Currently, according to the latest reports of the TrendForce Institute, foldable phones account for only one percent of the total share of smartphones sold around the world. According to the CounterPoint Institute, nearly half of the users of foldable phones prefer the clamshell form similar to the Galaxy Z flips; In contrast, 35% are in favor of models similar to Folds, and 15% do not see a difference between the two form factors. According to Statista statistics, by the end of 2023, Samsung will have about 70% of the foldable phone market and will be considered the uncontested king of this segment of the smartphone world. However this absolute superiority has become a big challenge for the Korean giant.

The question facing Samsung is simple; But it seems very deep: in a market without competitors, how to improve? Samsung’s approach in recent years shows that company managers either do not believe in this question or do not take it very seriously. The example for our claim will be the changes, improvements, and pricing model of Samsung foldable phones during the years 2020 to 2024. Millimeter changes and incremental updates might make sense for a fully established phone like the Galaxy S24 Ultra, But it’s definitely not what users of a new form of smartphone like foldable would expect.

Considering all the circumstances and taking into account that the Galaxy Z Flip 5 also had minor changes compared to the Z Flip 4, stay with me as I review the Galaxy Z Flip 6.

In the design department, everything goes smoothly and without challenges. At first glance, it seems that the Galaxy Z Flip 6 has not changed anything compared to the Galaxy Z Flip 5; But with a little closer look, you can see the minor and somewhat impressive changes of the new generation.

In terms of dimensions, almost everything remains the same; The weight of the phone is 187 grams, and in the unfolded state, the length, width, and thickness are measured at 165.1, 71.9, and 6.9 mm, respectively, which are the same numbers obtained in the measurement of the Galaxy Z Flip 5. We can easily conclude that in the closed state, we are facing the same numbers of 85.1 and 71.9 mm for length and width; But the thickness of Galaxy Z Flip 6 in this situation is reduced by 0.02 mm, showing a change in the hinge design of the phone.

The outer screen is designed and made in the same irregular shape as the Galaxy Z Flip 5; With the knowledge that we have of Samsung Display’s ability to make different shapes of screens, Koreans probably don’t have any particular problem with making the outer screen full screen; But so far this has not happened and we have to admit that Motorola’s foldable all-encompassing display; Like the Razer 50 Ultra, it looks much more attractive and exciting. Samsung may claim that the outer screen of Z Flip 6 has a more practical design; But in fact, there is no special difference in terms of functionality between the display of this phone and competitors.

Like the previous generation, aluminum has been used to make the phone frame so that the Galaxy Z Flip 6 is more resistant to falls and possible shocks. One of the differences between Flip 6 and the previous generation phone can be seen in the design of the same frame; Where Samsung designers have eliminated the curvature of the edges of the frame and used a completely flat form. This change brings a more modern look to the phone, But it can be said that it makes it a little more difficult to work with the phone in the style of Galaxy S24 Ultra or Apple iPhones; However, having a more modern design is probably more important in the minds of many users than making it a little harder to work with the phone.

This year, Samsung has equipped the Galaxy Z Flip 6 cameras with a ring of the same color as the body; This gives a different look to the new Korean foldable phone, but whether you like the different look of the Z Flip 6 or not is completely up to you. These rings are so clearly designed that even buyers of the black version will probably notice their existence; In any case, the color contrast created between the rings (in the blue versions we have for review, or yellow and green) and the dark glass behind them, will probably be the only distinguishing point between the Galaxy Z Flip 6 and 5.

The minor changes made in the Flexhinge system have enabled Samsung to equip the Galaxy Z Flip 6 with the IP48 standard, which means resistance to water (30 minutes at a depth of 1.5 meters) and dust; This ability was obtained in situations where the previous generation supported the IPX8 standard and in fact had no resistance to dust penetration. It may not be bad to know that Razer 50 Ultra, as one of the most serious competitors of Z Flip 6, also supports the IPX8 standard.

Around the frame of the Galaxy Z Flip 6, you can find the volume and power keys, which, as in previous years, the power key also plays the role of a fingerprint sensor, and the location of the volume keys is a little higher than what we expect. In the lower part, you will see one of the speakers of Z Flip 6, which together with the conversation speaker, form the set of stereo speakers of the phone.

