Samsung Galaxy Z Fold5 Review: A desirable phone with minor upgrades

Samsung Galaxy Fold5. Picture: Noel Campion.

The Galaxy Z Fold5 is a minor upgrade over the Z Fold4. It is a series of refinements and software tweaks that make it one of the most desirable phones.

Samsung sent a Galaxy Z Fold5 review unit in the stunning Icy Blue colourway, but the device is also available in Phantom Black and Cream.

First Impressions

The Z Fold5 comes in a sleek box, thanks to the lack of a power adapter. The package includes a USB Type-C data and charging cable without an adapter, a SIM card ejection tool, and a safety manual. The packaging is similar to what we've seen with the Fold4. However, my loan unit arrived with the new Fold case, which is 27% slimmer and the S-Pen.

Taking the Z Fold 5 out of the box and holding it for the first time gives you a premium feel. The Z Fold5 is 10g lighter and more compact, thanks to some minor tweaks by Samsung.

The new Z Fold5 now folds flat. Gone is the gap that gathers dust and debris on the Z Fold4. At its highest point, the latter was 15.8mm, while the new phone is only 13.4mm, and it makes a difference, especially design standpoint. Notably, the Ice Blue shade does an excellent job of repelling fingerprint smudges.

Folding the phone reveals the Samsung logo on the hinge, concealed when used in the unfolded state. I noticed the logo is now printed in the Z Flip5 and Z Fold5 rather than the more premium embossed logos in previous versions.

The all-new folding mechanism feels more rigid and durable while opening and shutting the phone.

Displays

The AMOLED cover display, measuring 6.2 inches diagonally, is stunning. The larger 7.6-inch Dynamic AMOLED display is twice as good. Both feature a 120Hz refresh rate.

The main display is QXGA+ (2176 x 1812, 21.6:18), 374ppi, 120Hz adaptive refresh rate (1~120Hz) and the cover display is HD+ (2316 x 904, 23.1:9), 402ppi with 120Hz adaptive refresh rate (48~120Hz). The main display gets a bump in peak brightness from 1,200 nits to 1,750 nits.

The cover screen has the same aspect ratio as the Fold4 and is fine for most tasks, but the keyboard can feel a bit cramped, leading to many typos. The main display is gorgeous, but I find it a handful to hold one-handed, which forces me to use both hands. The crease feels the same, which is disappointing, considering other models I’ve reviewed have a much shallower valley.

Cameras

The phone's back cover houses a triple camera setup with the same specifications as the Z Fold4. The camera performance is impressive, but I didn’t have a Z Fold4 to compare; however, I think the results will be similar.

The selfie

The cover screen has the same 10MP selfie snapper, while the main screen houses the same 4MP in-screen camera, discreetly placed to not interfere with your viewing experience. The selfie camera still needs improvement, which only encourages you to use the cover screen or rear cameras.

Performance

Under the hood, the Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 5 packs insane power thanks to the Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 for Galaxy. Although this is the same chipset found on the Z Flip5, it performed much better. Also, during my stress testing benchmarks, the Z Fold5 maintained its performance much better than the Z Flip5 due to the latter reducing power to deal with heat. However, the Z Fold5 didn’t perform as well as the RealMagic 8S Pro, which has active cooling and is powered by an overclocked Snapdragon 8 Gen 2.

Price and availability

The Galaxy Z Fold5 starts at €1,999 and is available for pre-order now and will be on sale from 11th August via www.samsung.com/ie and select partners.