Samsung Galaxy Z Flip 5 & Z Fold 5 first impressions: Big (cover) screen, small ambitions

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It’s foldable time again—Samsung Unpacked is going on right now and you’re looking at the new Galaxy Z Flip 5 and Z Fold 5. The company has been working on foldables for years now, and these are certainly the best ones it has ever made.

But they’re also very similar to last year’s phones, and now that there’s stiffer competition from the likes of Oppo, Motorola, Honor, Huawei and, soon, even OnePlus, this is the second time we’re asking the question, “Is this the best that Samsung’s got?”

Z Flip 5—new cover screen provides more freedom

Let’s start with the Z Flip 5, which gets the biggest change. It’s still the same form factor and it’s roughly the same size as before. But the big news is the cover display—gone is the absolutely tiny 1.9-inch screen, replaced by a far more usable 3.4-inch display. It’s shaped like a folder and it takes up pretty much the entire front face, going around the dual camera lenses. 

You can do a lot more things with the cover screen. There are more quick settings, you can mute calls by simply covering the front face with your palm, and you can use full apps like Google Maps and WhatsApp. What’s more, there’s a full QWERTY keyboard to type your messages—something Oppo has yet to add to its competitor, the Find N2 Flip, even though there’s clearly space on its vertical 3.26-inch display. You can even watch videos on YouTube and Netflix, though quite why you’d want to do that instead of simply opening the phone is beyond me.

Best of all, however, the camera viewfinder is no longer cut off by the confines of a tiny screen. What you see on the display is what you get, and you can even change the aspect ratio if you want to shoot 4:3 or 16:9 photos. There’s one drawback with using the cover screen to take pictures—as it’s still a relatively small display, there’s no shutter button. Instead, you tap anywhere on the screen, which will make for lots of accidental photos being taken.

Another big change is the hinge design. Samsung has finally adopted a teardrop folding mechanism that allows the phone to fold flat. That gap in the middle is gone, so the Z Flip 5 is 2.5mm thinner than before, at 15.1mm thick when folded. It’s not perfect, though—the Z Flip 5 still doesn’t quite open the full 180 degrees; you have to pry the phone for those last few degrees, which isn’t the best feeling on something that costs more than RM4,000. The crease is also not as flat as what you’d find on the Oppo Find N2 Flip, even though it is a bit shallower than before.

Speaking of which, the inner display is the same 6.7-inch Full HD+ AMOLED touchscreen with 120Hz adaptive refresh rate. Samsung says the ultra-thin glass has been made more durable, so hopefully there will be fewer customers having to replace their screens.

Z Fold 5—same as before, just slightly thinner

Next up, the Z Fold 5, which is…almost exactly the same as before. You still get a narrow 6.2-inch outer screen, which is still a bit cramped to type on, as well as a similarly-sized 7.6-inch inner screen. It has the same new hinge design and the inner screen is slightly brighter than before at 1,200 nits (1,750 nits peak brightness).

The bezels are very slightly thinner—noticeable if you’re looking for it, but most of the time it just looks like the Z Fold 4. The Z Fold 5 also gets the Z Flip 5’s new hinge design and as such is a little thinner at 13.4mm thick; it’s also 15g lighter at 253g, but that’s about all that’s changed.

New engine, same mechanicals

Both phones do at least get a more powerful chip. Under the skin, you’ll find the latest Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Gen 2—specifically the “for Galaxy” variant with a CPU overclocked to 3.26MHz, the same one that powers the S23 series. The benefit of that is you get faster LPDDR5X RAM, though Samsung won’t definitively confirm if the devices get the latest UFS 4.0 storage. The Z Fold 5 also gets a 38% larger vapour chamber than before for better cooling, which means it should handle sustained gaming better.

In particular, the extra horsepower allows the Z Fold 5 to open up to five floating windows, in addition to the three split-screen apps. This means you can have up to eight apps open at the same time, which is just insane—and makes for an incredibly messy experience. It’s like having ADHD.

The taskbar that was introduced on the Z Fold 4 will also now show up to four of your most recent apps, something that will no doubt please power users.

The rest of the hardware is exactly the same as before. That includes the cameras—the Z Flip 5 still uses 12MP main and ultrawide cameras, along with a 10MP selfie camera. The Z Fold 5’s cameras are also carried over from the Z Fold 4, meaning there’s no 200MP main camera from the S23 Ultra. Instead, you get the same 50MP main camera, 12MP ultra-wide and 10MP 3x telephoto camera. There’s also a 10MP selfie camera and an under-display inner selfie camera with a resolution of just 4MP.

Battery sizes are the same again—3,700mAh for the Z Flip 5 and 4,400mAh for the Z Fold 5. You also still get just 25W fast charging, 15W wireless charging and 4.5W reverse wireless charging. Samsung does at least promise that the more efficient chip will free up slightly more battery life on both devices.

Aside from that, you get 5G, Bluetooth 5.3 and WiFi 6E (not WiFi 7, unlike the OnePlus 11) connectivity, NFC, a side fingerprint sensor, face unlock and stereo speakers on both devices. The Z Flip 5 and Z Fold 5 are also still some of the only foldables (the only other notable one being the Huawei Mate X3) to come with IPX8 water resistance, although there’s still no dust resistance.

All in all, the Samsung Galaxy Z Flip 5 and Z Fold 5 don’t really move the needle when it comes to foldables, which is a real shame considering how strong the competition has been this year. For the Z Fold 5 in particular, I was really expecting better cameras or at least a larger battery, as those were two things I found lacking with the Z Fold 4. However, the Z Flip 5’s larger cover display does at least bring a whole new dimension, and I can’t wait to really explore all the things it can do.

The only slight issue is the price of the Z Flip 5 in particular. Even discounting the base price naturally jumping up thanks to Samsung discontinuing the 128GB model, the flip phone is still RM100 more than it was before, though the extra utility of that new cover display does help make up for that. As for the Z Fold 5, it’s priced exactly the same as the Z Fold 4 which, given what little has changed, is as it should be. These two phones are not quite the disappointments their predecessors were, but given these are still very expensive phones, Samsung should be doing more.