Galaxy Z Flip 6 speakers sometimes have a satisfactory volume in low-noise environments; Both high and low frequencies and mid-range frequencies are well covered; Therefore, fans of different styles of music from rock to jazz will be satisfied, as well as podcast lovers. If you are a fan of watching movies with your phone, you will also enjoy the volume, clarity, and loudness of the speakers; Of course, do not forget that the speaker of the phone is not at the same level as specialized headphones in any form and quality, and if you intend to rate them based on the ability of the speakers to distinguish the sounds of instruments, you should manage your expectations a little.

After opening the phone, we get to the sensitive 6.7-inch internal display of the Galaxy Z Flip 6. This 2640 x 1080 pixel OLED display supports a refresh rate of 120 Hz and thanks to LTPO technology, it can change the refresh rate between 1 and 120 Hz depending on the type of content being displayed. Samsung says that the maximum brightness of the internal display reaches 2600 nits and the pixel density is equal to a very good number of 426 pixels.

The folding in the middle of the screen is one of the most important and challenging points of the Galaxy Z Flip screen. You might expect that during the four years that have passed since the introduction of the first generation Z Flip, at least 20% of the folding depth has been reduced every year; But in fact it is not like that. ZFlip’s folding has become less prominent, But it still stands strong and powerful. Apart from the discussion of folding, the narrow and elongated dimensions of the flip screen with a ratio of 22:9 still seem strange and unpleasant; you have to constantly move your hand to access the physical keys or the edges of the screen.

The outer display remains unchanged at least in terms of dimensions; The 3.4-inch folder-like OLED display, which according to Samsung now reaches a maximum brightness of 1600 nits, is covered with a protective cover of Gorilla Glass Victus 2 and its pixel density is 306 pixels/inch, which is not a very high number in the standard of 2024 displays. In addition, the refresh rate of the external display still does not exceed 60 Hz, which by itself can give the user a contradictory feeling when switching between the two displays.

According to the tests carried out in the Zoomit laboratory on the Galaxy Z Flip 6, we obtained the maximum brightness of the internal display in manual mode and by activating the Extra Brightness option equal to 830 nits, and in the automatic setting, the maximum brightness of 2050 nits was reached. Also, the measurement of the highest level of brightness when playing HDR content shows the same number of 2800 nits, which is a very impressive number and beyond the brightness of 2600 nits announced by Samsung.

We achieved a maximum brightness of 1,450 nits for the external display of the Galaxy Z Flip 6 when playing HDR content, which is within the range of 1,600 nits announced by Samsung for the maximum brightness of the external panel of this phone.

Fortunately, Samsung realized the weakness of its screens in covering the color space and somehow improved it in Galaxy Z Flip 6; Therefore, in the display settings section and the color profiles section, a slider named Vividness has been added to the Vivid color profile, which, by increasing it, the device covers the wide DCI-P3 color space in a better way. Apparently, the Koreans have added this software feature to the Galaxy S24 series.

Galaxy Z Flip 6 is powered by the 3rd generation Snapdragon 8 flagship chip, which is considered the most powerful chip in the Android world today, and in some areas, even surpasses Apple’s powerful A17 Pro chip. Samsung’s new foldable is available to users in two capacities of 256 and 512 GB, But both versions use 12 GB of RAM; Goodbye 8GB RAM!

According to the benchmarks, the Galaxy Z Flip 6 seems to display a performance close to the S24 Ultra, which is not far from expected considering that it has the same chip. The existing difference can also be attributed to the better performance of S24 Ultra in cooling the device.

Naturally, the target group of Galaxy Z Flip 6 is not gamers; But for the first time in this series of foldable phones, Samsung has also used the Vapor Chamber cooling system so that the heat produced by the chip can be quickly removed from the phone.

In the 20-minute Zomit stress test, the Z Flip 6 showed more or less the same behavior as the previous generation with a 58% drop in performance; But thanks to the use of a more powerful chip, at the end of the test, it showed about 30% better performance and outperformed the Z Flip 5.

As expected, Galaxy Z Flip 6 also performs well in playing games; So a heavy game like Genshin Impact runs with the highest graphics settings in the range of 60 frames per second; But it seems that the Warzone game is still not optimal; Because achieving a rate of 60 frames per second, you have to leave the graphics settings to the automatic mode of the game, otherwise, the frame rate of the game will be below 30 frames per second.

Using a more powerful and optimized chip alone seems to be enough to improve the charging of the phone; But this year, Samsung has increased the capacity of its foldable battery by 8% compared to the previous year to 4000 mAh. The Z Flip 6 battery supports 25W charging, which cannot be called “fast charging” these days. 15W wireless charging and 4.5W reverse charging are also available for users.

