Samsung Galaxy Fold
The most forward-thinking phone you shouldn’t buy.
The arrival of the Samsung Galaxy Fold gives you the opportunity to own the future of smartphones and tablets, with a 2-in-1 design that just makes sense – if the bendable screen technology holds up.
It marries a tall, narrow 4.6-inch ‘cover’ display behind glass on the outside with the foldable, minitablet-like 7.3-inch ‘main’ display behind plastic on the inside. Samsung calls this the Infinity Flex Display, and its design really does dazzle.
The key to the Galaxy Fold’s book-like foldable design is a 20-part, dual-axis locking hinge that prevents the display from overextending past 180 degrees. Whereas the screen is delicate, the hinge feels like it’s been meticulously engineered to withstand abuse.
Opening and closing the Fold feels buttery smooth, and closing it ends with a satisfying magnetic click, like you’ve just closed up a book. Remember what it was like to hang up on people with a flip phone or even an old telephone? That feeling is back – only now, you’ll probably swallow them up in a video call.
Also coming back is smartphone heft. In its folded state, the Galaxy Fold is 17.1mm thick and weighs 276g; for comparison, the big-and-heavy Note 10 Plus is just 7.9mm and 196g. However, it’s narrower than you might think, and despite its thickness it isn’t hard to slip into a jeans pocket – it’ll even fit into tight-yet-deep jacket pockets that other phones can’t fit into, although there’s no escaping the fact that it’ll look like you’re packing two phones back-to-back.
Unfolded, it’s a reasonable 7.6mm thick. You’ll find a fingerprint sensor, power/
Bixby key, and volume rocker on the right (all accessible when the Fold is open or closed), and two speakers at the top and bottom. It’s easy to cover up these powerful Dolby Atmos stereo speakers when you’re playing games or watching videos in landscape orientation. Pro tip: instead of uncomfortably choking up your grip, try rotating the Fold 180 degrees – most apps will rotate just fine.
When it’s closed, an all-glass design envelopes the phone’s outside. The glass is slippery, but we found its folded size so easy to grasp that we didn’t feel the need to use the twopiece Aramid Fiber case that came in the box. This ease of handling is one of the things that struck us the most in our testing – while everything else about the Fold has a futuristic vibe, its narrow size took us back to a time when phones were easy to hold in one hand.
If you love big screens, but are tired of juggling big phones, this is the biggest phone we’ve tested... and smallest (recent phone) at the same time. It’s an idea that’s been more than 10 years in the making and, as Samsung likes to say, went through 1,000 different prototypes. It’s not a bad start, but there’s surely more innovation to come.
SCREEN
Beyond the mesmerising foldable design, the main display is impressive with only a few technical caveats, illustrating the cutting
“This phone is strictly for early adopters with money to burn and a penchant for impressing, and it’ll end up in a drawer with Google Glass and other gadgets ahead of their time”.
edge and its obvious downfalls.
The 7.3-inch display makes web browsing 1.4 times bigger than the Galaxy Note 10 Plus, and videos and games can appear 2.2 times bigger if they take up the full screen. It’s the reason to own a foldable phone. Alas, most video in the traditional 16:9 aspect ratio will only be 1.3 times bigger, with big black letterboxing at the top and bottom.
We found the big screen better for reading, web browsing, and gaming thanks to its 4.2:3 aspect ratio. This mirrors the traditional 4:3 TVs we did away with 15 years ago, but going back makes sense: it offers a broader view and makes way for Muti-Active Window mode. We had three apps open at once, and it was fairly usable.
Samsung has outfitted the Galaxy Fold with HDR10+, which bumps up the contrast ratio considerably on supported video content, and made it bright enough to be solidly visibly outdoors. You will find glare literally shines a light on the middle crease, indoors or outdoors, and you can feel the groove. The good news: like a notch, your brain will ignore it in time.
PERFORMANCE
Samsung Galaxy Fold isn’t going to outpace the performance of current phones, as if this were a specced-out gaming desktop at an absurd price. You’re paying for the screen innovation, not the latest chipset. That said, it matches the Galaxy S10 and Note 10 performance numbers thanks to its use of the Snapdragon 855 chipset.
Yes, Samsung could have opted to include the higher-end Snapdragon 855 Plus, but it stuck with the configuration announced in April. More importantly, it has 12GB of RAM that gives it a high yield when multiple apps are open.
It earned a multi-core score of 2,598, according to our Geekbench 5 benchmarking tests, with only the iPhone 11 Pro earning noticeably better marks (3,420). Without any noticeable lag, your foldable phone should be good to last – internally at least.
Testing proved that we could deplete the battery in a single day by gaming a bunch, binge-watching videos, and running multiple apps at once – basically running screen-on time to the max, the way a power user would on a long-haul flight.
VERDICT
The Samsung Galaxy Fold feels like the biggest sensation since the original iPhone – and, really, that’s the only reason to take a $2,999 risk on it. This phone is strictly for early adopters with money to burn and a penchant for impressing, and it’ll end up in a drawer with Google Glass and other gadgets ahead of their time. Everyone else should wait for something cheaper, better, and more durable in a few months.