Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 6 review: Nips and tucks in all the right places

I pull the Z Fold 6 from my pocket, open it up and show something on the huge 7.6-inch display to my dinner companion. The conversation from the neighbouring table pauses; I notice a sideways glance. A look of wonder crosses the face of the adjacent diner. It flicks to envy and back to intrigue. For a second I see the spark of rebellion in those onlooking eyes.

The conversation resumes as I flick through gloriously vibrant photos on the Galaxy Z Fold 6 and I sense that the spark from those onlookers has gone. I snap the phone closed and there it is again, the spark, the look. This is what living with the Galaxy Z Fold 6 is like. It happens everywhere you go. Despite being around for 6 years, folding phones are still a rare sight, a novel fascination, an intriguing challenge to convention.

Isn’t it about time you did something with that intrigue?

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The Disconnekt Downlow

The Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 6 remains one of the best large format folding phones you can buy. The design has been nipped tucked to make it slimmer and sharper than before, while the new cover screen is a better width for daily use. There’s loads of power and that main folding screen is glorious, giving loads of play space – even if it’s a little too reflective in bright conditions.

The cameras may not be the best that Samsung has put into a phone and that clashes with the high price that Samsung puts on this phone. But once you start using the big display and discover the practicality, it’s hard to go back to a normal phone. At its core, this phone will do things that others can’t – and that might just be worth paying that high price for.

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The reasons you should choose the Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 6

Samsung has two folding phones and this one, the Galaxy Z Fold, is the less popular of the two. That might sound like a strange thing to highlight at the start of a review, but there’s no avoiding that the Z Flip is the more popular option. Samsung sells more than twice the volume of Flip phones than it does Fold, according to data from 2022.

The Z Flip appeals directly to a mass market audience, taking something normal and letting you fold it in half. The Z Fold 6 isn’t about clever conventionality like the Flip is. It’s completely off the reservation, a whole other thing. Because of that, it might only appeal to a certain type of person, but once you’ve found the need for that larger display, you’ll never want to look back.

The 7.6-inch folding AMOLED display has nice narrow bezels, with squared corners for a sharper look than previous models. That’s paired with the Armor Aluminium frame on this phone which is also squared. The Z Fold 6 is Samsung’s thinnest Fold yet, but there’s no avoiding that when closed this is still a pretty big phone. It’s 12.1mm thick and you’ll feel that when you slip it onto your pocket, but the IP48 protection rating means you don’t have to worry if it gets wet. Dust, however, could pose a problem.

The crease down the centre of the display has never bothered me – as soon as you have content on the screen you won’t notice it. There are still some compatibility issues with apps – they could use the space better – but this isn’t like an Android tablet where you end up with wasted space. I found that most apps have no problem filling the available space and look great doing so.

Core to the experience is the external display. This has expanded so it’s now slightly wider than previous Fold models and this makes it a little more conventional for daily use. That was a point of compromise on older Z Fold devices and it doesn’t feel like that anymore, it now feels as useful as a normal phone.

The whole experience is supported by hardware that gives you a flagship experience. There’s loads of power from the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 for Galaxy hardware, the speakers are great, and the fingerprint scanner mounted on the power button does a good job. 

So what is the Z Fold 6 really good at? Displaying things that need a little more space. The browser experience is way better than a conventional phone and things like form-filling online is so much easier. Boring things like work is easier too – viewing a spreadsheet on the Z Fold 6 works, as does opening a PDF to read it without constant zooming and scrolling.

There’s vibrancy and punch to those displays and that makes photos look great, but it’s worth mentioning with more people creating content with vertical video these days, some of the advantage on apps like Instagram is lost. Go back a couple of years where it was predominantly square photos and the Z Fold was unbeatable. Still, everything looks great – with one exception which I’ll mention in a second.

