shouldn't do that. I've lost more time than I'd care to admit mindlessly opening and closing the Galaxy Z Flip. It's just that satisfying. The mechanical click that rings out as screen snaps open is music to my ears. Like the Galaxy Fold, it's an engineering marvel. And like the Galaxy Fold, it has a few quirks you'll need to put up with if you're after a taste of the future.

On the Galaxy Z Flip's exterior, you'll find a diminutive 1.1-inch display that's still visible when the phone is shut. This can be used to show the time, battery life, answer phone calls, take selfies, and display notifications. It makes sense in theory, but in practice, it's too small to be useful. You won't have any problems checking the time, but powering up the external display to look at notifications is downright painful. If you're trying to read a message, you'll need to patiently wait as it scrolls across the display. Heaven forbid you have two to deal with.

In an ideal world, maybe the Galaxy Z Flip could improve your relationship with your phone. The act of unfolding a phone is an extra physical step you need to take to use it, and you get the sense a notification isn't important enough to deal with in the moment, you might just leave it for later. But the small size of the outward-facing display makes it hard to ascertain whether it's actually worth unfolding the phone to deal with a message. In most cases, I had to unfold the phone to properly get a grasp on my notifications.

While the foldable form-factor certainly adds charm, it can be an imposition. You can't just pick up your phone to see a notification; it delays whatever it is you want to use your phone for. To make it as seamless as possible, I enabled facial recognition and a setting that breezes past the lock screen as soon as my face has been detected. 

This saved a few seconds here and there, but it became frustrating when the Galaxy Z Flip didn't recognise my face, which can be an issue in darker environments. Samsung's facial recognition just isn't as reliable as competitors like Apple's Face ID. You can also use a side-facing fingerprint reader to unlock the Galaxy Z Flip, you just can't unfold and it unlock it one fell swoop this way.

When at home, I just left the Galaxy Z Flip unfolded, to save myself the hassle. On the go, it was vexing. Doubly so, because unfolding the handset with just one hand is an exercise in contortion. I had to awkwardly pry apart the screen with my thumb and pressure the hinge until the phone lay flat. More often than not, this required pressing the Z Flip up against my body just to get extra leverage. Even after eight weeks in iso, this isn't the kind of close contact I want. Closing the Z Flip with one hand is similarly awkward, requiring a 90-degree pivot in your palm. It's easier to close than open, but both are precarious options.

These kind of issues could be mitigated by pairing the Galaxy Z Flip with a smartwatch. By putting a larger display on your wrist, you can better gauge whether a notification is worth opening your phone for. Being able to get around this with another device doesn't excuse the issue, but it's an option if you've got your heart set on a Z Flip.

Heart of Glass

The Galaxy Z Flip is notable for being the first foldable smartphone to feature a glass display. Well, kind of. There's still a polymer layer on top, and ultra-thin glass isn't going to be as durable as the glass we see on a traditional smartphones, but it's a big improvement over the plastic displays we've seen on other foldable devices. Glass feels nicer, and it's less prone to scratches. Nothing betrays a "premium" smartphone with a sky high price-tag faster than a display that's been scuffed to shit.

Of course, the Galaxy Z Flip is still a phone you'll want to handle with care. YouTube channel JerryRigEverything found that fingernails were still capable of leaving markings on the screen. I wasn't overly cautious with the Galaxy Z Flip in my two weeks using it as my primary phone, and mercifully, the display is free from scratches. It even took one unfortunate tumble when shut and survived without any issue. While it will almost certainly scratch and shatter easier than your typical smartphone, I didn't feel like I had to baby it in the same way I did with the Galaxy Fold. It's hard to tell how the phone will stack up after two or three years of usage, but it's a more reassuring design, at least in the short term.

Like the Galaxy Fold, the Galaxy Z Flip display has a slight crease where it bends. It's easy enough to forget about it when using the Flip, but it becomes awfully prominent when looking at the phone off axis or when using an app with a dark background. Apps with white backgrounds tend to hide it better. You'll also feel the crease if you're running your finger up or down the screen, like when you're swiping to open the app draw. It's unusual for a screen to not feel seamless, but it's not the end of the world. It's one of those quirks you end up getting used to.

The display itself is oddly elongated, touting an unusual 21.9:9 aspect ratio. The tall-yet-narrow screen can technically run two apps at once, but despite measuring in at a sizeable 6.7-inches, the screen isn't really big enough to do so well. Two apps stacked vertically in portrait mode isn't overly useful, and landscape isn't much better. Either way, you just end up with two side-by-side squares, which isn't ideal when most Android apps are designed to be run in rectangles.

There are a couple of apps - such as the camera - that can make a little more use out of the Galaxy Z Flip's unique design. If you fold the phone into an L-shape, the camera app will split the viewfinder across the vertical part of the screen, and the controls across the horizontal. It doesn't make a big difference in terms of how the camera app actually works, but it ostensibly turns the base into a tripod for the phone, which is kinda cute.

