Galaxy Z Fold 2 review: Samsung gets it right By CNET

It's gorgeous and refined, it's truly useful, and it fixes nearly every mistake that Samsung made with its first foldable phone the Galaxy Z fold.2 is truly a remarkable and unique advice that makes foldable phones less of a futuristic, curiosity or expensive toy and almost like a thing that somebody might actually use. Almost Samsung first launched the galaxy fold. It was a huge hit. I was so excited to use it, and then there were reports from reviewers that there were all sorts of damage that occurred that basically broke the phone Samsung took them all back, redesigned it, and even with the redesigned phone that fixed the major flaws, it still wasn't a joy to use. There were just too many problems with it, and it still seemed like a fascinating beta device. That was a blueprint, but not something that you could use in day-to-day life.

The z-fold 2 changes all of this. First, it's got a much larger outer screen. It has this beautiful hinge that feels so strong and so smooth Samsung has also made the hinge more tight and cohesive in the sense that when I look at it straight on and move it around, I see plastic. I see a lot of barriers and I can't even get my fingernail in any grooves inside there's no big ugly notch taking up your big, beautiful screen. You just have one little camera hole and that's perfect.

You know. Pricing hasn't actually changed that much from the original fold to the z fold too. It's only twenty dollars. More does bring you to two thousand dollars, which is quite a bit. It doesn't come with the case.

It doesn't come with headphones. So is it worth the price we are going to get to that? But first, let's talk about everything. This phone can do, let's start with design, because it is such an unusual one. I am absolutely in love with this mystic bronze color. It also comes in mystic black.

One of the things that I love about. It is that your fingerprints don't actually gum up on the back, because it's a matte finish. It's got gorilla glass, victim on the front, which is meant to be the strongest one of the strongest cover materials that you can have. Furthermore, it's got this beautiful metal frame and also glass on the back. Let's talk about this outer screen.

First, because Samsung made some big changes, and they're wonderful, mostly the screen is much bigger than before. This is a 6.2 inch display it's very tall and narrow, and that does have an effect when you're typing it does make the keyboard tiny. I found that I used this outer screen much more often than I thought that I would maybe 60 percent of the time, maybe even more, but this is where I open any apps and get those started. Do quick replies check in on things, but the outer screen is great because in the first iteration the screen was much smaller, and it wasn't really usable. One of the best things that you can do is open any single app that works with android from this display and then, if you want to see it, for example, you're looking at your email, or you want to see a picture that you've just taken, then you can open up the phone, and we'll take up that beautiful entire screen.

That's 7.6 inches on the inside, so I've talked about the dimensions. This phone is tall and narrow, it's also pretty heavy, and it is kind of like two phones stacked together. So it's thick, I can get it into the back pocket of my jeans. I can wedge it into the front pocket, but I don't really want that. It does tower out a little.

It doesn't feel totally comfortable because of the thickness of the phone, but it's also something that I really feel that almost anybody can get used to. In addition to being able to comfortably read on this outer display, I also really enjoyed it for watching video. Yes, I could open up the device and watch on the larger internal screen, but sometimes I got tired of holding it because it is pretty heavy, and it weighs on you um, or I wanted to just prop it up. While I was eating and have the phone open itself up, and you can actually see the video on the entire external display, and it's still pretty large, so I did find it very comfortable viewing. So I mentioned that you can open up any app on the outside and then unfold.

The phone and you've got it all on the inside, but Samsung has made it possible to actually go the other way that didn't happen as often with the original fold. But here you can dig into the settings menu a little and choose any app that you want to continue on from the inner screen to the outer screen when you close the device. One thing that I don't like- and this has everything to do with the fact that we've got two screens sandwiched together- is unlocking the phone. So you've got a power lock button. Here.

That's got a little trough and this is your fingerprint reader, and it's pretty comfortable to get to, but the problem is when the phone is closed. My thumb is pressing both of these surfaces at the same time. So, even though it's a pretty small target, and it's easy to hit, I got a lot of error messages, so I think that's a miss and when you're unlocking your phone dozens of times a day, it can get really annoying if it's not as responsive as you want it to be. So the interior screen is 7.6 inches. It is nice and big about the size of a small tablet.

It does have ultra-thin glass, as I mentioned, and there is a crease down the center, because that is just the nature of the beast, but it's not something that I really notice when I'm using the device. If I put my finger here along it, I feel it. If I look at the light, I see it, but when I'm watching video when I'm reading something when I'm immersed in an experience, I don't really notice it as much as the back of the phone doesn't pick up fingerprints, the inner screen really does, but because this is a phone that bends you do have to care for it differently and Samsung provides a lot of care instructions and one of them is that you can't get water on the device another. Are you don't want to apply too much pressure, so I haven't been cleaning the screen as much or as aggressively as I would with a phone that has a harder glass cover material and, as a result, the fingerprints definitely show. I absolutely love using this big inner screen for everything that you would expect watching.

Movies, looking at photos great for looking at photos that you've just taken galleries, but at the same time, for me, it's not that comfortable for typing. So I tried an experiment. I actually put aside my laptop for over 24 hours and I used the z-fold 2 instead, and I found that I was not as efficient doing the work for my full day as I wanted to be, it wasn't really comfortable to write stories or to edit. I would switch back to the smaller keyboard on the outer screen, but then it was too small, and I'd make mistakes. Also.

