Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 4 review: Design and Display
In the slim cardboard box, you get the Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 4 smartphone, a USB Type-C charging cable, a SIM tray tool and a warranty information guide. These days most smartphones by Samsung do not get a charger in the box and Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 4 is no different. The smartphone is available in three colours Phantom Black, Beige and Grey-green. Out of which we got our hands on the latter one.
This smartphone is ridiculously stunning. Yes, some might say it looks just like the Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 3, but Fold 4 has its own identity. The design is more squarish with flat lines all around. It screams premium. Everything from the front screen to the back cover has Corning Gorilla Glass Victus+ protection. The Spine is now more robust, and the premium metal frame (the smartphone encompasses) is nothing short of a marvel. The camera and key placements are still the same. Users get traffic light-style triple rear cameras with LED flash and a selfie camera on the main screen as well as the inside screen. The front main screen measures 6.2-inches and supports a resolution of 904 x 2,316 pixels with a 23.1:9 aspect ratio. The inside screen is 7.6-inches diagonally with 1,812 x 2,176 pixels of resolution and a 90.9 percent screen-to-body ratio.
Both screens are dynamic AMOLED 2X displays and support a 120Hz refresh rate. This essentially makes everything look smoother including the scrolling experience in social media apps. We threw everything at these screens including the bathroom tub and these stood strong. The colours are brilliant and they look even better on the deepest blacks, thanks to the super high contrast ratio supported by Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 4. Over that, HDR 10+ is supported and max screen brightness peaks at 1,200 nits. This makes them very legible under direct sunlight.
We played games like Asphalt 9, Apex Mobile etc on the Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 4 and we loved every bit of it. Over that, the YouTube videos, Netflix shows, and other OTT movies were outstanding. We never found the colours out of place or the hue distorted in any manner. The Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 4 can give some of the best smart TVs a good run for their money when it comes to display quality (both inside and outside one). Read Also: Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 3 review: Love at third sight
Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 4 review: Performance and Cameras
Before we jump into the performance part, let’s quickly shed some light on the tech specs of the Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 4. This smartphone has Qualcomm Snapdragon 8+ Gen 1 chipset/CPU with octa cores clocking at max 3.19 GHz. But don’t worry this speed only chips in when an app demands it, or else it will drain the battery. The rest of the time the other cores with lower clock speeds are in use. Adreno 730 powers the graphics and up to 1TB of storage is available in India with 12GB of RAM standard across all models. Bluetooth 5.2, Wi-Fi 6 and NFC are also supported. The power button doubles up as the fingerprint sensor just like in the previous version and recognises the slightest of touch to open the phone in a jiffy. When we started using it, we thought well, we have experienced the Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 3 before and used it for a long time, how much more better can the fourth iteration be? To our surprise, a lot! We saw at least 20 per cent speed and performance bump in all sectors. Whether you are playing a game or are just casually browsing your Instagram feed, everything feels so much nicer and smoother. Gaming experience and visual experience have already been spoken about, but we will touch upon the sound part. With stand-alone (twin) speakers on top and bottom, the Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 4 excels in the audio department. Yes, you will get thumpier/bassy output with a headphone, but when it comes to just casual day-to-day viewing or playing of games these speakers are by far the best in the category. Let’s move on to the operating system. Android 12 with Samsung UI 4.1 come on the device out of the box. There is so much going on in the OS department in the Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 4. You can work on multiple windows side by side with a bottom taskbar appearing with shortcuts to apps and more. It gives you very laptop Windows 11 OS vibes, which is a good thing. It makes multi-tasking and moving from one app to the other very easy. You just have to get the hang of it and you will be golden. There is S-pen supported by the Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 4 as well, but since we did not review it with the S-Pen, we will just keep it as an honorary mention. Read Also: Vivo T1 5G review: Good for the price Skipping over to another bright part of the Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 4 are the cameras. In total Samsung provided 5 cameras on this device. Three are on the back panel. These comprise of a 50MP wide, 10MP telephoto and 12 MP ultrawide. One on the front main screen is the 10MP selfie camera. And the last one is under the inside display, which has a 4MP sensor. This one is our least favourite as it is not as brilliant as the rest. And very brilliant the rest are.
We played around a lot with the rear cameras and the primary 50MP surpassed all our expectations. During the day or night, the pictures procured with the camera came out to be on point. The colour accuracy is exquisite and we loved clicking away with it. The telephoto and ultrawide also do a very good job during the day and in well-lit conditions. At night they lose a bit of quality and noise seeps in. Better to use the supplied flash to capture a bit more detail with these two. 8K videos can also be shot with the rear camera setup and that brought a smile to our face. The colours are very vivid in the sharp videos that we are able to click and they do not bleed in any manner. The human subjects pop with pleasant hues when shot in 8K.
Moving to the selfie camera, the 10 MP cameras on the outside screen does a very good job. Portraits come out clean and you would get natural close to life colours. However, the low-lit shots got a bit of edge disturbance. A tip here, when clicking in low light, keep your hand super steady as that will get you better results. Moving on to the battery life of the Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 4. A 4,400mAh battery is situated in the rear enclosure of the smartphone. When compared to the previous edition we were able to squeeze 10% more battery life from the Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 4. Yes, we were amazed too. After a full charge and nominal use (this included calls during the day, family WhatsApp group banter, half an hour to 45 mins of gaming) we got more than 24 hours of battery juice. Not bad Samsung, not bad at all.
Verdict
So, it all boils down to its price. At Rs 1,54,999 (256GB version), should you buy it? Yes. The price might seem steep, but this smartphone is built for both work and play, and there is nothing like it out there. You get a superb dual-screen experience, excellent machinery under the hood, loud loudspeakers, good battery life and much more. If you can afford it, buy it.
Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 4 Pros
Folding smartphone with 2 exceptional screen Good battery life Exceptional performance
Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 4 Cons
The inside under the display camera still needs a little bit of work For the latest gadget and tech news, and gadget reviews, follow us on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram. For newest tech & gadget videos subscribe to our YouTube Channel. You can also stay up to date using the Gadget Bridge Android App. You can find the latest car and bike news here.
