My Samsung Galaxy Z Fold5 Had A Problem I Will Never Unsee / Full Z Fold5 Review!

The new Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 5 has landed with a brand new flat fold, faster CPU, and a slimmer design. But at a starting price of $1800 before discounts or trade ins… that’s a really hefty price. Does it stack up, or is this a phone you can skip?

I actually skipped last year’s Z Fold 4 because the upgrades from the Z Fold 3 were fairly minimal, but I was interested in testing the 5’s new design in hand, so I purchased this one out of pocket - huge thanks for watching my videos and subscribing, as that helps me bring these in for review.

My short unboxing video shows what’s included in the box, and it comes in a few colors - blue, blue but icy, gray, black, and my choice - cream. TBH I find these colors to be dull and unexciting. I liked the Phantom White of the Fold 3 because of that almost holographic rainbow shine, the new colors are matte and don’t really give off any personality.

But Samsung did give us a ton of great trade in deals this year, plus a free storage upgrade from 256 to 512 GB for that $1800 starting price. The phones just shipped around August 11, though some folks got them early - good job Samsung on the shipping this year.

By the way, huge thank you to my patreon Smores and my Youtube channel members for supporting unsponsored videos like this one. Your support makes these videos happen.

Even though the colors leave a lot to be desired, the design has some beautiful improvements. We’ve got the aluminum frame, tis a shiny frame, with the matte gorilla glass victus 2 back. All the ports are in the same spots, but the Flex Hinge is very improved. Unlike previous Folds, the new one has zero gap. This is best demo’d side by side with an older Fold, like my Fold 3. Here, you can see how much thinner this new hinge is, and how much thinner it makes the whole device when folded. It looks a lot more premium and it feels less bulky. It looks cleaner and and more chic. The hinge doesn’t stick out as far when folded and is less rounded. And when opened, the screen snaps to 180 degrees with a subtle shift in friction. Opening and closing feel less resistant than the older hinge too. Like you know how power steering works with your motions? That’s how this new hinge feels. The redesign gives this phone smaller dimensions all around and it sits at 13.4 mm thickness, 8.92 oz.

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  • Dimensions:

    • 6.10 x 5.11 x 0.24 inches (154.9 x 129.9 x 6.1 mm)

  • Weight:

    • 253 g or 8.92 oz

Samsung says the new 5th generation hinge will withstand 200k folds over 5 years of usage, which is also how long their devices now get security updates too.

The phone is IPX8 water resistant, that doesn’t include dust resistance at that certification level.

The cover display is still 6.2”, it’s AMOLED and has that nice 120Hz refresh rate which you can change in the settings to conserve battery. It’s also nice and bright, on par with my S23 Ultra. Here are all the specs of the cover display - feel free to pause and read over if interested. The cover display is still narrow, too narrow in my opinion to be useful for anything that involves typing. I use a customized Gboard keyboard and change some of the preferences to help with this but you can’t make a physical display any wider so there’s only so much you can do.

It’s a flat display, the bezels are comparable to the older Folds. No really defining changes here.

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  • Cover Display:

    • 6.2“ Dynamic AMOLED 2X Infinity-O HD+

    • 120Hz Adaptive Refresh Rate

    • 2316 x 904 pixels

    • 402ppi

    • 1,750nits (Outdoor Peak)

The main display is also pretty similar to the older Folds with one major improvement. The AMOLED display’s dimensions are still 7.6”, and you’ll get that nice, crisp high nits brightness, along with that aspect ratio that makes this slimmer than the pixel fold. The bezels are certainly thinner than my previous fold3, and the crease has improved a ton. I don’t notice the crease as much when moving my finger across it. It seems shallower and fairly smooth. Obviously, you can still see it but compared to my Fold3, its much nicer to use. I’d say it’s on par with the Pixel Folds crease, which I was also impressed with. If I was to be nit-picky - I noticed that the protective screen cover leaves a little bit more room on the left side than on the right side - and that made me realize that the bezels are a little bit wider than on the right side - is that because the active AMOLED screen isn’t exactly centered? Anyone else notice that? I can show y’all this with my fingernail up close - I don’t have any wiggle room on the left side, but the right side gives me some noticeable wiggle room between the screen protector and the edge of the frame and casing of the phone. I’m never going to unsee that.

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  • Main Display:

    • 7.6" Dynamic AMOLED 2X Infinity Flex QXGA+

    • 120Hz Adaptive Refresh Rate

    • 2176 x 1812 pixels

    • 374ppi

    • 1,750nits (Outdoor Peak)

    • 21.6:18 aspect ratio

    • 91% screen to body ratio

I took a whole slew of photos and videos with this new phone, both in an outdoor setting and indoors. But first, here’s the specs of the rear cameras, which do protrude a little farther, but you will probably notice the specs have not changed from the Fold4. But the Image Sensor Processor is new, and that allows for some upgrades to the computational photography. Of course I don’t have a Fold 4, but I definitely see an improvement over the Fold 3. I’ll compare the Pixel Fold photography in another video! Here are some examples I shot along with some videos. Let me know what you think of the audio and stabilization of the videos and the photography.