As expected, the 4000 mAh battery, along with the more optimized chip, has significantly improved battery performance. In the standard Zoomit video playback test, Galaxy Z Flip 6 managed to register a record of 25 hours, which is almost 3 hours more than the previous generation; On the other hand, the phone had 11 hours and 32 minutes of charging in the daily user test, which shows an improvement of about an hour compared to the previous generation.

As expected, much of Samsung’s focus for the introduction of the Galaxy Z Flip 6 and of course the Galaxy Z Fold 6 was on showcasing the Galaxy AI capabilities. In addition to all the previous functions of the external display, such as the possibility of using different applications, controlling and displaying notifications, quick access to messages and settings, displaying the amount of sports activities, or setting different backgrounds at different times of the day, some of the smart functions that we saw in the introduction of the S24 family are also are available on this screen.

One of the new features in the Galaxy AI collection is an item called Photo Assist, which allows editing photos with artificial intelligence. Among the Photo Assist features, one of the most impressive is the Portrait Studio, which allows the user to edit their photos in Comic, 3D Cartoon, Watercolor, and Sketch styles.

Another interesting feature that also has an interesting function is Sketch to Image, which allows the user to add realistic elements to their photos by drawing simple diagrams and the magic of artificial intelligence.

With Galaxy Z Flip 6, it is possible to access the Chat Assist function from the external display; With the help of this feature, the phone can recognize the responses you use the most and when receiving a new message, based on the text of the message, it can suggest a pre-prepared response. Other Galaxy AI features such as Circle to Search for searching on Google by drawing a circle around the subject in the image, Live Translate for simultaneous translation of messages from any language to any other supported language and Transcript Assist for creating text from an audio file are also available to Galaxy users. Z Flip 6 is located; However, contrary to Samsung’s promise, there is still no news of Persian language support. There is also a special menu in the phone settings so that users can familiarize themselves with all the features based on the artificial intelligence of Samsung phones.

If we leave aside the relatively numerous functions of Galaxy AI, Galaxy Z Flip 6 uses the same familiar One UI 6.1.1 user interface based on Android 14; Of course, Samsung says that just like the flagships of the Galaxy S family, it will provide up to 7 years of software support for its new foldable; Therefore, if there is no special problem, the Galaxy Z Flip 6 will also see Android 21.

The camera has always been one of the weak points of Samsung’s expensive folding phone. Stranger than that, the Galaxy Z Fold 5 camera remained unchanged compared to its previous generation, the Z Fold 4. As a result, it is not so strange to see that Samsung has finally reached the server of the main camera of Z Flip 6.

Galaxy Z Flip 6, like its competitors and its previous generation, uses a dual arrangement of “wide + ultrawide” for rear cameras; Of course, the main camera (wide) now uses a much larger 50-megapixel sensor instead of the previous 12-megapixel module. In the following, we will talk more about cameras.

The main camera of the Galaxy Z Flip 6 uses a 50-megapixel, 1/1.57-inch Samsung S5KGN3 sensor with 1.0-micrometer pixels and a TetraCell color filter; The same sensor that also plays the role of the main camera of the Galaxy S24. This sensor is 28% larger than the one used in the previous generation, as before, it is located behind the f/1.8 lens with optical image stabilization and uses Dual Pixel phase detection autofocus.

Considering that the Provisional Engine has now been added to the Galaxy Z Flip 6, Samsung claims that the photos taken with this phone, especially in low-light environments, are at the same level as the photos of the Galaxy S24 and its Night Mode.

In fact, Samsung’s claim can be accepted; Even if the Z Flip6’s photos aren’t on par with the S24+’s, they’re a slight improvement over the Galaxy Z Flip 5 in some situations, especially night photography. In the photos above, the Galaxy Z Flip 6 both creates a brighter image and pulls out more details from the building facade.

In photos taken with Night Mode, details are preserved much better by the Galaxy Z Flip 6; Of course, in order to have more details, you have to accept a little noise, which is not an unnatural occurrence, at least in dark environments.

In daylight, the Galaxy Z Flip 6 usually captures the same photos as the Z Flip 5: colorful and glossy photos that have a lot of detail, high contrast, and a wide dynamic range; But sometimes there are small differences between the photos of the two phones.