Folding screen phones have been popular for a long time and are undoubtedly the veterans in the mobile phone industry. Looking back carefully, We can even recall the excitement and surprise of seeing a folding screen phone for the first time. But if we look at the time, folding screen phones have also gone through five years since their birth, and have stabilized from durability, performance, experience and other aspects, becoming the flagship products of mainstream cell phone brands. But after maturity, does innovation cease to exist?
On August 3, Samsung officially released its folding screen series of the latest products Galaxy Z Fold5 and Galaxy Z Flip5. As the pioneer and deep cultivator of the folding screen cell phone category, Samsung's folding screen cell phone has experienced five generations of development. What other innovations can Samsung make on what is probably the most mature folding screen product in the industry? Here are some of the feelings I gained during my one-week experience.
Appearance: upgraded hinge, thinner and lighter body
At first glance at the Samsung Galaxy Z Fold5, you may have the same feeling as me, it looks like nothing has changed, yet it feels as if it's not quite the same when you use it. Don't worry, your feeling is not wrong, this time the Galaxy Z Fold5, although the overall continuation of the industrial design style of the previous model, but in the details of the optimization.
First let's take a look at the key component of the folding screen phone --- the hinge, Samsung this time for the Galaxy Z Fold5 with a water drop hinge, finally solved the historical legacy of the screen closed poorly, but also incidentally further cut the thickness of the fuselage, the overall feel of the hand to get a further improvement.
In terms of external design, Galaxy Z Fold5 follows its predecessor's combination of matte glass back cover and bright metal frame, which is excellent in terms of perception and texture, but the glossy design of the frame also makes it a "fingerprint collector", which needs to be wiped off more often in daily use. It is worth mentioning that in order to increase the strength and rigidity of the body, Galaxy Z Fold5 uses "armored aluminum" material in the outer frame and hinge position, which is more durable.
The Samsung Galaxy Z Fold5 features an oval shaped rear module that has just the same curvature as the three cameras, creating a natural harmony. Samsung also used Corning Gorilla Glass Victus 2 glass, which has tough properties, to protect the rear camera module and the back cover of the Samsung Galaxy Z Fold5, making the back panel "indestructible" by all means.
With the outside out of the way, let's open up the phone to get a good look at the Galaxy Z Fold5's interior screen. Thanks to the narrowed bezels, the Galaxy Z Fold5's inner screen size is still 7.6 inches though. In addition, the Galaxy Z Fold5's internal screen supports a variable refresh rate of 1-120Hz, which allows the phone to automatically adjust to the optimal screen refresh rate according to the content displayed on the screen, which not only provides a better visual experience but also effectively reduces power consumption.
In the inner screen, the Galaxy Z Fold5 is still equipped with a 4-megapixel under-screen camera, but thanks to technological advances, the pixel density of the Galaxy Z Fold5's inner-screen camera portion has been dramatically improved, which makes this under-screen camera even more invisible and maximizes the integrity of the inner screen, thus achieving a complete and unobstructed view of the screen.
In addition, the Galaxy Z Fold5 also supports customized adjustment of the screen white balance, which allows you to control the overall tone of the phone's screen according to your personal preferences, presenting the most ideal display in your mind.
Galaxy Z Fold5 adopts the unlocking method of side identification, this kind of identification area attached to the physical keys, does not affect the aesthetics of the screen on the front of the phone in the slightest, and does not damage the integrity of the back of the body, to ensure the integration of the body. In actual use, the fingerprint unlocking area and the on/off button into one, so that the one-handed operation of a lot of dexterity, after the screen is unfolded due to the thumb right in the recognition area also makes each time the closure is more convenient.
Overall design, Galaxy Z Fold5 although the corners are rounded, but the overall shape is still mainly square, the aura is very strong; when the screen is unfolded after the body hinge and frame parallel very neat. In addition to adhering to the aesthetics of order in appearance, it has incorporated its own unique aesthetic genes, which is unique among folding screen phones.
Performance: flagship core is powerful enough
As a flagship model, Samsung Galaxy Z Fold5 naturally adopts the latest flagship processor second-generation Snapdragon 8 mobile platform (for Galaxy), and comes standard with 12GB of ultra-large RAM and up to 1TB of storage options, as well as UFS 4.0 flash memory to provide constant power for gaming performance. Let's follow the usual practice of examining the Galaxy Z Fold5's gaming performance through both score and gaming tests.
First of all, the score part, here I used AnTuTu and 3D Mark for testing, you can see that AnTuTu V10 scores reached 1568934 points, 3D Mark Wild Life Extreme scores reached 3909 points, the performance is very good.
Of course, score tests are certainly not exactly in line with users' real-world usage scenarios. In order to test the Galaxy Z Fold5's performance limits, I chose to test the most heavily loaded gaming scenarios in most users' daily use, and here we chose “Genshin Impact” for the test.
During the test, I used the High Quality + 60 fps setting, and during the 20-minute test, the Galaxy Z Fold5 kept its frame rate above 40 the entire time, which fluctuated to a certain extent, but did not go back to have a noticeable impact on the gaming experience during the real-world test, with a final average frame rate of 51.2fps.
