Samsung Galaxy Z Fold5 Review: Small Step, No Giant Leap

The Galaxy Z Fold series, for the lack of a better word, is the inventor of the foldable smartphone. For the last four years, generation after generation, the Galaxy Z Fold has been the best foldable smartphone in the world. But in 2023, things have changed. The Chinese smartphone makers have started making foldable phones, and they have some wild ideas. Google also has released the Pixel Fold, which comes with some impressive ideas that usurp what Samsung has achieved. While most of these products haven’t arrived in India, it is only a matter of time. So, the Galaxy Z Fold5 had to be a bold phone to keep its generational lead intact.

Samsung hasn’t been bold in the sense that it has scrapped its playbook. It has been metronomic instead and ruthlessly refined the design it has been using since last year. For some, this will be disappointing, but for most, this is going to be a phone that will still be the best foldable smartphone in the world. This is what I will explain in this review.

The Flex Hinge

The star of the Galaxy Z Fold5 show is the flex hinge. There are no two ways about it as it reduces the gap between screens when the phone is folded and makes the hinge less susceptible to dust-related damage. There is also Gorilla Glass Victus 2 on both the sides to protect the screen from dust-related damage. But the issue is that there is still no official dust resistance rating. It only gets IPX8 certification, which means water resistance.

This is an issue because this is a device that costs upwards of Rs 154999, and five years on, Samsung still hasn't figured this out. So that’s disappointing, but Samsung does say if the protective screen cover comes off within the first year, it will replace it for free. Samsung’s after-sales is also the best in the business for foldable phones.

So yes, there are improvements to the design. It is more robust, it makes the phone slimmer and lighter, which is critical for a device of its size, and with armour aluminium, it is built like a luxury car. It also looks very nice in this new lavender-like colour, which looks pleasant. 

My major quibble is that Samsung hasn’t changed the design when other manufacturers have started to release foldables, which have a wider and shorter outer screen and a wide internal screen. Samsung is sticking with the 3:2 square screen and a 9:16 external screen. This, according to me, isn't ideal.

The internal screen often ends up with massive black bars when watching a 16:9 video, and the external screen is too tall and narrow to get work done. It feels like a remote, an extremely big remote, like one of those old Logitech universal remotes.

Sure, it can be propped up like a Nokia communicator of yesteryear, but for many, that will not be the optical way of working. There are a bunch of apps that scale very nicely side by side, like Instagram on the square screen, but let’s get real: most people are used to smaller screens, and this square format is for very limited users. And I am surely not one of them.

I also must say there is one thing the Fold 5 manages to do -- the support for the S-Pen. The S-Pen is sold separately, but it is such a boon to have in your toolkit. Now, while Samsung sells a decent case that can securely store this redesigned, more secure S-Pen, I am now just waiting for a design which has a silo which can also host the S-Pen like the S23 Ultra.

Samsung’s Software Lead

The thing that strikes me is that the daily user experience of the Fold5 is excellent. It has elegant software that works delightfully well for multitasking with numerous apps. It is almost addictive using the internal screen, and dragging and dropping elements from one place to the next can be like ordering and salivating over a hot chocolate fudge ice cream from Nirulas!

There are more apps now in the dock, and the reason Samsung uses the 3:2 format screen is because that enables it to have two full-size 16:9 apps side by side. Samsung has done a lot of work for the same, and its lead in this space is commendable, but the game is being changed as Google’s new Pixel Fold uses a different aspect ratio, and now that Android has been tweaked for foldable phones, one can imagine a new multi-tasking paradigm arriving. This is something I have touched upon already.

Aside from this, One UI is one of the best Android overlays around. It is fast and secure. Samsung promises four years of software updates and five years of security updates. There is Samsung DeX, which basically turns the phone into a CPU when paired with a keyboard, mouse and display. It also has access to the Samsung Knox security suit, which makes it amongst the most secure phones around. 

For stylus users, again, the software experience is the best in the business on the Galaxy Z Fold5, which makes this phone a must-have for power business users who want to annotate on a PPT or perhaps work on some heavy-duty spreadsheets.

Generally, Samsung provides the most comprehensive software experience of all foldable phones in the market, which is its key selling point.

Fastest Foldable Phone Around

With Samsung’s deep partnership with Qualcomm moving to another level with the custom Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 for Galaxy processor, one can expect this phone to be the fastest foldable of its kind. Then there is also the case for 12GB DDR5 RAM, which makes this phone as powerful as Dodge Challenger. Like the case with the Flip 5 or the Galaxy S23 series, these are amongst the fastest phones in the world of Android phones. 

Why do I compare it with the Dodge Challenger? Because, like its supercharged Hellcat engine, this chipset is also overclocked. This means, at times, the chipset does run warm as the thermals of the Fold5 aren’t on the level of the Galaxy S23 Ultra, but for most people, this will be fine.

A high-performance device will run warm, and that’s something people should make peace with, as buying a foldable phone entails the absolute bleeding edge of smartphone technology. They are designed for productivity fiends who need to run two apps in parallel and get work done on the go. And that work gets done quite elegantly. It is the reason that many iPhone users have shifted to foldable phones.