The cover camera also saw no major upgrades other than the ISP, but I still had fun taking some selfies with it to test out. Here are some of my example photos I took over the weekend!

Folding phones give you the option of using the rear facing cameras as selfie lenses and that’s such a great feature of foldables that I use it as a content creator a lot more than I want to admit. I still think that front facing under screen lens is a potato, with potato quality. Stop putting potatoes in phones, they prefer to be boiled, mashed, and put in stews… Not in phones.

• Cameras

  • Rear cameras

    • Rear: 50MP Wide (ois), 12MP Ultra Wide, 10MP Tele 3x Optical Zoom 30x Space Zoom

    • Rear: 50MP (f/1.8) 85˚, 12MP (f/2.2) 123˚, 10MP (f/2.4) 36˚

    • Front: 10MP Cover, 4MP Main

    • Front: 10MP (f/2.2) 85˚, 4MP (f/1.8) under screen 80˚

    • Video recording

      • 8K video recording at 24 fps (7680x4320)

    • Dual Preview gives you previews on both screens

    • Flex Mode for hands free video

You get either 256, 512 GB, or 1 TB of storage with 12 GB RAM, plus the Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 Mobile processor and the Adreno 740. This is definitely a very zippy phone.

I found my 3D Mark scores kinda surprising because it turns out my Pixel Fold ranked a lot higher for performance than the Fold 5 did. I was expecting the Snapdragon to rank better. But this is an excellent example of how specs and benchmarks aren’t the full story - just because something ranks better doesn’t mean you’ll get better quality. My Pixel Fold doesn’t do as well when editing 4k video files as my Fold 5 does, for example.

Samsung packs in their OneUI 5.1.1 here and it does have some upgrades in terms of features and usability. Multitasking has gotten easier with the improved recent apps screen here and there are little UI changes to things like the Camera App.

Of course, Samsung’s apps are preinstalled on here, and I recommend disabling all the diagnostic settings during setup (you don’t need to share that data with Samsung mkay). The Fold5 is compatible with S Pens but only the S Pen Fold Edition. Other S Pens may damage the folding screen and it doesn’t work on the external screen. So there’s a lot of limitations there, plus there’s no where to store your S Pen without buying the additional case for it too.

But OneUI does support some cool features. Multitasking on here is really efficient and offers up some excellent productivity. Multi Control allows you to use a keyboard and mouse across multiple compatible Samsung devices so you can switch back and forth.

They offer 5 years of security updates, and Knox Vault is built in for security hardware isolation for your biometrics and credential data.

Face Unlock is also included as is a capacitive power button, and no ultrasonic in screen fingerprint sensor.

Most of my recent phones have had no issues with connectivity and I can add this one to that list. 5G speeds here in Denver are as expected - keep in mind your own carrier, location, and physical obstructions will make your own speeds vary. The WiFi 6E gives me fast speeds, and Bluetooth 5.3 (ooo, that’s new!), offers a great connection to my earbuds.

There are two speakers - one at the top and one at the bottom. Pretty standard sound quality, but slightly better bass than on my older fold3.

The screen on time was great in my tests. With the 4400mAh battery, I got it down to 5% after 12 hours and 30 minutes of use, with 11 hours and 15 minutes of screen on time. That’s with full brightness, 120Hz, opened the whole time. You’ll get better battery in normal usage days - more like a day and a half.

It does include powershare, qi wireless charging, and fast charging via wired. Wireless will get you 15W and wired tops out at 25W.

Honestly since the upgrades are so minimal if you don’t mind a hinge that doesn’t close all the way, you might want to look at getting a Fold 4 if you can find a sweet deal on it. The 5 is beautifully designed, but the overall upgrades are pretty minor. It IS worth it if you’re upgrading from a foldable that’s maybe 3 years old or more.

You can probably tell that I’m a bit underwhelmed, though I really appreciate how refined a lot of the details are with the Fold 5. At this point I feel like “ok, we’ve seen what folding phones can do…” where do we go from here? If it were up to me, I’d put the S23 Ultra cameras in this phone, put an ultrasonic fingerprint sensor back in the screen, give me a better camera on the folding display (the main display lens is a potato c’mon), and I’d increase the width of the cover screen so it’s more usable. I want to see some ingenuity that WOWs me and these are still problems that I have to settle with. And at 2 grand… ehhh, I’m not quite sold.

I feel like the fanboys are gonna come at me for saying it’s not perfect, but that’s my honest opinion and I have 5 folding phones on my desk right now that I’m testing. Do you agree? Feel free to share your tea in the comments.

Keep an eye out on my channel for a few more video deep dives and comparisons on this phone. I’ll see ya soon. Bye yall.