Samsung Galaxy Z Fold5 review
Intro
[music] Foreign [Music] This is Samsung's Galaxy Z Fold 5. the company's latest and greatest Flagship Foldable. It's the most expensive Samsung phone you can get right now, but it's a new hinge and a more powerful chipset enough to justify that price. I'm will for Gsm Arena and let's find out in our Galaxy Z Fold 5 review. [Music] Year after year, Samsung seems to stick to the tried and true formula with a Z-fold series phones. The star of the show is the large foldable inner screen, which is as big as a mini tablet. When you fold the device and Tuck that inner screen away, you can use the cover screen on the outside and the experience is similar to that of a regular smartphone.
Design and build quality
Not a whole lot has changed this time around. What you do get on the Z-fold 5 is a more refined design and a new chipset. Let's start with the design. The phone is more eco-friendly using more recycled materials, and the external panels are covered by the sturdier Gorilla Glass Victis too. The Z-fold 5 is also thinner than the previous model and is noticeably lighter too. At 253 grams, this is still no featherweight, but the Slimmer form factor makes it a bit more elegant and comfy to use. And you still get the Ipx8 protection here against water, which is really nice. The new Flex hinge is made from armor aluminum and reinforced by a dual rail structure to be extra sturdy.
The new flex hinge
This hinge allows the Galaxy Z Fold 5 and Z Flip 5 to fold flat, finally getting rid of the gap between the two halves. That's a welcome change over the previous generations with their wedge-shaped gaps when folded. The hinge can also hold the phone open to any angle, sort of like what you'd expect on the hinge of a laptop.
Displays quality test
While the Z-fold 5 is folded, you'll be interacting with this cover screen, which is virtually identical to the Z-fold 4's external panel. It's a 6.2 inch Oled with a 120 Hertz refresh rate and a 23x9 aspect ratio, a bit taller and narrower than we would have liked. The inner display is also basically the same as before. It's a 7.6 inch foldable Oled panel with a 120 Hertz refresh rate and a 5x6 aspect ratio. Samsung claims that this display is brighter now and when put to the test. we measured nearly 800 nits maximum with the manual slider, which could boost to 1100 nits in auto mode. That's indeed a little better than the Thousand nits of the C-fold 4. the cover display is similar with 735 nits on the manual slider and nearly 1150 nits in auto mode. And a nice feature is that when you're using the manual control, the brightness matches between the inner and the outer screens.
The Z-fold 5's inner display is sharp and contrasty, and the larger size really makes a difference compared to your typical smartphone. The color accuracy can be great depending on your color settings and you get support for Hdr 10. Plus here, Samsung hasn't made any changes to the crease where the screen folds over it's just as pronounced as it was last year, but what nice detail is that?
Again, the selfie camera lies hidden under the inner display, so at least that won't interrupt the expansive panel. However, if you want to take the best quality selfies, you'd probably use the main rear cameras using the cover screen as a viewfinder.
The refresh rate behavior is the same between the inner and the outer displays. The 120 Hertz Smooths out movements on the screen while you swipe around, and is quick to dial down to 24 Hertz when you stop interacting with the screen to save power. Samsung claims it can go down to 1 Hertz as well, but we didn't encounter such use cases.
Stylus
Stylus support is maintained on the Z-fold 5, along with a bunch of exclusive apps to take advantage of it. You still don't get a holder for the stylus built into the phone, though. What you can get is a new S Pen slim case sold separately. It can hold the stylus for you while adding only a few millimeters of thickness. The S Pen stylus itself is thinner and more compact this year, too. It's worth mentioning that only the foldable internal display supports the S Pen. you can't use it on the cover screen.
Speaker quality test
For audio, The Z-fold 5 has a pair of stereo speakers they're louder than last year with a very good Mark on our charts, and the quality is great too with some bass, nice vocals, and well presented highs. You can click the provided link to check how they sound for yourself.
Side-mounted fingerprint scanner & Storage options
For Biometrics, the Z-fold 5 has a side mounted fingerprint scanner built into the power button. It's fast and reliable, and although it isn't expandable through Microsd, you can get a ton of storage on the Z-fold 5. the base version has 256 gigs, and there's 512 gigs or a whole terabyte also available.
One UI 5.1.1, Android 13
The interface of the Z-fold 5 is Samsung's one Ui 5.1.1 on top of Android 13. at its core, it's the same UI you'd get on the other Samsung flagships, but there are plenty of extra functions to take advantage of the foldable form factor. One of these is a taskbar at the bottom for quick shortcuts like you get on a tablet. This provides easy access to recent apps. If you're doing something on the cover screen, you can easily continue with it. After you open the phone, you can choose separate wallpapers for the inner and cover screens, and if you want, you can mirror the app icons to match between the two. The Flex Mode panel splits the Ui of certain apps between the two halves of the screen. When the phone is partially folded, it includes a touchpad and a toolbar and even media playback controls. Having the buttons migrate to the bottom is useful for the cameras too, so you can easily shoot while the phone is resting stabilized on a flat surface.
A big focus of the software is multitasking. It's quite easy to drag and drop app icons to split screen mode with up to three apps running at once. On top of that, you can have apps open within floating windows and you can minimize these floating apps into a bubble on the side of the screen to be hidden, yet accessible.
You can interact with the Ui with both hands. Now with one hand, you can select an app or an image while the other manipulates the screen around it for a drag and drop.
