Samsung Galaxy Z Flip 6 review: Flippin’ fabulous

A couple of weeks before I wrote this review, I was out for dinner with some friends. You might wonder why I’m telling you this, but there’s a point, I promise. One of those friends had bought a Galaxy Z Flip 5 after they had seen my review sample in 2023 and they whipped it out to take a group selfie. They used the selfie camera on the main display rather than the rear cameras and the external display. 

Shocked, I asked what they were doing and why they weren’t using gestures and folding the device on the table to get a better picture from the rear cameras. Turns out they had no idea those features existed. They bought the Z Flip 5 because it, well, it flipped in half and they thought it was cool.

My point – I did tell you there was one – is that Samsung’s Galaxy Z Flip series isn’t necessarily about the features it offers, but the novelty value and, despite being in its 6th generation, that hasn’t waned. For the few weeks I had the Samsung Galaxy Z Flip 6, every time I pulled it out of my bag or pocket, it was met with staring eyes and dropping jaws. Is that enough to buy it though? Here’s my full review.

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The Disconnekt Downlow

The Samsung Galaxy Z Flip 6 is a great phone. There’s a sense of nostalgia that you don’t get with regular phones and while its competition is tough these days, Samsung makes excellent phones and the Galaxy Z Flip 6 is one of them. There’s a premium build, good camera performance, decent displays and some welcomed design tweaks from the Galaxy Z Flip 5. More could be done with the Galaxy Z Flip 6’s external display, charging could be faster and the Galaxy AI features don’t all add to the overall experience. But if you’re considering a flip phone, the Galaxy Z Flip 6 oozes quality, there’s a good user experience and some of the AI features are useful.

Buy from £1,049 on Amazon

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The reasons you should choose Samsung Galaxy Z Flip 6

There are a lot of things to love about the Samsung Galaxy Z Flip 6, but the thing I loved most is how utterly adorable it is. That’s been the case since the original Z Flip and it remains the case in this device. The design has changed slightly since the Galaxy Z Flip 5, with squarer edges and an aluminium surround adorning the rear camera lenses, both of which are welcomed changes. There’s also a matte finish for this year and that’s the nicest element about the design changes in the new model. I liked the glossy finish of the Galaxy Z Flip 5 but the matte of the Z Flip 6 is more subtle and it feels nice in the hand with a soft-to-touch finish.

The crease on the main display is definitely less visible on the Z Flip 6 compared to previous models too, and the hinge feels sturdier, allowing for various different bending angles. Of course, it’s not all about looks. Is it ever? But there’s plenty to love on the inside too. 

The main display is brighter, and in true Samsung form, it’s vibrant and punchy with plenty of detail. The rear cameras have also been improved for this iteration, and the result is decent images, especially in good lighting conditions. 

You won’t get the kind of results you’ll find on flagships like the Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra, Google Pixel 9 XL or the Apple iPhone 15 Pro Max, but the images are certainly better than they were in previous iterations of the Galaxy Z Flip 5 with a 50-megapixel main sensor and 12-megapixel ultrawide lens offering good detail and plenty of pop. They are over-saturated, which means colours are brighter than you’d see with your naked eye – like very green grass and very blue sky, but that also makes them great for sharing and they look excellent when viewed on Samsung’s AMOLED display.

There are a few extra camera elements enhanced by Galaxy AI – more on that in a second – and there’s a camcorder mode too, which enhances the novelty value of this device. Launch the video on the camera app, fold the Galaxy Z Flip 6 and spin it into a camcorder position and you get “Rec” and “Stby” appear in the top left corner, turning the Galaxy Z Flip 6 into an old school video recorder from the 80s. Like the Galaxy Z Flip 5, you can fold the Galaxy Z Flip 6 and hold your hand up to take selfies using the external display, but the Galaxy Z Flip 6 also has an Auto Zoom feature that uses AI to automatically fit people into the frame – it’s clever and it works well.

In terms of pure novelty value though, it never gets boring flipping the Z Flip 6 shut to make it smaller and more compact, fitting nicely into pockets and bags. There’s something quite special about hanging up a call by snapping the Z Flip 6 shut too, especially if you’re angry with someone. Pressing the red button on a touchscreen definitely doesn’t have quite the same level of satisfaction and while the Galaxy Z Fold 6 might have some more use cases with its larger display when open, I’d pick the Flip any day of the week for its small and compact form factor.