In fact, I found that I would actually fold the phone in half a little to bring the sides closer together, so I didn't have to reach as hard as I typed. Essentially, I think this is an area that could still use some improvement. One area where Samsung has really improved the experience on this inner screen is with multitasking. This can actually support up to three apps, and you can move them around. I found that this feature, which is called multi-active window, was something that I used really.

Naturally, it was definitely a benefit to have if you're, a fan of phones that have high refresh rates. Maybe you like to do a little gaming you'll, be happy to know that there's support on this larger interior screen for 120 hertz refresh rate. I definitely thought that the killer feature on this phone was going to be flex mode, and that is when the hinge can bend and hold itself in that position. But I found that I didn't actually use it as much as I thought. I really liked it on the Galaxy Z flip, because the dimensions of that phone are basically the same as folding the z-fold two in half and then folding it in half again vertically, but because of the dimensions when I fold this in half, it doesn't really work that great for video.

It doesn't work that great for video calls. I just feel that there need to be a few more apps that adapt themselves when you do fold the phone in order to make it truly useful. So you might expect that a 2 000 phones would have all the best cameras that Samsung could possibly make. But that isn't the case here, and that is because of the cost trade-off. What you do have is still quite good: you've got 12 megapixel cameras across the board from the wide angle, ultra-wide angle and telephoto lenses.

Plus you have a 10 megapixel camera on the front and a 10 megapixel sensor on the inside of the device. You can even use the rear cameras to take a selfie by pressing a button opening it up. The only problem is because you're holding the phone open, it's sort of off kilter, so you're not really getting yourself head on it's a little weird, but it's still a good idea. So you're not going to get the 5x optical zoom that you get with the Galaxy Note, 20 ultra, and you're not going to get any fancy 108 megapixel camera, but I still found that the photos were really clear: colorful detailed, totally 100 usable. I was happy with most of the ones that I took, but when you're trying to get up close on some architecture, that's way up high or set a scene up a specific way, or you want to really get detailed you're, just not going to have that with this phone to the same extent that you would with one of Samsung's.

Other devices will admit that I was worried about battery life for this phone, because it has two separate battery cells for a combined capacity of 4 500 William hours, which is the same as the note 20 ultra, whose battery life I was not very impressed with, and one thing that we know about batteries- is that when you split one big battery into two smaller pieces, they are inherently not as efficient. However, it was not as bad as I feared, thankfully, and I was able to take the phone from day to night. Remember how I said that I used this device instead of my laptop for over 24 hours. I still needed to charge it every day. I used it just like a normal device, but I was on it all day long, and it still lasted sure it drained a little later into the evening, but I still felt completely comfortable that I would have enough battery reserves before I went to bed as a rule of thumb.

Furthermore, I would say if you get this device depending on what you do, you'll want to keep an eye on battery. You should expect it to take you for morning to night, but you will want to charge it completely, probably at least once a day. The reason that I think battery life wasn't such a problem for me is because I use the outer screen so extensively. This is the screen that only has support for 60 hertz as the refresh rate and the interior screen is the one that has support for the much faster refresh rate, which is known to pull down more battery. The second factor is that there is a program on here called adaptive brightness, and that is the default mode, and what that means is that, when you're using the screen in a way that would take advantage of really smooth scrolling that you get with 120 hertz, then it's going to switch and use that if you're doing something static like I am right now, just staring at a screen doing absolutely nothing um.

Then it's going to fall back to the 60 hertz, so it will actually conserve energy. As for your other specs you've got your snapdragon 865 plus processor, on every single galaxy fold. That means you're not going to have a different processor if you buy it in a different region. You all get the same. There's also only one configuration with 256 gigabytes of onboard storage, no micro, SD card and no water resistance.

So you do want to be a little careful as a piece of innovative technology. I am really impressed with what I see. Samsung has made fantastic improvements to the first fold and, as I said earlier, transformed what was a concept, a blueprint for foldable devices and now to see and use this device. It is refined its lux. It actually seems like a device that somebody could have that.

I could see someone having right now. Samsung is treating this as a statement. Piece is something truly luxury, so I don't look at this and think that the device is overpriced and that Samsung needs to lower the cost, because it's too big a barrier to entry, and that is something that I felt for the Galaxy Note 20 ultra. So now for whether you should buy it. You need to ask yourself what you value most you've got to love technology in order to want this phone because it doesn't act the same way that a regular phone would the cameras aren't going to be quite as good they're still good, but they're not going to be the most amazing.

You have to want to have this kind of hybrid device that you think that you would take advantage of. If you think that you're going to kick back on the couch and really use the tablet part and then close it up and take it on the go, then this could be a device that you can integrate very easily into your daily life. However, it is still twice the price of a regular premium phone, and therefore it's not for everyone, but I do think that it is worth watching, even if you're never going to buy the device, because the pace of development is really quite fast and it is so exciting, and it's quite possible that a year from now the prices are going to come down, and you might find yourself using a phone just like the z-fold 2.

Source : CNET