The Samsung Galaxy Z Fold6 is lighter and faster this year. You can multitask, play games, do 8K selfie recording, and more.
But honestly, is that really the big deal here? Well, after using this phone for a month, I found a few quirks that nobody mentioned and just one thing that almost made me want to go back to a regular phone.
Design & Build
Alright, let’s start with the design and the build quality. The Galaxy Z Fold6 is slightly slimmer, and it’s so light that I almost mistook it for the Galaxy S24 Ultra. So yes, it finally feels like you’re not lugging around a brick in your pocket—no more foldable phone workouts.
The corners are more square this time, giving it a sleek rectangular finish. Now, some reviewers say that the edges were quite sharp and poked their palms. I’m like, are your palms made of marshmallows, bro?
But jokes aside, the build quality is super robust even with the lighter weight. I went with the Silver Shadow, and honestly, in my opinion, it is the best Z Fold finish ever. It feels great, does not attract fingerprints, and yes, you can even wirelessly charge this as well, although it doesn’t look like it.
However, if I had to nitpick on something, it would be the fact that it does wobble when you type on the phone folded on a surface, but it is not as bad when you unfold and try to type on the surface.
Display
Now, let’s talk about the screen. The cover screen is wider now, but it’s not as wide as a usual slab phone. The cool part is that this is an LTPO AMOLED 2X panel, so it can drop to 1Hz and go up to 120Hz.
Plus, because it’s Corning Gorilla Glass Victus 2 protection, for the first time ever, I am actually confident using this foldable phone without a case—something that you can’t say for most foldables out there. But just don’t test that confidence too much and do some dumb drop tests like some people tend to do.
The cover screen was also super bright with a peak brightness of 2600 nits. What I loved the most was the automatic brightness adjustment. Whether or not you’re watching videos in broad daylight or even scrolling at night, it was always spot on.
Typing on the cover screen is also quicker now, thanks to its wider form factor, and I even found myself watching videos more on this cover screen as well. But of course, the real star is the inner 7.6-inch display, which is perfect for those treadmill cardio sessions. Trust me, having this on a treadmill beats watching videos on any non-foldable phone.
The only downside is the fact that the inner screen is quite reflective. While the crease doesn’t bother me anymore, it might be a dealbreaker if you’re new to foldables.
The screen brightness adjustment in auto mode here was also fantastic, so yes, the display experience of using the phone, both on the cover and the inner screen, was a really great experience overall, using it for more than a month now.
Cameras
Let’s talk cameras because while the cameras were the same as last year’s fold, I felt like the image processing was better overall. Just for context, I’ve left everything at default before taking these photos and videos, just turning on the grid and the watermark. So let’s go through the photos.
Ultrawide
Starting from the ultrawide photos, the dynamic range for both the brighter and the darker shades of each image was amazing, and as expected, the images were sharp from edge to edge.
Main
The main lenses were also really good too, really making the phone a true flagship with no compromises at all.
I can zoom further up to 3x, 10x, and even up to 30x, but the sweet spot to get the best image quality is the 10x zoom during the day.
Rear Portrait
The rear portrait mode also has three zoom levels, and for objects, it was definitely one of the best—not only because of the great subject-to-background blur but also the edge detection and how it blends with the background was super amazing.
But where the phone shines is when taking photos of a person because even at the wider 1x zoom, the edge detection was flawless all the way to the 3x zoom without a single color shift. The pictures look like I almost cropped from the first 1x zoom to the 3x zoom image because there’s no color shift at all.
Day Selfie
The daytime selfie for the regular selfie mode was great, and I used the rear camera to take selfies too, where the quality was really good with a natural bokeh thanks to its bigger rear camera sensor.
But keep in mind, doing this is not as easy as you would on the Flip6 since you need to hold the phone like this when you take a shot. Honestly, at first, it was hard, but I kind of got used to it after about a day or two.
If you’re taking a portrait selfie using the cover screen alone, it still produces some really nice images. Yes, you can even use the rear cameras here too, which did produce overall better results with amazing dynamic range for the background blur area.
What’s interesting is that if you plan to take a photo using this inner in-display camera, when you look at the image before taking a shot, it does not look very good, but after taking a shot, the image processing that Samsung did was quite magic.
So it is great to know that you have a lot of versatility when taking selfies using all of the different types of lenses or the modes available.
NIGHT
Ultrawide
Switching over to night mode, the ultra-wide lenses handle highlights very well, as seen in the traffic lights and the lamp posts. The skies were also nice and black with no noise in the darker areas.
I was extra surprised to see how well the photos did in an ultra-low-light situation in this particular shot, as the details were still very prominent and properly lit up.
Main
As expected, the main lenses also performed superbly at night. I just love how they transition from the lighter to the darker area—it looks very natural, like how the eye perceives it.
This particular night mode can only go up to 10x zoom, but I would just use up to 3x zoom as the quality does degrade at 10x, especially in an ultra-low-light situation.
Portrait Mode
The night portrait mode was also flawless, performing as well as the daytime shots—something that you cannot say with most other smartphones out there. This shows how well Samsung has done with its overall image processing, especially at night.
Selfie
You can take selfies using the rear cameras with the cover screen as I showed earlier, but I love how there’s also an ultrawide camera mode here where you can go from regular to an ultrawide portrait mode as well using these rear lenses.
VIDEO
[Sample video footages are available on my YouTube video]
As for videos, starting with the daytime videos first, here’s where I went through some potential issues. When I was taking 8K video specifically, the phone did become warm to the touch. This could be because the phone’s chipset was really working hard to produce this high-quality video footage.
