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All About Latest Smartphones
Samsung Galaxy Z Flip
Samsung’s new Galaxy Z Flip could not be more different from the Galaxy Fold. It’s actually phone-sized and shaped. It’s expensive at £1,300, a £300 premium on its closest Galaxy S20 counterpart. And it doesn’t overcomplicate a new design and engineering idea. In other words, the Galaxy Z Flip is an intriguing introduction to what Samsung. Either way, this is a much less ambitious proposition than the Fold. The Fold was an attempt to merge the phone and tablet into one do-it-all, futuristic device which encountered obstacles in everything from industrial design to quality control. A device that, let’s face it, could have benefitted from another year of development and testing. The Z Flip, in contrast, is a phone that folds in half to make it more pocketable. Folded, the Z Flip looks a lot like a shiny, chunky compact mirror or a GameBoy Advance SP, depending on your reference points. Mirrored on the rear/case, I got to see the black and purple models, both quick to pick up fingerprints – it also comes in gold. The inevitable chunkiness that comes from this being essentially a Samsung Galaxy smartphone folded in half – it’s 17.3mm at the hinge, 15.4mm where the bezels meet – is almost completely mitigated by the fact it’s small, square and pocketable when in clamshell mode. The Z Flip is big but it’s also tactile and feels right-sized in a way the Galaxy Fold never did. The 6.7-inch Full HD screen is sharp and bright with no discernable issues at the fold from our very brief time with it. You can see the crease that runs straight across the middle of the device, don’t listen to anyone who says otherwise. The only time it ‘disappeared’ was when I looked at it head-on with an image or video on the display. I don’t mind the crease too much; it’s a personal preference, though, and could easily be a dealbreaker, especially at this price. Samsung's estimate is that the Z Flip will last 200,000 folds. In tests the Galaxy Fold fell short of the claims with 120,000 folds - the new RAZR did even worse with 27,000 folds in CNET's excellent FoldBot test. he Z Flip units I got to handle looked and felt more robust than v1 and 1.5 of the Galaxy Fold, but the difference wasn’t dramatic. For everything – the glass, the hinge, the splash resistance – I’d say wait for real reviews. Galaxy Z Flip is cool enough to deserve the initial buzz. As far as customers who might actually have the money to pay for this thing, we now need to see whether this glass and hinge and everything else stands up to testing.
