Samsung Galaxy Z Flip 6 review: Overdue improvements make it a more attractive phone than before

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Previous Galaxy Z Flip phones have never delivered the same kind of value compared to the best Android phones in the $1,000 range, despite offering a foldable design that turns the phone into a compact little square. The biggest compromises were lower battery life and just-OK cameras. Not to mention, their foldable designs can't reach the same levels of durability as a flat phone design.  

With the Galaxy Z Flip 6, Samsung has effectively addressed some of these compromises. The result is an excellent flip-style phone with a 6.7-inch display when fully opened. 

But the Flip 6 isn't perfect, as there are still some durability concerns related to dust resistance. Plus, foldable phones have more moving parts than regular phones, like the hinge mechanism and the display itself, which introduces more points of failure. 

A phone with premium finishes and a folding trick

Samsung carried over the previous generation's best physical attributes to the Flip 6, like a premium design and a large cover display. The company built on the Flip 5's excellent design and improved the metal frame's durability against shock and scuffs for the Flip 6.

The Flip 6 is a sophisticated-looking device with its flat aluminum edges. I received a unit with the Silver Shadow color option, which gives the frost-textured rear glass and smooth metal frame an ultra-clean modern look. It's also available in more playful colors, like yellow, mint, and blue. Whatever color you go for, this thing looks gorgeous. 

When it's folded, the Flip 6 is a square about twice as thick as a regular flat phone, but it takes up about half as much space. The cover display is black, no matter what color option you go for, except for the two rings around the camera that match the color you picked. The rear is glass with a smooth frosted texture.

Unfolded, the Flip 6 looks and feels like a regular phone, and its hinge is strong enough to keep it flat when handling it like a regular phone — the hinge only starts to fold again if you give the Flip some spirited flicks of the wrist. There's still the tell-tale crease that spans the middle width of the display, but it's easy to ignore. 

My only complaint with the phone's look is that the black borders around the main display are thicker than those on Samsung's Galaxy S24 series. When unfolded, the Flip 6 has a narrower and taller design than a regular phone, which makes the content look smaller than it does on a typical 6.7-inch display. What you lose in width, you gain in height, and you can see more content in a web article, for example.

 Another complaint is that unfolding the Flip 6 can sometimes be an annoyance, mostly when my hands are busy with kids or groceries, or when I want to quickly take a photo before the moment dissipates. The hinge is so strong that opening it requires two hands — you can't flick it open like a retro flip phone.

Samsung mitigates some of the inconveniences of unfolding the Flip 6 with an exterior display on the cover, which is handy for quick little tasks, like replying to a message, checking notifications, controlling music playback, and getting quick bits of information from widgets like weather, calendar, reminder, and so on.

Out of the box, you can run a very limited number of third-party apps on the cover screen. Yet, there is a way to make all of your apps available, which could make the Flip 6's cover screen infinitely more useful. It just requires a few extra steps, including installing the "Goodlock" app from the Galaxy app store and installing a module called "MultiStar," where you're eventually given the option to run all your apps from the cover screen. 

One inescapable problem with the Flip 6 is that it isn't dust-resistant, which could pose problems for the main display. If you're a beach-goer or visit dusty places, the Flip 6 isn't for you. You could risk damaging it, like getting dust specks under the display, dents or bulges, or breaking the display. I went to a beach to test some phones, but I opted not to bring the Flip 6 with me for this reason.

Power you'd expect from a top processor and useful AI features

You won't be starved for power and speed when running apps and games on the Flip 6. It runs on the Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 for Galaxy processor, the most powerful chip available for Android phones in 2024, and the same processor used in the flagship Galaxy S24 series.

The Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 also powers Samsung's recently introduced Galaxy AI features. Many of these features are centered on improving your photos, like deleting unwanted details, and niche functions like moving and resizing objects/subjects to different places. There are also AI-based translating features for calls and messages, webpage summarizing, wallpaper creation, and more. 

