As Samsung’s fourth-generation folding screen mobile phone, the Samsung Galaxy Z Fold4 is under the premise that the product form is mature. By optimizing the details in appearance, photography, system, etc., it still provides users with a better experience.

• $1800 – Check latest price on Amazon US, Amazon Germany or other Amazon countries

01/ Appearance Design

At first glance at the Samsung Galaxy Z Fold4, you may have the same feeling as me, it looks like nothing has changed, but after using it, it doesn’t seem to be the same. Don’t worry, you’re not feeling wrong. This time, although the Galaxy Z Fold4 continues the industrial design style of the previous generation model as a whole, it has made a lot of optimizations in details.

First, let’s take a look at the external screen. This time, Samsung optimized the hinge design and narrowed the width of the hinge and the black border of the screen. With the help of this design, the screen ratio of the external screen has been further improved, and the visual immersion is stronger. At the same time, thanks to the increase in screen width, the external screen ratio of Samsung Galaxy Z Fold4 has also been reduced, and the one-handed experience is better.

In terms of external design, the Samsung Galaxy Z Fold4 uses the previous generation’s matte dark gray glass back cover + bright metal frame combination, which is excellent in look and feel. It is worth mentioning that in order to increase the strength and rigidity of the fuselage, the Galaxy Z Fold4 uses “armored aluminum” material in the outer frame and hinge position of the fuselage, which is more durable.

The Samsung Galaxy Z Fold4 uses an oval rear module with exactly the same curvature as the three cameras. Samsung also uses the tough Corning Gorilla Glass Victus glass to protect the phone’s rear camera module and body back cover.

02/ Display

Next, we turn on the phone and take a look at the internal screen of the Galaxy Z Fold4. Due to the narrowing of the frame, the internal screen size of the Galaxy Z Fold4 is still 7.6 inches, but it is more square in proportion. In addition, the internal screen of the Galaxy Z Fold4 supports a variable refresh rate of 1-120Hz. The larger adjustment range allows the mobile phone to automatically adjust to the most suitable screen refresh rate according to the content displayed on the screen, which not only provides a better visual experience but also effectively reduces power consumption.

In the inner screen, the Galaxy Z Fold4 is still equipped with a 4MP under-screen camera. However, thanks to technological progress, the pixel density of the camera part of the internal screen of the Galaxy Z Fold4 has been greatly improved, making the camera under the screen more concealed and ensuring the integrity of the internal screen to the greatest extent.

In addition, the Galaxy Z Fold 4 also supports custom adjustment of the screen white balance, which can control the overall tone of the phone screen according to personal preferences, showing the most ideal display effect in your heart.

The Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 4 adopts the unlocking method of side recognition. This identification area attached to the physical button does not affect the aesthetics of the front screen of the mobile phone at all, nor does it damage the integrity of the back body, ensuring the integration of the body. In actual use, it is found that because the fingerprint unlocking area and the switch key are combined into one, the one-handed operation is much more dexterous. After the screen is unfolded, it is also more convenient to close each time because the thumb is just in the recognition area.

03/ Performance & Gaming Test

As a flagship smartphone, the Samsung Galaxy Z Fold4 uses the Snapdragon 8+ processor, and the entire series comes standard with 12GB RAM and up to 1TB ROM. It is also equipped with UFS 3.1 flash memory to provide a steady stream of power for gaming performance. Below we still follow the usual practice to test the game performance of Galaxy Z Fold4 through running points and game testing.

The first is the running part, I used AnTuTu and 3D Mark for testing. It can be seen that the AnTuTu score reached 981994 points and the 3D Mark score reached 10657 points, showing excellent performance.

Of course, running the test is definitely not exactly the same as the user’s real usage scenario. In order to test the performance limit of the Galaxy Z Fold4, I chose the most heavily loaded game scenarios in daily use by most users for testing. Here I have chosen two games “Game For Peace” and “Genshin Impact”.

“Game For Peace” frame rate performance

The first is “Game For Peace”, where I use HDR and frame limit settings. In the twenty-minute game test, the frame rate has been around 60FPS, and the final average frame rate is 59.9FPS. Through the stable frame rate curve, the performance can be very stable, there is no lag phenomenon in the whole game process, both the picture and the operation are very smooth.

“Genshin Impact” frame rate performance

In the more heavily loaded “Genshin Impact”, I used the high quality + 60fps setting. During the 20-minute test, the frame rate of Galaxy Z Fold4 remained above 40FPS. Although there was a certain degree of fluctuation, it did not have a significant impact on the game experience during the actual measurement, and the final average frame rate was 51.2FPS.

It is worth noting that in the process of the game, thanks to the Samsung Galaxy Z Fold4’s use of stereo speakers to support Dolby Atmos, it provides users with shocking sound effects and a wide sound field experience in single-player or multi-player games. The sense of distance and orientation of the sound field created by inserting the headphones is even stronger.

04/ Photography

As one of the major hardware upgrades, the photography capabilities of the Samsung Galaxy Z Fold4 have been significantly improved. On the rear camera module, the Galaxy Z Fold4 uses a combination of 50MP main camera + 12MP ultra-wide-angle lens + 10MP 3x telephoto lens. The main camera and telephoto lens both support optical image stabilization. In terms of parameters, this configuration is already the same as the Samsung Galaxy S22+, reaching the level of the first echelon. Let’s take a look at the actual imaging level of the Galaxy Z Fold4 through the proofs.

