This is the Galaxy Z flip six. Samsung’s latest clamshell style foldable. It has a new camera hinge cover screen software and more A I and a new price. Let’s unpack it. So the Z flip has all these new things. There’s now a 50 megapixel main camera. The hinge is smaller and helps reduce the screen crease. It has a new chip, the Qualcomm Snapdragon eight gen three and 12 gigabyte. It’s A R AM. There’s even more A I for all intents and purposes. The new Z flip six is a Galaxy S 24 that can fold in half, which is fantastic. So the Z flip six should be a slam dunk. Right. Right. Well, it would be if it weren’t for two things you see Samsung raised the price from an already hefty $1000 to $100 and that changes the value ratio of the flip in recent years. Previous flips offered an incredible amount of features for the dollar and yet, yeah, you may be able to get a good trade in deal for a discount on the Z flip six, but it’s still $1100. And then there are Samsung’s competitors like Motorola and its new Razr Plus that also has a new camera, new hinge, new chip, 12 gigabytes of Ra M and more A I. But it costs $1000. All this makes it hard to appreciate the Galaxy Z flip six for the absolute great phone that it is and indeed it is now standing phone, but so is the Razr Plus and it costs less with that being said, let me explain why the new Z flip six is a fantastic phone. And let’s start with the design that is nearly identical to last year’s Z flip five. Now gone is the glossy back and instead we have a lovely matte finish the review unit. I’ve been testing comes in this quiet blue color which is also used for highlights around the rings of the dual cameras in the cover screen. I absolutely love the way this thing looks. It, it has a striking Bauhaus like style that would make Dieter Rams happy when I hold the phone, it feels rigid, solid like one continuous piece. It has an IP 48 rating for water and dust resistance, meaning it can be submerged under 1.5 m of water for 30 minutes. But it’s that first number that’s particularly exciting. We have dust resistance. This is amazing. Aside from last year’s Motorola Razr Plus, this is the only other flip phone that I know of that has dust resistance. Does this mean you can take the Z flip six out Sandcastle building on the beach. Well, not quite yet. See that number four means that the flip six can resist an ingress of materials greater than one millimeter. So those fine particles are still an enemy. The Z flip six has a 3.4 inch cover screen with that trademark Samsung folder file tab cut out for the dual cameras. It’s small but there are widgets optimized for it, playful wallpapers for it. And with some chicanery, you can pretty much run any Android app you want on it. I just wish this ability was set up out of the box. Kind of like the Razr plus. I still think the Razr plus is four inch cover screen and its software is better overall, but this is the best cover screen experience I’ve used on any Z flip phone so far. Now let’s talk about the cameras. The Z flip six has the same 10 megapixel selfie camera in the internal display as last year’s Z flip five, the 12 megapixel ultra wide camera gets a new sensor and there’s a new 50 megapixel main camera that’s similar to the one on the S 24 which is similar to the one found on the S 23 and the S 22 before it. But this is the best flip phone camera I’ve used period when compared to non flip phones like the pixel eight pro and the S 24 ultra. Well, those are still much better take a look at some of the photos and videos I shot with the Z flip six images from the main camera have good details, some textures like leaves look a bit crispy from over sharpening and this is not a freeze the action kind of camera. This is more of a good enough to post on Instagram and tiktok kind of camera which is totally fine. Some photos like this. One of cnet’s video producer today show the literal marks of processing. Notice the strange mark in the sky to the right of today’s lights on his camera and notice the color cloud cut out around the edge of the trees just above that. I absolutely love the ultra wide cameras on Samsung’s phones, the lenses they use offer this sweet spot making subjects look dramatic without skewing too much into fish eye territory. Overall, ultra wide images from the Z flip six look decent, but they’re soft and process, especially if you look at things like clouds. One of the new camera features that’s been fun to play with is the new auto zoom in and out. It’s powered by Galaxy A I and perfect for those selfies you want to take or maybe pictures of yourself with friends and you it works, but it can be a bit slow, especially picking up on changes in position or distance. Now, this actually might be one of the more useful A I features on the Z flip six. I did an entire other video about the Z flip six A I features and tested them out during a day in Paris. So I’m not going to go into too much detail here, but I do want to talk about a couple of things. The first is the ability to draw on a photo and turn your sketch into a photo, realistic looking object or animal. It’s wild and I wish I could use it to draw mustaches or eye patches on friends faces. Because otherwise I’m just not sure when I’d ever use this feature. Then there’s the interpreter mode on the Z flip six, which uses both screens on the phone to show each speaker what the other person is saying in their own language. I find the feature very useful, but the translation seems to be done word by word and is accurate but not perfect. Now, I tried it from English to Korean and English to French. Now, one consequence I didn’t think about at the moment while I was using the feature is that the translations lack of perfection could make a speaker feel self conscious or even well embarrassed when I used the mode to order coffee in Paris. The phone’s translation was good but got words and phrases slightly wrong like instead of translating something to Yes, no problem, it said agree on problems. Now, the French speaker apologized saying it was her accent that may have caused the translation to be off. And I’m not saying that this stressed her out. But the last thing I want to do is make someone else feel embarrassed because an A I couldn’t understand what they were saying. Then there’s portrait studio which turns portraits of people into artwork. It’s silly and it’s fun and the results are far from accurate again. Not sure when I’d use this. All this to say, well, A I power tools like circle to search and the autofocus reframe in and out are nifty. They should be the main reason you get a phone like the Z flip six though, I’m curious, are there A I features on the Z flip six or other phones that make you want to buy them? Let me know in the comments. Lastly, let’s talk about performance and battery life. The Snapdragon eight gen three and 12 gigabytes of ra M make the Z flip six Peppy fast and fun to use even high demanding tasks like video recording or playing video games. Don’t seem to stress the phone out too much. The Z flip six has a built in vapor chamber cooling system which no doubt helps keep things from getting hot. And remember this is a super tiny thin foldable phone. Occasionally it did get warm but nothing I’d worry about in that same cooling system along with a larger 4000 milliamp hour battery has meant that this is an all day phone over the week I’ve used it. It’s finished every day with 10 to 50% of a charge left. And there were days where I had the screen cranked up to full brightness and we’re shooting tons of photos and videos. So to wrap things up, the Galaxy Z flip six is an outstanding phone. The fact that Samsung offers seven years of OS and security software upgrades is amazing. The problem is there’s the Razr Plus, which is also an outstanding phone and $100 cheaper. Now, I’m working on a Razr Plus and Z flip six in depth comparison. But for more about the Z flip six, check out my full written review on CNET. If you like this video, please give it a thumbs up and last. Thank you for watching.
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