Samsung Galaxy Z Flip 6 hands-on: our first impressions of this flip phone

The Galaxy Z Flip 6 has modest design improvements, but it's 50MP camera and larger battery make it our favorite clam-shell-style foldable phone

Pros

• ✅ 📸 50MP camera matches that of the bigger Fold 6

• ✅ 🎨 New bright and playful color options

• ✅ 💪 Beefier build makes this foldable stronger

• ✅ ⚙️ Latest Qualcomm chip with more memory and a new heatsink

• ✅ 🔋 Bigger battery fit into a compact design

Cons

• ❌ 🤑 $100 more expensive than last year’s Fold 5

Update: our full Samsung Galaxy Z Flip 6 review is now live, so you can judge for yourself whether or not you should buy this year’s clamshell-style foldable phone.

Samsung Galaxy Z Flip phones have arguably always been more popular than the company’s Fold phones that turn into tablets. However, they’ve also almost always played second fiddle to Samsung’s flagship foldable – always lagging with a weaker processor, less memory, shorter battery life, lower resolution camera, or another missed spec. That’s all changed with the Samsung Galaxy Z Flip 6.

This year, Samsung has upgraded its flip phone with the latest processor, more memory, a bigger battery, a higher-resolution camera, and a more rugged construction. Aside from the Samsung Galaxy Z Flip 6’s mostly untouched aesthetics, this is a whole new flip phone that’s in every way as premium as its bigger foldable sibling.

(credit: Kevin Lee / The Shortcut)

🌈 Same aesthetic, but more colorful. Unfortunately, the Samsung Galaxy Z Flip 6 does not feature a larger cover or main display like the Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 6. Aesthetically, the Flip 6 features the same overall design as its predecessor, including the folder-shaped cover screen. The differentiating feature of Samsung’s latest flip phone is the added color rings around the cameras. They’re a nice touch and I love the way the colored outlines match the overall color of the phone.

🍌 New exuberant colors. Speaking of colors, I love that the new color options are a bit more vibrant and full this year. You can get the Samsung Galaxy Z Flip 6 in silver shadow, yellow, and blue mint at any retailer. There’s also a Samsung online store exclusive white and material black colorway, the last of which features an etched glass-like finish.

🛡️Beefier defenses. The Flip 6 might not feature a new design, but it’s practically built out of all-new materials to make it more rugged for everyday use. The phone’s armor aluminum frame now features a matte finish that should be slightly less scratch-prone than the Samsung Galaxy Z Flip 5’s shiny metal rails. Samsung has also made the hinge sturdier with a dual rail mechanism, which should make the phone’s folding edge more resistant to sharp edges and pressure.

⚙️ Split widgets. Widgets on the cover screen were by far my favorite thing about the Flip 5 and now you can display more than one at a time on the Flip 6. Previously you could only display the calendar, clock, weather, or what have you in fullscreen on the cover screen. But now, you can have up to three widgets on the outer display. It takes a little bit of setup in the menus, and yes, you have to arrange them with the phone’s inner display, but this change makes the cover screen more versatile.

Some of Samsung’s new flip cases have light-up LEDs!

🌲 Pretty little trees. The new Flip 6 features some new attractive wallpapers, too. There are new life-like background options that react to your touch. Alternatively, the more static photo ambient wallpapers feature a still image that changes based on the current time and weather. My favorite of the new wallpapers are the ones that match Samsung’s new flip-suit cases, some of which include miniature LEDs that activate when you open the phone.

🗣️ Interpreter: conversation mode. Live translations are one of Galaxy AI’s most useful features, as seen in our Galaxy S24 Ulta review, and now you can display translations on Flip 6’s cover screen. This new interpretation of the translation feature looks straight out of Star Trek and it removes a bit of the awkwardness of waiting for translations to generate. You simply activate the Galaxy AI translator and open the phone halfway. As you speak the phone will display your speech in another language, while on your end you can see a transcription of what you originally said and translated replies from the other person.

📷 50MP main camera. Samsung has granted its smaller flip phone a 50MP sensor for its main camera, making it the same resolution as the Fold 6 primary snapper. That’s a huge bump in resolution over the Flip 5’s 12MP that just seemed basic. The higher resolution sensor in the Fold 6 also unlocks digital zoom for users and a new AI-enhanced auto-framing feature for photos and video. Sadly, the ultrawide camera is still stuck at only 12MP and selfies are still only at a pedestrian 10MP.

📹 Camcorder grip. You can also record videos with the Samsung Galaxy Z Flip 6 in a new camcorder grip. This new feature has you hold the phone sideways while it’s half-folded. While you’re doing this, you point to the top half of the device and watch the live preview like some kind of handheld power-level scanner from Dragon Ball Z. It’s an odd retro throwback, but it does give you a good grip of the phone and you operate the digital zoom slider with your thumb while holding the phone in this orientation.

🚗 Internal tune-up. Samsung has seriously upgraded the Galaxy Z Flip 6 in several ways. It’s running on Qualcomm’s latest Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 processor with 12GB of memory instead of the usual 8GB. It also packs in a new larger heat sink that’s 50% larger than the one in the Samsung Galaxy S23 Ultra – which was an odd comparison, but the heat sink should be pretty big since that phone was a honker of a traditional smartphone.

🔋 Boosted battery life. It also has a larger 4,000mAh battery, giving it 300mAh more power capacity than the Flip 5. That should let it last longer than its predecessor – which could already last for a full day of use – on paper, but we’ll have to put it to the test in our full review.

📈 Pricier hardware. Now, unfortunately, all of those improvements Samsung has made to the Galaxy Z Flip 6 have also made it more expensive starting at $1,099. That makes it $100 more expensive than the previous Flip 5 and the newly introduced Moto Razr+ 2024. The good news is Samsung runs $50 off deals at preorder and one of the industry’s best device trade-in programs to help reduce sticker shock.

Be sure to also check out our hands-ons with the new Samsung Galaxy Ring and Galaxy Buds 3 Pro.

Kevin Lee is The Shortcut’s Creative Director. Follow him on Twitter @baggingspam.