The latest foldable device from Samsung has been with us a few weeks now and its about time we share some thoughts on the newest devices to Samsung’s flagship collection. Samsung are still very much the only real contender in the foldable mobile scene, so during initial impressions it’s it was clear that Samsung were going after refinement rather than redesign or large evolution.
Let’s not waste any more time and dive right into the review and breakdown of the Galaxy Z Fold 4.
Design
Other than some dimensional changes that Samsung have made, the Fold 4 could easily be mistaken for the Fold 3. It’s only when you have them side by side that begin to notice the differences.
The device is now slightly shorter than its predecessor. This goes along with the smaller bezel along the front display next to the hinge, providing a wider display. This aims to maybe not fix, but improve one of the biggest issues facing fold series, and that is having a very narrow front display.
The only other noticeable change this year is the slight reduction in hinge size, and weight. Samsung shaved off 8 grams from the device, but somehow this feels more noticeable than you would expect.
Performance
The Fold 4 gets the latest and greatest chipset from Qualcomm. The Snapdragon 8+ Gen 1. This chipset offers some of the best performance available on Android and does so with much better efficiency than the Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 we saw early in the year. This bodes well for the fact that while Samsung didn’t change the battery size this time around (still 4,400mAh) other improvements such as above mentioned efficiency and the display that now ranges refresh rate 120hz all the way down to 1hz. These changes alone have significantly increased the battery life performance of the Fold 4 over the Fold 3, and has even notable beaten the S22 Ultra in battery tests.
Software
Samsung are launching the Fold 4 with Android 12L. This brings some changes to Android that make support for foldable and larger displays a bit more well rounded. That being said, Samsung had already been devleoping OneUI to work well under their Foldable series. Multi-tasking is taking spotlight this time around, with taskbar being a main focus point. This feature was previously available on the Fold3 but with a caveat of being side position only. Now the taskbar is where you would expect it and this provide quick switching between apps and easier launching of apps into mutli-window.
Camera quality
The main shooter on the Fold 4 is now a much larger 50MP with 1.0µm pixel size. This is the first big upgrade the series has seen since launching. While it doesn’t bring it inline with the S22U offerings, it certainly steps up the game nicely. The camera MP bump also allows the Fold 4 to record 8K video, but that is really not something we really recommend anyone actually doing.
The camera performance is a definite improvement over the Fold 3 and in some case provides some top quality shots even compared to the S22U and iPhone 13 Pro. Smartphones have been constantly moving towards computational photography, where MP and hardware specs are becoming less and less as important as the software and image processing involved.
Performance
