Display
This is the galaxy z fold 4 for Samsung’s new premium foldable flagship. This is the most expensive Samsung phone you can get right now. So what does the z-fold 4 bring compared to last year and is the innovation worth the price tag?
Last year Samsung seemed to hit the nail on the head with its foldable phones and they were pretty successful so understandably the new z-ford 4 sticks to the tried and true formula you’ve got the foldable inner screen protected within a clamshell form factor and an outer screen that you can use while the device is folded.
What’s New
What is new this time around are some refinements of the design, an upgraded chipset, and some new cameras. Design-wise fold 4 is similar to before but a little bit smaller and lighter in weight. You still get the ipx8 protection against water.
| Specifications | |
|---|---|
| Network | 2G,3G,4G,5G |
| Announced | 10 August 2022 |
| Weight | 263g |
| SIM | Dual nano sim+ one e-sim |
| Display | Foldable Dynamic Amoled screen HDR 10+ 120Hz 1200nits peak brightness 7.6 inches 1812 x 2176 pixels – 373 PPI Gorilla glass victus + protection |
| OS | Android 12 |
| Chipset | Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 Plus |
| GPU | Adreno 730 |
| Memory | 256,512,1TB ROM 12 GB RAM UFS 3.1 No Card Slot |
| Main Camera | 50MP wide OIS 10MP telephoto,3x zoom, OIS 12MP ultrawide 4k@60fps video recording |
| Front Camera | 4 MP -wide, under display 10MP -wide |
| Sound | Stereo speakers No audio jack |
| NFC | Yes |
| Battery | 4400mah-Li-Po non-removable 25W fast charging 15W wireless charging 4.5W reverse wireless charging |
| Colors | Beige, Burgundy, Phantom Black, gray-green |
| Price | $949 |
Build
Here which is really nice there’s a soft matte finish and glossy frame and the back panels are made of sturdier gorilla glass victus plus. The armor aluminum hinge has seen a bit of a redesign and is slimmed down a bit it still functions the same way though it’s quite supportive and can hold the phone open to almost any angle while folded you can use this default force AMOLED cover screen and you get a similar experience to a standard smartphone.
Display
It’s still 6.2 inches but has thinner bezels and a different aspect ratio from last year at 23 by 9. This means that it’s a bit shorter and not quite as narrow as the z-fold 3’s and is more comfortable to use. Though still on the tall side when you open the z-fold 4 you reveal a 7.6-inch inner AMOLED screen with a 5 by 6 aspect ratio.
It’s like a small tablet it has a pixel density of 401 PPI and a fast 120hz refresh rate. But unfortunately, there is still a crease where the screen folds over, and depending on the angle it can be quite noticeable at least the under-display selfie cam has been upgraded a bit and is supposed to be a bit less visible than last year the high refresh rate smooths out movements on the screen and is very adaptive. It can dial down to a variety of different refresh rates depending on the activity the lowest, we saw it go down to 24 hertz but the UI frame rate will readily go down to 1 fps for static content.
The z-fold 4’s display is sharp and contrasty and the large size gives you a much different experience. Smartphone colors are very accurate and you have options to tweak them in settings and you get support for hdr 10 plus.
The brightness of the screen is impressive too we measured a maximum of 800 nits with the manual slider with the extra brightness toggle on and this can boost over a thousand nits in auto mode when out in the sun the z-fold 4 also has stylus support but it requires a specific kind from Samsung with a tip that won’t scratch the display.
Sound
For audio, the Z-fold 4 has a pair of stereo speakers one bottom firing and one top firing. Loudness wasn’t impressive with a score of just average in our test but the sound quality is very good with nice vocals and treble and some bass.
Sensors
For biometrics, the Z-fold 4 has a side-mounted fingerprint reader built into the power button. It’s fast and reliable and even though storage is not expandable here. But you can get the Z-fold 4 with plenty of it there are options for 256 or 512 gigs or even a whole terabyte.
Cameras
The new setup includes a 50-megapixel main camera and a 10-megapixel telephoto camera with 3X zoom which are similar to what you’d get on the galaxy s22, the 12-megapixel ultra-wide though is the same as on the z fold 3. One other difference from the s22 setup is that the main camera has a different sensor so you get dual pixel autofocus instead of the more advanced dual pixel pro.
During the day the main cam captures pleasing images, there’s enough detail and the processing is pretty laid back and natural looking without excessive sharpening. There is a lot of contrast though and the colors have plenty of pop.
Portrait mode: Lets you shoot from the main or telephoto camera those from the main camera have a slight quality advantage, especially in darker scenes separation is excellent here the zoom portraits offer a different perspective and you don’t have to stand so close to the subject while shooting again you get great subject separation regular zoomed-in shots look very good too detail is crisp sharpening remains conservative and noise is minimal. The color rendition matches the main cams nicely and the dynamic range is excellent.
The ultra-wide captures good photos. It’s not the sharpest ultra-wide on a flagship phone but it’s not bad either and resolves a lot of detail too color reproduction is also in line with the other two cameras. One complaint we do have is that shadows can end up a bit on the darker side at night the z-fold 4 can apply automatic night mode processing in some conditions or you can toggle it through settings.
The night mode isn’t the most dramatic we’ve seen but you can nicely brighten shadows and some better-preserved highlights. Though the noise reduction may smooth out some textures and details with night mode off, there’s still some HDR action going on. So dynamic range is still good those scenes dominated by shadows can end up with darker colors are nicely saturated and the detail is good.
Interface
The interface of the Z-fold 4 is one UI 4.1.1 based on android 12. It’s the same feature pack UI you’d get on other Samsung flagships except for a few specific features for the unique form factor. One handy feature is the taskbar which floats on the bottom, it provides quick shortcuts to your dock icons and also recently used apps.
Flex mode allows apps to take advantage of the two halves of the folding display for example in some apps you can use the bottom half as a touchpad to control the upper one.
The Z-fold 4 also offers advanced multitasking options to take advantage of the screen real estate. It’s quite easy to open multiple apps side by side on a split screen. You can change the orientation of the split on the fly too you can have up to three split screen apps and five apps in pop-up windows that’s eight apps open at once besides, it’s a pretty standard Samsung UI you can find out more about one UI 4.1 specific features.
Chipset
The new flagship deserves a new chipset and that’s just what you get with the z-fold 4. It packs the latest Snapdragon 8 plus gen 1 which provides you the better efficiency and an upgrade in performance compared to last year’s non-plus version as you’d expect benchmark scores are excellent with the z-fold 4 right up there near the top of the charts. It is notable that for GPU-intensive tasks scores are higher when using the cover screen than of testing on the more demanding inner display.
Thermal Throttling
When it comes to thermals the Z-fold 4 is no champion. We did observe some thermal throttling, it’s gradual though and the amount is comparable to what you’ll see on other current flagships.
Battery
The z-fold 4 has the same battery capacity as last year at 4400 mah, what we were able to measure battery life has seen a small improvement compared to last year the z flip 4 achieved two more hours of screen on time when web browsing and about a half an hour extra during video playback.
Charging speed is better as well even though the wired charging rate hasn’t changed from 25 watts with a proper samsung adapter. We were able to charge the phone from zero to 50 percent in half an hour compared to 33 percent on last year’s model. The wireless charging has also been bumped up from 11 watts to 15 watts and you get reverse wireless charging too.