The biggest benefit of the Galaxy Z Flip's form-factor ends up being a smaller footprint when shut. Measuring in at 183g, it still weighs about as much as a standard phone, it's just a little easier to pocket. It won't peek out like many of the supersized phones that have become the norm. The Galaxy Z flip does have its own trade-offs; the foldable design means the Galaxy Z Flip is about the thickness of two phones together. For some, a thicker phone could be worse than a longer phone. It becomes a question of preference; do you want a small, thick phone, or a tall, skinny phone?

Sum of its parts? 

The Galaxy Z Flip's form-factor is easily the star of the show here, there's not too much else to get excited about. When you put aside the foldable display, all you're left with is a fairly conventional smartphone that doesn't manage to measure up to this year's top-tier devices - including Samsung's own.

It's clear that Samsung cut a few corners to keep the Galaxy Z Flip's cost down. The least egregious trade-off is the processor; inside you'll find a Snapdragon 855+, which is the best processor you'll find in any 2019 Android phone. It may not technically be as fast as an S20, but it's no slouch either. The Galaxy Z Flip will admirably handle anything you can throw at it.

Battery is another story. Even when they're touting massive 5,000mAh batteries, Samsung smartphones can struggle to make it past a full day unless you turn off a plethora of features. The Galaxy Z Flip is powered by a 3,300mAh cell, which is tiny for an Android phone. While compromising on battery capacity was clearly necessarily to achieve the sleek form-factor, it almost means compromising on battery life. In my testing, I struggled to get a full day out the Galaxy Z Flip. I found I only got about four hours of screen time per charge, which is a tad disappointing. It's definitely the kind of phone that will need a top-up through the day. For comparison, the iPhone 11 Pro Max can easily get close to eight hours of screen time per charge.

It's a similar situation when it comes to cameras. To start, the Galaxy Z Flip only has two rear-facing cameras, as opposed to the four you'll find on the S20+ or S20 Ultra. There's certainly no 100x Space Zoom, let alone a zoom lens. Instead, you just get a run of the mill primary camera paired with an ultra-wide lens. And they're fine. The S20, the iPhone 11, the Pixel 4, and even last year's Note 10+ will all take better photos, but the Galaxy Z Flip still has a respectable camera setup. It's just not one you're going to rave about.

Lowlight is the Galaxy Z Flip's biggest weakness. It can still take a well exposed, good looking photo in a dark environment, but one without much detail and a little bit too much noise. Even when you're using night mode. The Galaxy Z Flip is also a little too prone to capturing shots that are a bit out of focus or subject to motion blur in environments that are even a little dim. In short, the Galaxy Z Flip camera is serviceable, but it's far from being in the same league as anything else in its price bracket.

If the Galaxy Z Flip were half the price, all of these niggles would matter a whole lot less. Nothing about the phone is truly bad, but the same kind of money can buy you a lot more phone. It's abundantly clear you're paying a big premium for the sake of having a foldable.

Samsung Galaxy Z Flip - Final Thoughts

The Galaxy Z Flip is a showcase for foldable technology, rather than a meaningful implementation. It doesn't use its new kind of display to go beyond what any other existing smartphone can do. The Galaxy Z flip may be the most polished foldable to date, but it's ultimately just a phone that folds in half. While the compact form-factor is a boom for pocketability, it doesn't change your relationship with your phone.

This is a shame, because the potential was there. If the external display was just a tad more useful, it's easy to imagine using the Galaxy Z Flip in a different way. Unfolding your phone to use it is a barrier to entry, and it's one that can be positive or negative. If you're able to dismiss a notification without having to open the phone, that's one less time you're opening your phone. One less chance to get stuck in a social media wormhole. Unfortunately, the Galaxy Z Flip's tiny external screen doesn't lend itself to making these kind of decisions. Unfolding to check what was ultimately a banal message is a frustrating experience at best.

Smaller phones are sorely needed by the industry, but as it stands, I prefer the Galaxy Fold's approach to that of the Galaxy Z Flip. While there's a lot to love about being able to make a big phone small, it doesn't change how you use your phone. I'm much more interested in the potential of phones opening up to become tablets - the tantalising prospect of getting the best of both devices in one package.

There is, of course, no reason why both form-factors shouldn't exist. But if we're going to see a foldable flip phone revival, handsets like the Galaxy Z Flip need to offer more functionality when shut. Otherwise they're just getting in the way of themselves.

Even if you love the idea of the Galaxy Z Flip, it's expensive for what it is. In many ways, the $1,349 Galaxy S20 is a better phone. It just doesn't fold. It's understandable that Samsung had to make some compromises, but these become problematic on a phone that costs over $2,200. You want a phone that offers the best of the best when you're spending this kind of money. A folding screen doesn't automatically excuse shortcomings, especially given there's no meaningful impact on the relationship with your phone.

The Galaxy Z Flip makes it clear that the current generation of foldable devices are status symbols. It's like buying a Gucci jumper that ends up being less comfortable than your Uniqlo pullover. You're not buying the Galaxy Z Flip because it's a good phone in the traditional sense. It's a good phone, but it doesn't represent good value for money. It's not a rational purchase when you play the numbers game.

You're buying the Galaxy Z Flip because you want a phone that stands out.

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