Samsung Galaxy Z Flip 4 First Impression full review
Intro of Samsung Galaxy Z Flip 4
Hey, what’s up guys?
We are here and welcome to your first look and hands-on of Samsung’s new midyear drops for 2022,
the Flip 4, the Fold 4, and a really impressive looking new pair of watches. So this is everything you need to know about all of it.
So I’m gonna start with the phones and the theme for the phones is definitely refinement. And this was already the theme last year and the year before.
But look, in the relatively young world of foldable phones right now,
if we’re being honest, Samsung is kind of dominating the space.
There’s only a few foldable phones that real people are actually buying right now. And the Flip is apparently the most popular folding phone
in the world. So the Flip 4 looks and feels very much just like a Flip 3. Like
3 latest features of Samsung Galaxy Z Flip 4
there’s really three things that are notably new about it, and they’re all subtle.
1st is a slight aesthetic trimming. So the bezel are just a little bit slimmer
on the inside, the rails feel a little bit more trim and flat. Plus there’s a new set of colors.
2nd is it’s a bit stronger and more durable. So that’s always good to see in a folding phone. So the hinge is a little bit more trim and still feels very sturdy to open and close. and of course stays half open for all the software features that take advantage of that.
3rd is there’s updated specs, and I’m thinking, this is just me just using context clues, but I’m thinking that the most noticeable improvement year over year with this phone might actually be battery life. So this phone has a new Snapdragon 8+ Gen 1 which has had excellent efficiency in some other phones I’ve tested so far. Plus the battery also bumps up from 3,300 to 3,700 milliamp hours. That’s a small thing, but it’s a combo that could be great for battery life. Plus it still fast charges up to 50% in 30 minutes.
Not bad.
Other than that, though, the hardware you’re looking at is very similar to the last flip and really there’s one big new software feature, which is a bunch of new widgets and lock screen stuff on the outside cover screen.
So you gotta love the lock screen customization and the functionality,
potentially even matching your watch face to your phone.
So if this was early days, maybe the first one to two generations of the phone, that’s when you’d expect to see more tinkering with like the size of the outside screen and what it really should be capable of.
Now that they’ve settled on this size though, they’re really just adding stuff that you can do with it.
So you can change quick settings, take a selfie, activate the flashlight, accept a phone call, start a new phone call, all types of stuff like that.
This is all good quality of life stuff.
Makes a lot of sense.
samsung galaxy z flip 4 better then flip 3 comparison
And I think there’s Flip fans out there, Austin Evans, who like the previous versions who are gonna like this one too.
But at the same time if you weren’t convinced on the Flip, whether it’s because that crease is still somewhat visible and feelable when you scroll or because you don’t like the idea of having to open up the phone every time you wanna use it or whatever else might have bothered you, none of that has changed either.
So this new one probably won’t change your mind, and neither will the new price because it’s the same as the old price, $999. So there are other phones that you could get for this price.
Other flagships, gaming phones, slab style phones, but this one for $999 folds in half. And it’s probably the most appealing folding phone
to most people. But on the other end of the spectrum though
is the big unfolding productivity monster, the Fold 4.
So this is actually the one, I’m personally most interested in. And what if I told you that the exact same set of things is new on this phone too?
Well, it’s actually a little bit more than that same stuff, but the Fold 4 also has an improved slightly slimmer hinge, which is one of the most important overall pieces of this phone. And it feels firm and confidence-inspiring and very satisfying to clap closed, which is great.
Samsung Galaxy Z Flip 4 design
It has a nice satin finish on the back with three colors, the gold, the black, and then this deep blue. And then it does in fact have a stronger Gorilla Glass Victus Plus on the outside paired with those aluminum rails. They’ve also updated the specs again with the same new Snapdragon 8+ Gen 1 inside, the highest end chip available. And it does have the same size 4,400 milliamp hour battery
as last year.
Samsung Galaxy Z Flip 4 camera
And then there’s a new camera system on the back as well. So these folding phones have never quite had exactly the same set of cameras as the highest end flagships, you know, the ultra phones, but they do typically get right up underneath as the next best thing.
So this fold here has a 50 megapixel primary camera, a 12 megapixel ultra wide,
and a 3X telephoto which will let you get up to 30X space zoom.
I will definitely be testing these new cameras in these flipping folding phones in the full review just to see how good they are.
But if I was guessing, if I was guessing, they’ll probably perform pretty similar to
like an S22 plus, which just to say pretty great. We’ll see though.
Samsung Galaxy Z Flip 4 software features
And then surprise, surprise, the Fold 4 also has one big new software feature, this time it’s on the inside screen and that’s the dock at the bottom.
So you’ll notice when you open an app, the entire dock shrinks down to the bottom into this sort of bar, kind of like a Windows task bar. And from there you can easily launch recent apps or hop back and forth between apps quickly
or even launch straight into multitasking with two or three apps on the screen at once.
It’s a small change,
but I think it makes a big difference to keeping it easy and fluid to quickly multitask on a phone like this. I don’t know about you, but when I open the phone up and it’s got this huge seven inch screen inside, I just want to use a lot of stuff and multitask.
So you’ve got the button to open up any app all the way on the left. You’ve got the navigation buttons all the way to the right. I really do like this task bar,
and then just flipping through the device for a bit, the rest is very familiar to what we’ve seen.
Samsung Galaxy Z Flip 4 opinion
Just again, slightly refined. The outside cover screen is actually three millimeters wider. So it’s a slightly different aspect ratio. Again, thanks to slimmer bezels. And you can just barely tell by eyeballing it. And on the inside,
the bezels all the way around again are just slightly thinner and the crease through the middle to my eye is a little bit less visible than it is on the Flip, though it’s not too different from last year basically where if you’re looking at the content on the screen, you really don’t notice it too much because you don’t pass your finger over it when you’re scrolling like maybe you would on the vertically folding phone.
Maybe if you’re a big stylus person, you’ll get the whole S Pen case and everything. And then you really notice the crease when you draw a lot over the middle. But yeah, I’m not one of those people. So basically it’s there if you’re looking for it but it’s not really too bad if you’re not.
what is yours idea about Samsung Galaxy Z Flip 4
You know what else though you probably didn’t notice if you weren’t looking for it?
The new under display selfie camera right up here on the top right hand side.
So Samsung is using a new second generation hidden selfie camera up here.
And from my very limited experience, it is actually very impressive just how well it’s able to hide itself and stay out of view, even more so than last year’s first gen.
Samsung Galaxy Z Flip 4 pros & cons
The images that come out of it definitely do not look any better. That was the big weakness of last year’s Fold’s hidden camera. And it appears to absolutely be a weakness of this one again.
You can see it does a fair amount of processing with the still photos, but I imagine a video call won’t look too pretty. I’ll give it a shot.
Maybe that Snapdragon 8+ Gen 1 will surprise me but that’s how it looks. Aside from that though, there’s nothing fundamentally different in any technology
across the board with this phone, it is still very much the productivity based tablet in your pocket that we know and love just settling into its form.
Basically, if we expect any sort of different shape with a foldable from Samsung,
that’s probably just gonna be a whole new phone, just a whole new model.
So in the meantime, this Fold 4 launches again at the same prices last year, $1,799.
Let me know in the comments, what you’re interested in reading for the full review. I am definitely looking forward to testing it.
But in the meantime,
get updated if you haven’t already, that’s how you’d be among the first to see the review. That’s been it.
Thanks for reading. Catch you guys later.
