Samsung Galaxy Z Flip 5 Review: The foldable to flip for!

There weren’t very many (read ‘any’) commercially successful folding display phones when Samsung stepped in the foldable ring. The brand paved the way for foldables, and since the launch of the first Galaxy Z Fold and Galaxy Z Flip, the world of foldable smartphones have come a long way, and well, so has Samsung’s own foldable line. When launched initially, there were a number of rough edges in Samsung’s foldable devices.

But the brand, to its credit, has kept ironing out creases (pun intended) in its foldables. Each new Galaxy Z Flip and Galaxy Z Fold has been better than the previous one. This is the case with the latest ones as well.

The latest Galaxy Z Fold 5 and the Galaxy Z Flip 5 are miles ahead of the Flip and Fold that were first launched by Samsung. We are going to be looking at Samsung’s latest foldable, especially the Z Flip 5. The phone comes with a number of improvements, and Samsung has fixed a lot of resident issues that previous generation Galaxy Flips suffered from.

The Galaxy Z Flip 5 comes with a number of high-end features and specs, but with a starting price of Rs. 99,999, it remains on the expensive side. Is it worth flippin’ for?

Galaxy Z Flip 5 Review: Flexing it with a Flex window!

While the new Galaxy Z Fold has little to show off when it comes purely to looks, the case is actually quite different when it comes to the Galaxy Z Flip 5. While the basics of the phone remain the same – it has a foldable display that folds into a clamshell form factor, leaving you with a square-shaped palm fitter, it still has a few differentiating factors that help it stand out amongst the Galaxy Z Flips of the past. The biggest one, quite literally, is the secondary display on the phone, what Samsung calls the Flex Window. On the earlier Flips, this display used to be all of 1.9 inches or smaller. On the Galaxy Z Flip 5, Samsung has now stretched it to 3.4 inches, which makes for a massive Flex Window. It is not as big as the 3.6-inch one on the Moto Razr Ultra 40, but it is still a big step up from what Galaxy Flips used to come with.

This big, beautiful AMOLED display covers almost the entire upper half of the Samsung Galaxy Z Flip 5, edging around the main cameras of the smartphone.

Another difference comes in the way the phone now sits in one’s palm. Thanks to the new and improved hinge on the Z Flip 5, the phone shuts all the way when folded down and feels more compact and symmetrical. The earlier Galaxy Z Flips used to have space between the two folded displays near the hinge, making it feel slightly ‘off’ and also allowing dust to creep in between. When folded shut, the hinge reveals the engraved and the only Samsung logo on the device. Between the display on the upper half, the hinge and the middle, and the glass at the bottom half, the Galaxy Z Flip 5 looks nothing like any other phone in the market, and thanks to its boxy shape, it stands out as a Galaxy Z Flip, which means the phone is unlikely to be mistaken for some other device.

Flip the phone open, and you come face to face with a beautiful 6.7-inch main AMOLED plastic display surrounded by thin bezels. There is a small dot notch on the top center of the display that houses the front camera of the phone. The crease from the fold on the display still exists and is still quite visible and palpable. But one gets used to it with time.

The device has straight aluminum sides. The lock button, which also doubles up as a fingerprint scanner, is on the right side of the frame, and just above it sits the volume rocker. On the left, you get the SIM card tray, while the base of the phone holds the USB Type C port and speaker grille.

The phone measures 165.1 x 71.9 x 6.9 mm when unfolded and 85.1 x 71.9 x 15.1 mm when folded, and weighs 187 grams. Because it has a boxy build, the phone does not feel slim in particular and feels even more chunky when folded shut. It slips into pockets more easily but does feel like a big block and bulges out. Props to Samsung for improving the hinge of the Z Flip 5, but it is still a struggle to open the phone with a single hand. It comes with an IPX8 rating, which makes it water resistant so that you can use it on your runs, workouts, and even in the rain. The Galaxy Z Flip 5 embodies the very essence of what it means to be a Galaxy Flip, and it comes with many improvements this time around.

Galaxy Z Flip 5: Flagship specs, flagship performance

The Galaxy Z Flip 5 is a flagship phone from Samsung, which means it comes with a flagship-level processor. The phone is powered by the best smartphone processor Qualcomm has to offer, the Snapdragon 8+ Gen 2 chipset. This is paired with 8 GB RAM, and there are two storage variants to choose from: 256 GB and 512 GB.

With that sort of hardware on board, the phone can easily handle all your day-to-day tasks with ease. Throw any multimedia hoop at it or open multiple apps at the same time, and the phone will be able to jump through those swiftly. The Samsung Galaxy Z Flip 5 can handle gaming very well, too. You just have to get used to the slightly off-display proportions of the phone (as it is more tall than wide) and the crease in the middle. If you can get over it, you can enjoy gaming on the device. In terms of sheer power, the Snapdragon 8 Gen 2+ is more than enough for all gaming needs, and even high-end games like Asphalt and Call of Duty play smoothly on the device.

Galaxy Z Flip 5: Can heat up and be a little hit-and-miss on fingerprint matters

That said, there is a slight heating issue with the smartphone. On more than a few occasions, when pushing the phone, we realized it was heating up, especially the top half of the phone. Editing video or playing games on maxed-out settings can cause the temperature to rise up a bit, and the phone then takes a few minutes to get back to its normal self.

Another issue that we often faced with the device was with its physical fingerprint scanner. Yes, the side-mounted scanner, which is supposed to be invincible and has the upper hand (read thumb) over in-display scanners, actually took more than a single attempt to recognize our fingerprint. The phone did get it right many times, but you don’t expect a physical fingerprint scanner on a flagship-level smartphone to behave erratically.