I mean, even my Blackmagic Cinema cameras have a larger form factor than this. They claim that there is no 8K variant because it was too small of a device, so imagine a device with this smaller size, I can understand why it does become warm when you shoot in 8K.
But if you’re shooting in 4K resolution, the ultra-wide and the main lenses produce some really nice video even up to 3x zoom.
Image stabilization-wise, I was floored by the amazing performance of the 8K video where it really looked like a great handheld 8K camera. But of course, the 4K ultra-wide and even the main lenses were even steadier.
Speaking of 8K, you can even take selfie videos using the rear camera on the 8K mode, but since I was moving and holding the phone like this, I did have a little anxiety holding the phone like this. But yes, you will be able to take high-quality 8K footage if you really need to.
I have to be honest and say that the video did look very great on the cover screen at 4K resolution with great dynamic range and image stabilization as well.
At night, the rear cameras were also superb, and the darker areas had no noise at all on the 8K video recording, where the darker areas were as high quality as an OLED TV. I was able to cover some great details on the reflection of cars and nicely on the highlights as well.
But of course, once again, if you shoot 8K video for long periods, you’ll start to feel the phone becoming warmer, so I would just stick to the video quality for the 4K main lenses. Or if the area is nicely lit, you can even use the ultra-wide lenses too.
Image stabilization-wise, the 8K video was decent, but you can see a lot of jitters. You’ll see even more on the 4K ultrawide lenses, where the main 4K lenses, when it comes to image stabilization, perform the best over here.
Finally, the nighttime video for the cover screen selfie was decent, and if you use the rear camera for the 4K video, it was better even compared to the ultrawide video. If you want to get the best video quality, you can use 8K here as well. So yes, this means that you can actually do 8K vlogging.
[Check out my YouTube video for a vlogging test]
Software
The software experience on the Fold6 was definitely one of the biggest reasons to get this particular foldable. Besides the gaming performance that I’ll talk about later on.
Multitasking on this was really amazing, especially if you’re switching from the S24 Ultra to this Fold6. Things like having WhatsApp contacts on the left and the chats on the right is something that I truly miss and appreciate more. The same goes for Telegram as well.
Then, the keyboard separation when typing when the phone is unfolded made typing on this particular form factor even easier, and browsing apps like Notion was also a huge plus point on this particular screen as well.
During my daily use, I have to say that the vibration intensity was just okay. It definitely felt better on the Galaxy S24 Ultra. But another life-saving feature for me is the docking system at the bottom that gives you that laptop or desktop vibe for you to easily choose apps over there.
Then, as for Galaxy AI, I will be doing a dedicated review on all of these new features, but using things like Circle to Search and Sketch to Image on the inner display is a much better experience.
Since the S Pen is not included, I just used my finger to draw on the screen where I easily created a ghost-like figure here in the studio and also created a friend for my cat Luna too.
Speaking of the S Pen, if you’re wondering if you can use the S Pen from, say, your S24 Ultra or any other models, you can’t because the phone will give you a prompt—that it might damage the screen or you’ll need to get one specifically designed for the Z Fold series. So the only pen that works on this Z Fold series is the dedicated one, even the S Pen Pro.
Other Galaxy AI features, like the new interpreter app, were way better on this because of the larger cover screen as well. Finally, one of the best things about owning a Samsung phone now is the fact that it comes with a massive 7 years of Android and security updates. So that is a massive win in software support for any Samsung phones, especially for this foldable as well.
Gaming
So, how does the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 For Galaxy chip perform for gaming? Well, I was totally surprised—and yes, in a good way!
Because while the phone did feel warm when I was using the 8K resolution to record using the cameras, I am happy to report that it didn’t overheat at all during gaming.
The phone played very well at the highest settings—60 FPS with motion blur set to high on Genshin Impact. I tested gaming both on the cover screen and the inner screen as well, and there were no issues at all.
Speaking of using the cover screen to game, I was actually surprised that gaming on this folded rectangular form factor was quite comfortable. But one thing that really stood out to me, besides the performance, was the screen, as the graphics and colors were one of the best on any other smartphones.
While the battery drain was minimal—don’t go anywhere because I’ll be talking about the battery life on this soon—yes, if you are indeed playing games for a really long time, just play on the medium settings on Genshin Impact, or you can just take a break and go outside to enjoy the skies instead…
Then, switching over to COD Mobile, it performed best at graphics set to very high and frame rate at max. Performance-wise, it was really great, but at first, the aspect ratio was something that you might need time to get used to, specifically for this game. But after you get used to it, you’ll enjoy the experience whether or not you are using this on both of the form factors.
So yeah, gaming is a beast on the Z Fold6, whether or not you’re playing casual games like Asphalt 9: Legends Unite, which was quite nice, or even heavier games as well.
Battery
Lastly, let’s talk about the battery life. I got about 4 hours of screen-on time with heavy usage, using the phone mainly on this unfolded screen when I was at 10% battery with dark mode turned on.
As mentioned, there is wireless charging up to 15W, wired charging up to 25W, and even 4.5W of reverse wireless charging. Now, these are probably not mind-blowing specs, but they are very reliable when it comes to battery life, especially if you’re not doing heavy work where you could get close to 5 hours plus, which was really great.
Conclusion
So there you have it—the Samsung Galaxy Z Fold6 after one month. It is lighter, more robust, and packed with amazing software features, which makes it a really serious choice in the foldable category. So, if you are in the market for a foldable and want something that can last for a really long time, then this is something that you can “fold” on to!