One of the Flip 6's new highlighted AI features is Suggested Replies for replying to messages from the cover display, and it gives you three reply options that are contextually relevant to a message you received. For example, when my wife told me she didn't feel well, Suggested Replies came up with "Take a rest, you'll feel better." That's way beyond the scope of the usual quick replies, where the best option is "What's up?" Oddly, Suggested Replies isn't available when you're using the main display. 

Google's popular AI features are also included, like Circle to Search, which is a surprisingly useful tool for searching for people or objects you see in a photo (or a paused video). It unfortunately doesn't work in all apps — I tried using it in the Peacock streaming app to search a location in a movie I was watching, but Circle to Search didn't seem available.  

Improved battery life makes the Flip more practical in daily use

Samsung said it improved the battery life in the Flip 6, and it absolutely wasn't making things up. The phone had 63% battery remaining after my battery test, whereas the previous generation Flip 5 could only muster a 56% result.  

That result puts the Flip 6 on par with larger phones, like the Galaxy S24 Ultra (66%) and Galaxy S24 Plus (60%). It doesn't mean you'll change your habit of charging every day to every two days, but it will leave you feeling more confident that it can last through a typical day.

Samsung made no improvements to the charging speed, which remains at 25W. It's a bit of a bummer considering the similarly priced Galaxy S24 Plus charges at a faster 45W. Yet, since the Flip 6 has great battery life, the slower charging speed is less of an issue. Wireless charging can reach 15W, which is solid and standard for premium phones.

The camera system gets a notable enhancement

The Flip 6 has a dual-lens camera rather than a triple-lens camera like you'd find on the similarly priced Galaxy S24 Plus, so it lacks a dedicated zoom lens. With a 50MP main camera and 12MP ultrawide, the Flip 6 otherwise matches the camera specs of premium Android devices, which wasn't the case in previous Flip generations, which had 12MP main cameras all around.

As a result, the Flip 6 takes excellent photos that actually feel like an upgrade over the Galaxy S24's cameras. Lighting is better balanced, as bright details are less prone to overexposure (when details are brightened so much they become white patches void of detail). Colors are also more natural and appear less artificially enhanced than the Galaxy S24.

And despite the omission of a dedicated zoom lens, the Flip 6 takes surprisingly sharp photos when you zoom in digitally at 4x. You start to get noticeable detail loss at 10x zoom, but 10x photos are surprisingly usable. The Flip 6's camera can't compete against a dedicated zoom lens to capture far-away objects and subjects, but it's easily good enough for most people.

The 50MP main camera also makes the Flip 6 more versatile in different lighting conditions than the previous Flip generations, especially when it's dark. 

Video quality is also excellent, as it carries over the same lighting and color balance from photos. I mostly took videos of my kids, which include clothing and toys with vibrant colors, and the videos look fantastic on my 32-inch color-calibrated 1440p monitor. Those vibrant colors aren't overly saturated, which maintains lots of details that can easily get lost with oversaturated colors, like the texture of fabrics. The Flip 6 is capable of up to 4K60 recording, which is standard for premium phones, and videos playing on a 65-inch 4K OLED TV also look beautiful after they've been uploaded onto YouTube.

One of the greatest things about taking photos and videos with the Flip 6 is showing your subjects what the camera sees with the cover display — it works great for young kids and keeps their attention and faces towards the camera, for example.

Should you buy the Galaxy Z Flip 6?

The Galaxy Z Flip 6 is easily one of the best foldable phones you can buy, as it's an outstanding flip-style foldable thanks to its performance, cameras, battery life, and cover display. It's a niche product, but Samsung has made improvements to its foldable phone design that make it more usable as an everyday device.

The Flip 6 addresses two key shortcomings in the Flip series when compared to solid flat phones in the $1,000 range — battery life and camera performance. I used to be largely critical of Samsung's Galaxy Z Flip phones, but the Flip 6 has won me over, and I'd happily include it in my shortlist of models for anyone who asks me which phone to buy next. 

That said, I'd accompany my praises with notable concerns, like the fact that I don't feel comfortable bringing it to the beach or dusty places for the risk of damaging the screen. I'd also warn that the extra step of unfolding the phone felt cumbersome, but it might not be a dealbreaker.