From the samples taken with the main camera of the Galaxy Z Fold4 below, it can be seen that the imaging effect is very good, and the details of objects in the scene can be easily recorded. When shooting buildings in a natural light environment, the light and shadow effects brought by the light can be well presented, and the bright color style is also very eye-catching.

The telephoto lens has a high usage rate in actual shooting. With the 3x telephoto lens of the Galaxy Z Fold4, users can easily capture detailed and portrait photos of close-up objects. As can be seen from the proofs below, while the telephoto lens has excellent imaging effects, it can also help us effectively avoid the interference of the cluttered environment on the composition of the picture in daily shooting.

It is worth mentioning that with the help of the 3x telephoto lens, the Galaxy Z Fold4 supports up to 30x hybrid zoom, which can help users capture more detailed scenes. According to the actual shooting, in the case of 10x zoom, the image quality of the Galaxy Z Fold4 is still within an acceptable range. It is believed that with the help of hybrid zoom, Galaxy Z Fold4 can help users unlock more new scenes for taking pictures.

The ultra-wide-angle lens has a unique imaging effect when shooting large scenes, and has an irreplaceable position in daily shooting. The ultra-wide-angle lens of the Samsung Galaxy Z Fold4 has an equivalent 16mm focal length, which can easily record a wider picture when shooting scenes such as buildings and group photos. In terms of image quality, the ultra-wide-angle lens of the Galaxy Z Fold4 is not inferior to the main camera, and I believe it can meet the image quality needs of most users.

In the dark light environment, the optimization scheme of Galaxy Z Fold4 software + hardware combination does provide good imaging performance. It can be seen from the proofs below that in the night scene mode, the Galaxy Z Fold4 has no obvious glare, the suppression of the highlights is excellent, and the details of the dark parts are retained, and the picture latitude is high. At the same time, in terms of noise processing, the Galaxy Z Fold4 also maintains an excellent level.

Main camera night scene proofs

From the hardware configuration and real shooting experience, it can be seen that the photography strength of the Galaxy Z Fold4 has reached the first-class level among the current flagship mobile phones. The three-camera combination of ultra-wide-angle, wide-angle, and telephoto can also meet the needs of users in many scenarios from landscape to portrait.

05/ System Functions

For folding screen mobile phones, how to make good use of the large screen is always the key to the user experience. As a pioneer in the field of folding screen mobile phones, Samsung has naturally made a lot of efforts in this regard. On the Galaxy Z Fold4, Samsung equipped it with the Android 12L based on OneUI 4.1.1 system, which is also the world’s first folding screen phone equipped with the Android 12L system. Next, let’s take a look at the large-screen experience of the Galaxy Z Fold4.

For computers, the existence of the taskbar can help us quickly and freely switch between multiple applications, which greatly improves the efficiency of multitasking. This time, the Galaxy Z Fold4 also added this function. After opening the application, the dock bar at the bottom of the desktop will be automatically stored to the bottom, which is convenient for users to switch quickly.

If you press and drag the icon for a long time, you can trigger the split-screen function, and you can open up to three applications on the same screen, making full use of the space advantage brought by the large screen. If you still need to open more applications, you can use the floating window function. With the help of this feature, Galaxy Z Fold4 can open up to 8 applications at the same time.

Thanks to the swivel-stop hinge of the Samsung Galaxy Z Fold4, Samsung has equipped it with a variety of vertical interaction modes. Users can adjust the screen opening and closing from multiple angles, and with the adaptive split-screen function, they can operate it as if they were using a laptop, making processing work more convenient. You can also take advantage of this by placing the phone on the table to unlock the hidden function of selfies from more angles.

Samsung Galaxy Z Fold4 still provides support for S Pen, with a dedicated S Pen, it can protect the flexible screen by limiting the writing pressure, and you can get a paper-like writing experience during use.

The Samsung Dex function launched by Samsung has been upgraded many times, and it can already provide quite good performance during use. At present, the screen projection mode of Samsung Dex supports not only wired connection, but also wireless connection. Through this function, not only the mobile phone screen of the Galaxy Z Fold4 can be projected to the display device that supports WiFi connection, but also the split-screen projection function in which the display device and the mobile phone can display different pictures respectively. For example, we cast the video of the online class to the monitor, and then we use the S Pen to take class notes on the mobile phone.

In addition to the screen projection mode, Samsung Dex also has a desktop mode. We can now run Samsung’s Dex desktop mode on a computer system by installing the Dex application on a PC or Mac. To put it simply, we can directly control the mobile phone through the computer under the Windows system, read the files in the mobile phone and use the applications on the mobile phone, so as to realize the information exchange between the computer and the mobile phone, and break through the ecological barriers between the mobile phone and the computer.

With the help of multiple software optimizations, the Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 4 can greatly improve the efficiency of users in daily use and give full play to the productivity advantages of the large screen, which is extremely attractive to business people.

• $1800 – Check latest price on Amazon US, Amazon Germany or other Amazon countries