Last but definitely not least, the Z-fold 5 will get extensive software support from Samsung for four generations of Os upgrades and 5 years of security patches.
If you'd like to find out more about one Ui's specific features, you can check out our dedicated video.
I mentioned before that the main upgrades you get on the Z-fold 5 are the design and the chipset, so let's go over that second part.
Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 for Galaxy
Now, what you get here is a Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 for Galaxy. That's the most powerful Android chipset available right now, the same as you get in the Galaxy S23 series phones. The difference between this and the Snapdragon Hn2 you'd find in other flagships is that here there's a slightly higher Cpu clock speed. The performance of the Z-fold 5 is significantly better than the Z-fold 4S, and on top of that, you get support for advanced memory Tech now Ufs 4.0 storage and Lpddr5x RAM.
Thermals chart
Samsung claims better thermal management this year thanks to a larger Vapor chamber, but the results in our prolonged stress test were around the same ballpark as the previous model, with some noticeable thermal throttling.
Battery life and charging speed test
The Z-fold 5 has the same battery capacity as last year at 4 400 milliamp hours, and despite the new chipset, battery life is virtually unchanged, with the Z-fold 5 earning an endurance rating of 95 hours. When we tested it using the internal display, the cover screen's battery performance turned out similar to that of the inner one. The phone earned a rating of 96 hours when tested there.
The Galaxy Z45 supports up to 25 watt wired charging just like the previous model, and there's no charger included. even at this price. With a proper adapter, we were able to charge the phone from zero to fifty percent in half an hour. It's all right, nothing great. There is support for wireless charging too.
Camera specs
The cameras of the Z-fold 5 are carried over from the Z-fold 4. there's a 50 megapixel main cam, a 10 megapixel 3 times telephoto Cam, and a 12 megapixel Ultra wide.
Main camera: Daylight image quality
The main camera saves 12 megapixel photos by default, and they're quite likable. They have good detail and sharpness, and foliage looks natural without over sharpening. The colors are quite vibrant, as is typical of Samsung, and while there is plenty of contrast, The dynamic range remains wide. Portrait mode shots are great with a detailed, colorful subjects, great separation in most scenarios and convincing background blur.
Main camera: Selfie
One of the benefits of having a foldable device is snapping selfies using the main cam. These are very nice with great detail, balance processing, high contrast and vibrant colors. We did notice that this camera sometimes has a hard time focusing on you and chooses something in the background instead. Better tap on your face just to be safe.
Selfie camera cover screen
Of course you can also use the 10 megapixel selfie Cam that sits within the cover screen. The detail level here is very good and so is the contrast, the colors, and the dynamic range. The subject is well exposed and the noise is minimal. And then there's the 4 megapixel under display selfie camera.
Selfie camera inner screen
From the inner screen, these photos are a bit hazy but still passable. This camera isn't really intended for selfies, but for video calls.
Main camera: Low-light image quality
Now back to the main camera for some low light photos. In these conditions, the Z-fold 5 can automatically apply as night shot processing and the results are excellent. There's good detail, low noise, Vivid color saturation, and wide dynamic range. The exposure is bright, maybe a bit brighter than reality.
Video quality
The main camera can capture video in up to 8K resolution at 30fps. These clips have Lively, accurate colors, good sound, and why dynamic range. The sharpness here isn't amazing, but you still get more fine detail than the 4K footage.
4K videos from the main cam are superb. They have balance processing with plenty of detail, accurate colors, high contrast, and wide enough dynamic range in low light. The 4K video quality is alright. The detail is enough, the noise is tolerable, and the color saturation is great. The dynamic range isn't that wide though.
3x Zoom Camera: photo and video quality
Let's talk about the telephoto camera, which provides three times optical zoom. Its 12 megapixel photos are good. They're detailed and Noise free with accurate colors. We do wish there was higher contrast though in low light conditions.
The auto night shot processing works well on the telephoto cam. The photos are bright with Lively colors, good contrast, wide enough dynamic range, and low noise. The detail level is only average though, and 4K videos captured at three times Zoom are excellent with abundant detail, accurate colors, and great contrast and dynamic range. Moving on to the ultra wide camera, its 12 megapixel photos are decent.
Ultrawide camera: photo and video quality
They offer the same popping colors as the main camera with high contrast and enough dynamic range. The detail level is somewhat uninspiring, but it's decent for this sort of camera. At night with night shot processing kicking in, the ultra wide cam produces photos with popping colors, wide dynamic range, and bright exposure. However, the detail level is rather low.
4K video capture from the ultrawide cam is good with consistently good color rendition and contrast, and wide dynamic range. The detail and sharpness are just average though. Finally, here is a demonstration of the video stabilization. It works equally great on all cameras.
Conclusion
So there you have it guys. The Galaxy Z Fold 5 brings you the most advanced smartphone Tech Samsung has to offer, as it should. For nearly 2 000 bucks, you get the most powerful chipset, excellent cameras, and the phone can fold flat thanks to the revamped hinge. and you won't find Rivals that bring this degree of multitasking options plus stylus support. The problem is you could already get most of this with last year's Galaxy C Fold 4. and at this point, the older model is much less expensive. Still, if you're after the latest, most Cutting Edge foldable phone and money is no issue, the Galaxy Z Fold 5 is the one to get.
Thanks for watching guys! If you're looking for alternatives to the Z-fold 5 on our Channel, you can start with the Galaxy Z Fold 4. another option is Huawei's Mate X3. Let us know what you think and I'll see you on the next one.