Galaxy Z Flip 5: Sheer display magic, although the Flex Window ain’t too appy!

Far away from anything negative is the beautiful, bright main display. The 6.7-inch 2x AMOLED display of the Galaxy Z Flip 5 comes with 1750 peak brightness and 120 Hz adaptive refresh rate, making it very pleasant to look at and smooth in terms of usage. The punchy colors reproduced by the main display make it a pleasure to view content on, and paired with stereo speakers, the Galaxy Z Flip 5 becomes a multimedia master.

This story continues when the phone is folded, too, provided you are consuming content on Netflix or YouTube. This is because the Flex Window on the Galaxy Z Flip 5 only comes with support for a handful of apps, which includes Google Maps, Netflix, and YouTube, amongst a couple of others. These apps can transition on the primary display when the phone is flipped open while using them. Using the secondary display for responding to messages and notifications is manageable, but it can be rather tedious, and we found ourselves opening the phone more often than not.

Samsung has taken the functionality of the secondary display a level above the older Galaxy Z Flips. From reading and responding to notifications to using widgets and customizing them and consuming content on some particular apps, you can do a whole lot without ever flipping open the Galaxy Z Flip 5. The Flex Window also comes with different watch faces and can also be used as a viewfinder for selfies when it is flipped shut.

That said, a lot of functionality ground still remains to be covered. Especially when you consider that the biggest competitor of the Galaxy Z Flip 5, the Moto Razr Ultra 40, lets you do pretty much everything you can on the primary display on the secondary display as well.

Galaxy Z Flip 5: Very good cameras

Not much has changed since in terms of sheer megapixels when it comes to cameras on the Galaxy Z Flip 5 as compared to its predecessor, the Galaxy Z Flip 4. The Flip 5, too, has a double camera setup with two 12-megapixel sensors. The main sensor comes with OIS, while the second one is an ultrawide sensor. There is a 10-megapixel secondary sensor on the primary display nestled inside the punch hole.

The images captured by the Galaxy Z Flip 5 turned out to be quite sharp and bright in well-lit conditions. Much like many Samsung phones, the Z Flip 5 also has the tendency to push the colors to the warmer side a bit, which means you end up with a richer color palette when compared to reality, but many people prefer punchy colors to dull, real-looking colors. The phone did well in terms of detail as well in good light conditions, and zooming in on a well-captured image did not expose us (pun intended) to a completely pixelated result. Portrait images turn out well on the Galaxy Z Flip 5 with deep bokeh and great edge detection between the subject and the background.

The performance of the cameras suffers a bit in low light, but the night mode on the device helps its cause. With night mode on, the Galaxy Z Flip 5 can take decent low-light shots with a good amount of detail.

The phone does struggle a bit to capture close-ups as focusing on subjects up and close takes a few seconds, but once the camera manages to focus, it can take good macro pictures. The Samsung Galaxy Z Flip can record 4K videos at 30 fps and 60 fps and can take decent videos, with OIS coming in handy in these situations. The 10-megapixel selfie camera also performs well, but the images can turn out to be slightly washed out – the opposite of how the primary camera performs. Hence, we found ourselves using the main camera whenever we wanted to take better selfies, even though it can take a while to get used to the flipped-shut selfie system.

Galaxy Z Flip 5: Mostly regular One UI and okay-ish battery life

The Samsung Galaxy Z Flip 5 runs on Android 13 out of the box with Samsung’s One UI on top. The phone is easy to use in general, but Samsung does have a number of third-party apps preinstalled on the device, which can be a bit of a turn-off, especially for a phone this expensive. That said, you can uninstall these apps easily. The UI is overall quite functionality forward and isn’t too different from other Samsung phones out there in the market, even though this is a Flip, although it comes with a few additional settings for the Flex Window.

We wish Samsung had worked more on the UI with the Flip in mind and given the device some more software smarts when it comes to the secondary display. This would have really helped the secondary display shine a bit more. It is more reflective than shiny at the moment.

The Samsung Galaxy Z Flip 5 comes with a 3,700 mAh battery, which comes with support for 25 W charging support, 15 W wireless charging support, and 4.5 W reverse wireless charging. These are the exact same numbers we saw on the previous Galaxy Z Flip. They may not be too impressive by today’s big battery and faster charging standards, but they are not too bad by Flip standards. The phone can manage to see a day of mediocre usage. Push it a bit, and you might have to plug in a charger even before the day ends. While on the subject, the Galaxy Z Flip 5 does not come with a charger in the box.

Galaxy Z Flip 5 Review Verdict: Still THE Flip, but the competition is getting sharp…RAZR sharp!

With a starting price of Rs 99,999, the Samsung Galaxy Z Flip 5 finds itself in the premium smartphone category. And while other Z Flips did not have much competition to deal with back in their day, the scenario has changed quite a lot this time around. There are a few flip phones in the market now, but the biggest pain in the Galaxy Z Flip 5’s hinge has to be the Moto Razr Ultra 40. Not only does it trump the Galaxy Z Flip 5 in some specs and numbers parameters like external display and battery, but it also has cleaner software and comes with a smaller price tag.

The Galaxy Z Flip 5 has a clear advantage in the processor department as it comes with a more advanced processor as compared to the Razr Ultra 40, but otherwise, it has its work cut out for it this time around. Its superb hardware ensures that the Samsung Galaxy Z Flip 5 remains the Flip to flip for, but the competition is catching up.

Buy Samsung Galaxy Z Flip 5