It is worth noting that in the process of game play thanks to the Samsung Galaxy Z Fold5 uses stereo speakers to support Dolby Atmos, whether it is a single-player combat or multi-player melee game implemented to provide users with shocking sound effects and a wide sound field experience, inserted into the headset creates a sense of distance and a sense of orientation of the sound field is more intense.
Image: flagship triple camera combo easily records the beauty of life
Being a folded flagship, the Galaxy Z Fold5 doesn't fall short in terms of imaging capabilities. In the rear camera module, the Galaxy Z Fold adopts a combination of a 50-megapixel main camera + a 12-megapixel ultra wide-angle lens + a 10-megapixel 3x telephoto lens, where both the main camera and the telephoto lens support optical stabilization. In terms of parameters, this configuration is already on par with the straight flagship S series, reaching the first tier.
From the following sample photos taken with the Galaxy Z Fold5 main camera, you can see that its imaging effect is excellent, and it can easily record the details of the objects in the scene. When photographing buildings in a natural light environment, it is able to present the light and shadow effects brought about by the light very well, and at the same time, its bias towards the bright color style is very appealing to the eye.
The ultra wide-angle lens of Galaxy Z Fold5 has a unique imaging effect when shooting large scenes, and has an irreplaceable position in daily shooting. the ultra wide-angle lens of Galaxy Z Fold5 has an equivalent focal length of 16mm, which can easily record a wider image when shooting scenes such as architecture, group photos, etc. The image quality is not inferior to that of the main camera. In terms of image quality, the Galaxy Z Fold5's ultra wide-angle lens is not inferior to the main camera, and it is believed that it can meet the image quality needs of most users.
Experience: system-level optimizations take productivity a step further
For folding screen phones, how to use the big screen is always the key to the use experience. As a pioneer in the field of folding screen phones, Samsung has naturally made a lot of efforts in this regard. On the Galaxy Z Fold5, Samsung has equipped it with OneUI 5.1.1 based on the bottom layer of Android 13, so let's see how the Galaxy Z Fold5's big screen experience really is.
For computers, the existence of the taskbar can help us quickly and freely switch between multiple applications, greatly enhancing the use of multi-tasking running efficiency. From the last generation to join after the user response is very good, in the opening of the application, the bottom of the desktop dock bar will be automatically stowed to the bottom of the user to facilitate rapid switching.
And if you long press the icon and drag it, you can trigger the split-screen function, which can open up to three apps on the same screen, making full use of the space advantage brought by the large screen. If there is still a need to open more apps, you can use the floating window function, with the help of this feature, the Galaxy Z Fold5 can open up to eight apps at the same time, I believe that even for heavy use, it can be easily satisfied.
Thanks to the Galaxy Z Fold5's swivel-stop hinge, Samsung has also added multiple vertical interaction modes to it. Users can adjust the screen opening and closing at multiple angles, and with the adaptive split-screen feature, they can operate it as if they were using a laptop, making it easier to handle work. This can also be utilized to unlock more angles of selfie hiding by placing the phone on a desktop.
With the increasingly powerful performance of smart phones, cell phone manufacturers are also constantly thinking about whether it is possible to replace the bulky computer through cell phones, and truly realize a machine in the hand, office at any time. Samsung as an early involvement in this field of manufacturers, the introduction of its Samsung Dex function after a long period of upgrading, and now in the use of the process has been able to provide quite good performance.
Currently Samsung Dex's screen casting mode not only supports wired connection, but also has the option of wireless connection. Through this function can not only Galaxy Z Fold5 cell phone screen casting to support WiFi connection display device, but also can realize the display device and cell phone respectively display different screen split screen casting function, for example, we will online class video casting to the display, and then we use the S Pen in the cell phone for class notes record, realize listening to the class notes both.
Apart from the cast mode, Samsung Dex also has a desktop mode. We can now run Samsung Dex desktop mode on PC or Mac by installing Dex app on PC or Mac. Simply put, it means that we can control the phone and read the files in the phone and use the apps on the phone directly through the computer under the Windows system, thus realizing the interoperability of information between the computer and the phone, and opening the ecological barriers between the phone and the computer.
With the help of multiple software optimizations, Galaxy Z Fold5 can dramatically improve users' efficiency in daily use, giving full play to the productivity advantages of the large screen, making it extremely attractive for business people.
Write at the end
To conclude the article, let's go back to that opening question, does the maturity of folding screen phones mean that innovation is stagnating? The answer is obviously no. As Samsung's fifth-generation folding screen phone, Galaxy Z Fold5 still provides users with an even better experience by optimizing the details in appearance, image, system and other aspects on the premise that the product form has matured.
As a company with a leading edge in the field of folding screen phones, Samsung has always led the development of folding screen phones. Along with the rapid development of the folding screen cell phone market, Samsung has chosen to provide users with higher quality folding screen cell phone products through continuous technological innovation. I believe that under the leadership of products like Galaxy Z Fold5 that continue to improve, folding screen phones will also become more and more popular.