What Samsung Galaxy Z Flip 6 could do better

Nothing is perfect and there are some areas the Samsung Galaxy Z Flip 6 could improve. The external display is one of those areas. It’s larger than it was when the Galaxy Z Flip first launched, but it’s the same size as the Galaxy Z Flip 5 and it does pretty much the same too. There are no new features as such – except for Auto Zoom – and it’s still harder than it should be to edit it and make it what you want it to be.

You can’t change the quick settings that appear on the external display for example, and getting apps like WhatsApp to appear require you to dive into the Labs section of settings, which honestly is too much for the average user. If you love tech and you’re into that sort of geekiness, then you’ll find things like that easy, but for the average person, Labs is the kind of thing most people would find quite intimidating. Motorola offers support for apps like WhatsApp straight off the bat on the Razr’s external display so I can’t really understand why Samsung doesn’t.

The battery life could also be better. You’ll get through a day depending on what kind of user you are, but charging speeds are still what I would consider to be relatively slow. The Galaxy Z Flip 6 supports charging speeds up to 25W, and while that’s not slow as such, it is compared to some Android phones out there, with some offering over 5x that. Faster charging would allow you to top up the Galaxy Z Flip 6 without getting any kind of battery anxiety if you were heading into an evening event after work, for example.

The Galaxy Z Flip 6 also offers 2x zoom from the camera, allowing you to get a little closer without losing detail and without the need for an additional telephoto lens, but the 2x zoom could be easier to find. On iPhone for example, the 2x and 5x options are on the main camera screen as soon as you open up the camera app. For Samsung’s Galaxy Z Flip 6, they don’t appear straight away so if you didn’t know 2x zoom was available, you might not realise.

What does Galaxy AI offer on the Z Flip 6?

Samsung has revealed a number of new smartphones in 2024 and all of them have ushered in artificial intelligence in the form of Galaxy AI. We all know AI is the buzzword of this year, with Google having announced its Pixel 9 devices with Gemini, Apple about to announce its iPhone 16 devices with Apple Intelligence and companies like Oppo and OnePlus also offering their take on AI, but whether it is a soul reason to buy a device is questionable.

Some Galaxy AI features are helpful and some are good fun, others are a little gimmicky and don’t really add much to the general experience. Google’s Circle to Search feature is pretty neat, allowing you draw a circle around anything you see online to get related search results, like where a friend got their top from for example, while some of the camera features are genuinely great.

When you remove something from the background of an image, it’s not always perfect, but the results are often better than the bin ruining your selfie, or the random person in your beautiful landscape shot. Sketch to Image is hilarious. Sometimes it produces exactly what you would hope for, other times not so much. You can either draw in notes, or you can add to an image and while I don’t think it particularly enhances your life or makes life any easier as such, it’s got good entertainment value. 

The Live Translate feature also has potential, though I think it would be a little awkward making someone read the front of your Galaxy Z Flip 6 screen while you speak a different language and hope the feature translates what you’re saying properly. Then again, if it means you get a beer instead of water when ordering in a country you don’t speak the language of, happy days. 

I think the Chat Assist features and summaries are probably the least exciting, but as a journalist, I don’t need a computer to draft an email for me, or suggest replies to a text that make me sound like a robot. It’s also a little frustrating that some of the features rely on you using Samsung’s native apps and keyboard, as Google’s keyboard is significantly better and so are some of the apps so I’d like to see Galaxy AI expand beyond Samsung’s own apps in future devices.

Should you buy the Samsung Galaxy Z Flip 6?

The Samsung Galaxy Z Flip 6 is a great phone. There’s a sense of nostalgia that you don’t get with regular phones and while its competition is tough these days, Samsung makes excellent phones and the Galaxy Z Flip 6 is one of them. There’s a premium build, good camera performance, decent displays and some welcomed design tweaks from the Galaxy Z Flip 5.

More could be done with the Galaxy Z Flip 6’s external display – especially given the competition is pushing the boundaries, charging could be faster and the Galaxy AI features don’t all add to the overall experience.

But if you’re considering a flip phone, the Galaxy Z Flip 6 oozes quality, there’s a good user experience with some handy features like Auto Zoom and those gestures for selfies I mentioned at the beginning, while some of the AI features are useful. It’s expensive and there are cheaper flip phones out there but Samsung does a great job with this device, as it has done since the Z Flip launched. 

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