At the same time, this performance stack is the absolute best for mobile gamers. I tested my go-to game, Call Of Duty Mobile and the graphics were ravishing. I am saying they were comparable to COD on my PS5, but certainly, PS4 ballpark levels were being achieved. The frame rate situation is also quite smooth, as I couldn’t perceive any issues visually speaking, even on a fast-paced game like F1 2023 or Asphalt 9. It also helps that the GPU supports ray tracing, something that is not even present in the GPU of the mighty iPhone chipset. 

Excellent Yet Disappointing Cameras

The cameras on the Galaxy Z Fold5 are more or less the same from a hardware perspective as the Z Fold4. Same triple camera array with a 50-megapixel sensor for the wide-angle camera, a telephoto lens for optical zoom and portraits and a 12-megapixel camera for the ultra-wide lens. What’s changed here is the ISP, thanks to the Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Gen 2, which is certainly an improvement. Samsung claims other software improvements, but to the untrained eye, any improvement in the camera stack will be almost negligible. 

There is also a new lens coating, which Samsung says reduces the lens flare on the night-time shots. Yes, sure, I did find this to be an improvement, but the reality is this is a minor improvement for low-light photography.

The end result is that the cameras on the Galaxy Z Fold5 are excellent by foldable standards but they are just above average by Samsung or flagship smartphone standards.

Daylight photography is excellent, and night-time photography is above average. There is a lot of noise in the low light shots, which makes photography problematic for many users, especially for someone like me, as I am taking photos either in dimly lit nightclubs or pubs or indoor situations.

Sure, during the daytime, the ultra-wide camera is excellent for landscapes, and the portrait mode is amongst the best in the business. Samsung has nailed its portrait mode algorithm, and on top of this, there is an optical zoom -- 3x of it -- which is in the iPhone 14 Pro ballpark, but the lossless zoom up to 10x is also very, very usable. 

Video is an area of excellence for the Galaxy Z Fold5. It can even shoot 8K video, which I personally believe to be useless, but what I do find admirable is the 4K at 60 frames per second. It takes cinematic footage, perhaps the best on an Android phone outside of the Pixel 7 series and the Galaxy S23 models.

Being a foldable, it can also be propped in unique ways for more cinematic videos, though the Flip 5 is slightly better for the same.

So why am I disappointed? Because Samsung has done the bare minimum. It has leaned on the gains from the chipset and modest software improvements. There is no new party trick as well. And I fear that OnePlus, with its upcoming foldable, may usurp its capabilities at a lesser price. In the photography department already, reviewers from abroad have said that the Pixel Fold is superior.

Usable Battery Life

Samsung hasn’t increased the size of the battery on the Galaxy Z Fold5. It remains at 4,400mAh from its predecessor. But it is quite clear this year the mission was to make the device slimmer, which is why there was no increase in battery size. However, the battery life is indeed better. It is good enough to last you for 7-8 hours on a single charge with extensive use of the internal screen. In the case you use the screen on the outside more, then you can expect normal smartphone levels of battery life at around 10-12 hours on a single charge.

In other words, this is the best battery life I have seen on a foldable, but then again, I haven’t tested the foldable phones that have launched abroad, or heck I haven’t even reviewed the Tecno Phantom V Fold. 

I was initially worried not just because the battery figures hadn’t improved but also due to poor scores on the PCMark benchmark, but in regular use, it is a different story. I do suspect PCMark is not fully tailored for a foldable phone. 

It is quite clear that the screens on the Galaxy Z Fold5 are guzzling less power while being brighter and being downright delightful for content consumption. At the same time, the 4nm Qualcomm chip also brings a sense of efficiency that we usually accustom with ISRO and its rocket launches.

The 25-watt fast charging and 15-watt wireless charging are table stakes -- nothing special in the scheme of things, but the bare minimum. The reverse wireless powershare is a very handy feature to have also, which works really well on the Fold5.

Extras

There are a lot of subtleties to appreciate about. For example, the multimedia experience is exceptional thanks to the 1700 nits bright 7.6” fluid dynamic AMOLED 120Hz display. Their crease is still there, but you tend not to notice it after a while. The speakers also pack a thump, which means you can watch everything and even enjoy it with Dolby Atmos support. The haptic feedback is the best in the business, which makes typing such an enjoyable activity. The 4-megapixel camera on the internal screen, which is hidden behind the screen, is hideous, like the last iteration, and so mostly, selfies are being done on the selfie camera of the outer screen. 

Verdict

The Galaxy Z Fold5 is the best foldable in the world. It is an aggressive refinement, but that’s about it. The winds of the foldable world are changing, and that could cause issues for Samsung. On top of this, one hoped for better cameras across the board -- something that hasn’t happened even though it still has one of the best cameras on a foldable. This means I cannot recommend this phone to anyone but a first-time foldable user or someone who has used the Fold. For Fold 3 and Fold 4 users, the Fold 5 will be a very, very minor update. And when you are paying upwards of Rs 154,999, this will be an issue.