Hands-on with Samsung’s Galaxy Z Flip

I’ve only had it in my hands for a few minutes, but I already like Samsung’s Galaxy Z Flip way more than the company’s last attempt at a foldable phone. 

While last year’s Galaxy Fold was essentially a small tablet disguised as a phone, the Z Flip looks and feels very much like a phone. 

It has a clamshell design — like an old-school flip phone — but also manages to look sleek and modern. And, at $1,380, it’s a little more approachable compared to the nearly $2,000 Fold. 

The Z Flip is available in three colors: mirror black, mirror purple, and mirror gold. And Samsung isn’t exaggerating with the “mirror” moniker here. These phones are not only reflective as hell, but are also absolute fingerprint magnets. In Samsung’s demo area following its event, each phone had a dedicated staff member standing by with a microfiber cloth to try and keep them all pristine. It didn’t quite work.

While the photo above might be a more extreme example, you should definitely expect these phones to require a lot of cleaning and wiping. That glossy finish also makes the phone pretty slippery in hand — not great if you’re prone to dropping your phone. (Samsung is apparently including a “clear cover” in the box with each phone, but it’s not yet known if this will make it more grippy.) 

When the phone is folded up, there’s a small 1.1-inch display on its front cover which you can use to check the time or preview some notifications. One neat feature Samsung showed off was the ability to preview the camera using that cover display, but in practice it felt a little gimmicky. 

When it’s unfolded, the Z Flip has a 6.7-inch glass display. This is a big difference from every other foldable phone, including Motorola’s Razr which uses plastic OLED panels. Because it’s a little narrower than most modern phones, the Z Flip definitely feels much easier to use one-handed. But flipping it open and closed one-handed isn’t as effortless as you might expect. 

The Z Flip uses a unique “hideaway” hinge system that Samsung says will make the phone more resistant to dust and dirt particles. And, unlike the Razr, there’s no gap between the hinge and the display. It also doesn’t make any noise when you open and close it.

The stiffness of the Z Flip’s hinge allows the phone to act as a kind of kickstand, so you can keep it propped open at pretty much any angle. This kind of split display — which Samsung calls “Flex Mode” — will also allow apps to take advantage of each half of the screen. 

So far, we’ve only seen a couple examples of this — with YouTube and the phone’s camera — but hopefully it’s a feature other apps will adopt. 

There is also a visible crease in the phone’s display. But the good news is that, since it spreads out horizontally across the screen, it’s much, much smaller and harder to notice than the unsightly lump that ran down the center of the Galaxy Fold. You can, however, feel the crease when you run your finger over it. It didn’t bother me in the few minutes I had with the phone, but it could become more annoying with time.

Still, the Z Flip already feels like it will be much better than the Galaxy Fold. I don’t know if it’s my own old-millennial nostalgia for flip phones, but there’s something about clamshell-style smartphones that just looks cool. And, much like the first time I saw the Razr, it’s hard to not be at least a little excited seeing a new flip phone from a major phone maker.

Whether or not the Z Flip will prove to be more durable than the other foldable phones we’ve seen so far is unclear. In my limited time with it, I have to say I’m cautiously optimistic that it could be. The hinge feels solid and there’s no visible gap in the screen or hinge system. But there is a little bit of a crease and if there’s one thing we’ve learned from the Razr, it’s that a lot can change after just a few days of folding.