The camera too, while not as advanced as the Galaxy S24 Ultra, still gives you a full range of possibilities, with a 3x zoom and a great main camera. It’s not the best camera on a smartphone, but there’s versatility that comes with being able to fold it and stand it up, with the palm gesture to trigger a selfie or group photos a real strength.

What the Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 6 could do better

I said there was an exception for that display. In terms of the hardware, the main folding display is more reflective than I’d like it to be. Although it has a respectable peak brightness of 2,600 nits, there’s still too much reflection on this display in bright outdoor conditions. That comes down to the factory-fitted screen protector.

As an aside – the aspect of the folding display, while great for some content – isn’t that good for watching movies and films. Once you open up Netflix and hit play, you’ll find that content is heavily letterboxed, so there’s no real advantage here compared to a normal phone with a big display.

The battery life also suffers. There’s a 4,400mAh battery which isn’t massive by modern standards and that’s reflected in the stamina of this phone. You might struggle to make it through a day and a night with this device, so you’ll find yourself needing a charge towards the end of busy days. That’s compounded by changing speeds that haven’t moved forward and are limited to 25W wired and 15W wireless.

This being a Samsung phone there is some duplication of apps, with Samsung wanting to equip your phone with a whole range of its own services. That’s standard for a Samsung phone so in that regard the Z Fold 6 is no different to other devices. The good news is that you get 7 years of software support, which is market leading.

The Galaxy AI experience on the Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 6

Galaxy AI got top billing at the launch of the Galaxy Z Fold 6 as Samsung looks to push its artificial intelligence on these devices. Having used Galaxy AI on a number of phones – including the Galaxy S24+ – I think it’s important to outline exactly what’s interesting and what isn’t.

The photo editing that Samsung offers is great. It will do some things that Google doesn’t and it’s worth remembering that you can access Magic Editor (Google’s excellent editing tool) through Google Photos on this Samsung phone, so it’s a best of both worlds. I think the photo stuff is fun and there are plenty of creative options.

The ability to turn your selfie into an artistic version using Portrait Studio is a clever novelty, but a novelty none the less. Sketch to Image is equally fun, letting you add (almost) anything you want to a photo by roughly sketching it onto an existing photo. But you’ll notice that this cock seems to have no eyes, hairy feet and a knitted face – such is the world of AI images.

Then there are instant AI replies, which will give you a contextual response to a conversation. I found these to be about as generic as you can get, despite Samsung’s assertion that they would adapt to the language of the conversation they were following. I found some of these replies to contain AI hallucinations or run off into some tangential idealised reality.

My biggest problem with AI replies, however, is the message it sends. Not the words themselves, but that you couldn’t be bothered to reply to your friend, that you just tapped a button instead and sent … whatever the computer came up with. That’s not really a foundation for a positive human relationship, is it?

I feel the same way about other generative text options, like the “compose” option that will craft a message based on a brief message. Ultimately, these features might help someone who struggles with language, but the results are clearly AI and you need to consider what that says to the person you send it to.

Underlining the Galaxy AI experience is a but and it’s pretty big: these features only work with Samsung’s apps. To use the text creation you have to use Samsung’s keyboard, for example, which is otherwise a terrible keyboard – it’s not a patch on the speed or autocorrect skills of Gboard. Other features only work in Notes or Samsung Internet.

Ultimately, I’ve found myself playing with the photo features, but otherwise, I don’t find that Galaxy AI makes the experience.

Should you buy the Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 6?

The Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 6 is a magnificent device that opens up a word of possibilities, but it’s not going to be for everyone. The price is a huge barrier as you can get yourself a Galaxy S24 Ultra for that price; the cameras are not Samsung’s best and you can get better for cheaper. The battery life faces challenges too.

But the big screen creates opportunities that conventional phones lack, while the new cover screen makes one-handed use more approachable. The thing about the Fold, is that once you find a use for that big display, it’s hard to go back. This phone will make its mark on some people and expensive as it is, it’s still one of the best folding phones around.

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