Samsung’s popular folding-screen Z Flip phone is back for 2024 with a faster chip, much longer battery life and more AI.
The Galaxy Z Flip 6 is the smaller of Samsung’s two new folders for this year, launched alongside the book-style Z Fold 6. It takes the flat sides and slab-like design of Samsung’s standard Galaxy S24+ and folds it in half, turning a big-screen phone into a compact clamshell.
The new Flip has many small improvements all round, but the price isn’t one of them. It costs from £1,049 (€1,199/$1,099/A$1,799) – a $100/A$150 increase over last year – making it the same price as the S24+ on launch and more expensive than flip-phone rivals.
The exterior of the phone has been refined with flattened sides and a matt finish to the aluminium, giving it a more modern, monolithic feel. The 3.4in outside cover screen remains unchanged, capable of showing the time, date, notifications, quick settings and various widgets. It can run a small selection of apps, such as maps or WhatsApp, but falls short of the utility of some of the best from rivals such as Motorola.
The inside 6.7in screen is smooth, crisp and brighter than its predecessor, making it much easier to see outdoors in direct sunlight. The crease where it folds is less noticeable to both eye and finger, too. It remains an excellent way to fit a big screen into a more pocketable package, but the folding display is still made of softer material than a traditional phone, so needs more careful treatment to avoid scratching or breaking.
Specifications
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Main screen: 6.7in FHD+ 120Hz AMOLED Infinity Flex Display (425ppi)
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Cover screen: 3.4in AMOLED
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Processor: Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Gen 3
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RAM: 12GB
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Storage: 256 or 512GB
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Operating system: One UI 6.1 based on Android 14
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Camera: 50+12MP rear, 10MP front-facing
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Connectivity: 5G, nano sim + esim, wifi6E, NFC, Bluetooth 5.3 and GNSS
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Water resistance: IP48 (1.5-metre depths for 30 minutes)
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Folded dimensions: 85.1 x 71.9 x 14.9mm
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Unfolded dimensions: 165.1 x 71.9 x 6.9mm
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Weight: 187g
Speed with two-day battery life
Inside, the Flip 6 has the same top Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 chip as the S24 Ultra, with 12GB of RAM and a starting storage of 256GB, which should be plenty for most. That makes it one of the fastest Android phones available, capable of handling anything you might need. The chip is also more efficient than previous versions, which, combined with a higher capacity battery, means the Flip 6 lasts longer than previous generations.
It lasts a good 48 hours between charges with moderate usage, including using the screen for about three hours a day and a couple of hours a day spent on 5G. That means you will need to charge it about every other day, and the phone should make it through the heaviest of days.
It takes about 90 minutes to fully charge using a 25W charger, but this is not included in the box. The Flip also has wireless charging.
Android 14 with lots of AI
The Flip 6 runs One UI 6.1 based on Android 14 and will receive software and security updates for seven years from release, making it one of the longest-supported phones alongside Google’s Pixel 8, with only Fairphone offering longer.
It has a similar set of AI features to the S24 series including voice transcription, translation services, various summarisation tools for notes and the web, and AI assistance for quick message replies and proofing tools.
The phone also supports Google’s Gemini AI chatbot and the excellent Circle to Search. New from Samsung is interpreter mode, which puts translated text on the cover screen so you can prop the phone up in a L-shape and show it to someone else for live translation of conversations.
The most interesting of the new tools, photo assist, is in the gallery app. It can modify photos by turning crude, hand-drawn sketches into properly scaled photo-realistic objects inserted into a scene. With a bit of trial and error it can produce very impressive images that don’t obviously look doctored at first glance, and from rudimentary finger-doodling. The tool is quite fun to mess around with, producing AI-generated images that are watermarked.
Improved camera
The Flip 6 has a new, 50-megapixel main camera that joins a 12MP ultrawide on the outside and a 10MP selfie on the inside.
The new main camera shoots great images at 12MP resolution by default, dealing with a range of lighting conditions and producing photos with good detail and colour balance. It also has 2x in-sensor zoom, which works very well in bright conditions, as does the up-to-10x digital zoom on top. The camera can shoot full-size 50MP images, which are sharp in bright light, but most will get better results from the default mode. The 12MP ultrawide camera is decent for group shots and landscapes.
The internal camera is solid but, as with previous-generation Flips, the phone can take much better selfies with the main camera using the cover screen as a viewfinder. The camera app is packed with useful and fun features. New for this year is an auto-framing mode, so you can prop the Flip up and have the camera follow you around an area, capturing photos when you show it your palm.
Sustainability
Samsung does not provide an expected lifespan for the battery but it should last in excess of 500 full-charge cycles with at least 80% of its original capacity.
The phone is generally repairable. Inside screen repairs cost about £350. Samsung offers a self-repair programme, as well as Care+ accidental damage insurance that reduces the cost of repairs to £119.
The Flip 6 is made from recycled aluminium, glass and plastic. Samsung offers trade-in and recycling schemes for old devices. The company publishes annual sustainability reports but not impact assessments for individual products.
Price
The Samsung Galaxy Z Flip 6 costs from £1,049 (€1,199/$1,099/A$1,799).
For comparison, the Galaxy Z Fold 6 costs £1,799, the Galaxy S24+ costs £999, and the Motorola Razr 50 Ultra costs £1,000.
Verdict
The sixth-generation Flip is a fairly minor update featuring a few small refinements to the design and a big boost in battery life to help keep it on a par with regular premium phones.
The flattened sides and coloured accents give it a more modern feel. The internal screen is one of the very best on the market, rivalling the colour, smoothness and brightness of a quality flat phone display. Two-day battery life means it should make it to the end of even the heaviest of usage days, while an improved main camera and some fun new AI tricks are welcome additions.
The outside screen looks good but isn’t quite as big or useful as some rivals. But no other flip comes with a full seven years of software support from release, which allows you to use it for longer and increases its resale value.
The Z Flip 6 is still one of the best flip-phones on the market and remains the best way to fit a big screen in a small pocket. But the durability of all folding screens cannot match standard phones, requiring careful treatment and potentially expensive repairs.
Pros: a great large screen that folds in half, IP48 water-resistant, good camera, great software with seven years of updates, plenty of AI features, solid battery life, fun.
Cons: expensive, less durable than a regular phone and costly to fix, no telephoto camera, not a major update, cover screen less useful than rivals.
Spotify on the cover screen turns it into a pocket media player, giving the user all the controls without having to open it. Photograph: Samuel Gibbs/The Guardian