Flip to the future: A closer look and review of Samsung Galaxy Z Flip5

Snap! In an era dominated by sleek touchscreen smartphones, There's something just so satisfying and nostalgic when it comes to shutting close a flip or slider phone — we're talking the Motorola Razr and Sony Ericsson Xperia (feel old yet?).

However, modern smartphones have now largely embraced a minimalist, buttonless design for everyday communication, often leaving us yearning for a touch of aesthetic delight.

That is till Samsung first announced its latest flip and fold collections, giving a new ‘smart’ kick to the old-school phones that we all still reminisce about. In this article, we, as devoted Apple users, delve into the all-new Samsung Galaxy Z Flip5, offering an honest review of its design, functionality, and more.

Design and build quality

An upgrade from its first predecessor, the Samsung Galaxy Z Flip5 now features a much slimmer and compact design, not only making it more pocket-friendly, but still offering the satisfying flip sound. The flex hinge between the upper and lower screen has also been redesigned and made much tougher this time, making the phone more sturdy compared to the classic mobiles that we have been used to.

Additionally, for folks who love to add a little colour into their lives, the phone comes in mint, lavender, graphite and cream colours. Whilst online exclusive colourways include grey, blue, green and yellow.

Accordingly, with the phone made with two screens adjoined by a hinge, the screen dent is still prominent with text appearing slightly askew on-screen. Nonetheless, as you continue to use the phone and get adjusted to it, we felt that it becomes barely noticeable after a while.

The phone also utilises a wide variety of recycled materials in its body, including pre-consumer recycled glass and aluminium and post-consumer recycled plastics, sourced from discarded fishing nets, water barrels and PET bottles

Display and camera

Amongst the biggest upgrades in the Samsung Galaxy Z Flip5, is the new and versatile 3.4 inch full flex outer window. The largest cover screen on a Galaxy Z Flip yet, this window is fully functional making the task of looking through notifications, scrolling through apps and even taking selfies much more quicker.

For a generation of netizens and gen-z content creators, the next vlog is as easy as whipping out your phone and start recording without even having to flip open the phone.

You can also use the camera controller on your Galaxy Watch6 to take handsfree selfies, or prop up the phone to watch vids and take photos. The best part? The window is fully customisable with plenty of options to suit your style.

Note: While transferring photos to our Macbook, we did notice that the photos taken from the flex window did become much more pixelated and are not optimised for Apple software. If you do plan on using both Samsung and Apple devices, we recommend using third party media file transferring apps, like ShareIt or Dropbox, for the best results.

Day photography

When it comes to day photography, to our surprise, the Samsung Galaxy Z Flip5 was a clear winner compared to the iPhone 14 Pro, resulting in sharper and much more vibrant photographs.

The videos were also impressive with crisp quality as well as an impressive zoom functionality all the way from 0.6x to 10x, with textures rendered relatively well, and noise kept to a minimum.

Night photography

Alternatively, when it comes to night photography, the Samsung Galaxy Z Flip5 faired pretty well when it came to capturing images with well-lit images and preserved colour saturation. The videos, on the other hand, did not keep to the standards of the images with blown highlights, lost details, and much more noise compared to the iPhone 14 Pro.

Camera dimensions

Front:

10MP Selfie Camera, F2.2, Pixel size: 1.22μm, FOV: 85 ̊

Rear Dual Camera:

12MP Ultra Wide Camera, F2.2, Pixel size: 1.12μm, FOV: 123 ̊

12MP Wide-angle Camera, Dual Pixel AF, OIS, F1.8, Pixel size: 1.8μm, FOV: 83 ̊

Performance & battery life

When it comes to performance, we found that it was quite easy to multitask on the phone, with smooth transitions from app to app. Additionally, apps do not take a long time to load, thanks to the new Snapdragon® 8 Gen 2 Mobile Platform for Galaxy chip which means smoother graphics and faster AI. 

Compared to the iPhone, the Flip5 also offered various different password options like face recognition, fingerprints, PIN, password, and patterns. The keyboard is also useful, displaying both alphabets and numerical values for less back and forth. 

If we had to pin-point something, it would be that setting up your Samsung Galaxy Z Flip5 takes quite long with various steps and processes. Moreover, the android UI is decent, but it’s not on par with Apple’s user-friendly and modern design interface.

The Snapdragon® 8 Gen 2 Mobile Platform for Galaxy chip also fared well when it comes to gaming, with the phone able to process and keep up with quick graphics. However the phone did start to heat up after about 10-15 minutes of heavy use.

According to Samsung, the phone is backed up by a powerful processor and the 3700mAh battery stretches out the charge for longer periods of time. Though decent, we felt that that battery life drains pretty easily, especially when using multiple apps, gaming or using the camera for extended periods of time.

Final thoughts

When it comes to a foldable phone, The Samsung Galaxy Z Flip5 is easily one of the more impressive new generation flip phones out there. Combining both functionality and style, Samsung clearly understands how to appeal to both consumer types; the heavy duty phone users and those in it just for the aesthetics.

The high-end chip combined with the solid camera functionalities, and now the flex window keeps it far ahead of many foldable phones in the market right now.

With a few minor tweaks to the battery life and perhaps a review of the nighttime videography, Samsung Galaxy Z Flip5 is easily a recommend-worthy product to us. We can’t wait to see what’s next for Samsung and the foldable-phone market next!

The Samsung Galaxy Z Flip5 retails from S$1,498 (256GB) to S$1,678 (512GB). For more information, please click here. 

ALSO READ: Oppo aims to make foldable smartphones mainstream with the launch of Find N3 and Find N3 Flip

This article was first published in City Nomads.