Ever since the original iPhone came out in 2007, completely changing the Cell-Phone industry, Smartphones haven’t really changed that much. Sure, we did get OLED Displays, Dual, Triple, Quad and even Penta Camera Modules, but the idea of a Smartphone has remained the same. It’s essentially this block of glass that we carry with us all the time, which helps us communicate with each other and accomplish our daily tasks on the go.
But, that block has remained just a block since 2007. Displays started getting larger and Bezels started becoming thinner to the point where we now have Smartphones that are just a massive Displays, and nothing else. However, we’ve now reached a point where there’s only so much we can do with that Form-Factor.
You might have noticed that since 2017, when Apple and Samsung added a Full-Screen Display to their Smartphones, the design has remained almost unchanged. So, when I started hearing all the rumors about Foldable Smartphones, I got very excited because we were finally going to get something new. I am very glad to say that I’ve been using a Samsung Galaxy Fold for more than a month now as my Daily Driver and this has completely changed my view on Smartphones. I honestly would not be able to go back to a standard one, after using the Fold. So, here is my Full In-Depth Review of the Samsung Galaxy Fold!
First of all, you’re all probably wondering, why are you reviewing the Galaxy Fold now? This Smartphone was originally teased in November 2018, fully unveiled in February 2019 and was released in September 2019. Well, it’s simple.. I finally got my hands on one.
Ironically, we were actually one of the first channels to talk about the Galaxy Fold. We started making videos on this back in 2017, three years ago. Samsung has been working on Foldable Display technology for the past nine (or more) years now. They showed us their first Foldable Display prototypes back at CES 2011. They then showed us a now famous TV ad where someone was folding a Tablet into a smaller Phone and then unfolding it back into a Tablet, back in 2014.
When I heard about the leaks & rumors that Samsung was finally working on a Foldable Smartphone that they would sell, I was extremely exited for this future. That’s why we made so many ‘Leaks & Rumors’ episodes on this, just because I was so hyped for something new.
The general design of most Smartphones has been pretty much the same for the past few years.
Then, right after the February 2019 unveil, they started sending over a few Review units to some of the biggest tech channels in the world. We didn’t get one, but luckily this was the first generation that had a ton of issues and was literally breaking after just a few hours of use. Samsung postponed the release, redesigned the Hinge, even the Display to some extent, and then fully released it seven months later, in September 2019.
That’s when Samsung started sending loads of Review units to a ton of larger, and smaller, Reviewers. Unfortunately, we weren’t on that list and even though I tried my very best to get ahold of one, Samsung UK just didn’t want to send us one. It was also almost impossible to buy as it wasn’t in stock pretty much every single time I checked, so we just skipped making videos on it because we couldn’t get ahold of one.
I did go to IFA 2019, in September, and I did go to Samsung’s booth, but we got kicked out because the whole place was closing down. I was about 10cm away from the Fold and I just couldn’t touch it. Then, in October 2019, about a month after the Fold came out, I attended the OnePlus 7T launch event, in London. Emkwan, a great guy who also runs the Em Kwan Reviews tech channel, had a Galaxy Fold. He let me use that for a good 15 minutes and I was impressed. It was unlike anything I’ve ever seen before, but it felt like a prototype device.
Fast forward a few months and when Samsung finally sent over the Galaxy S20 Ultra Review unit, they also sent over a Samsung Galaxy Fold for me to check out. While the S20 Ultra ended up being the most disappointing Smartphone I’ve ever used, the Galaxy Fold ended up being the most outstanding Smartphone I’ve ever used. I used it as my daily driver for two weeks, after which Samsung asked for it back. So, I went and bought my own, just because I loved it so much. The Fold has now replaced my iPhone 11 Pro Max as my daily driver and I have loads to say about it.
Design
With the Design, the Galaxy Fold is unlike anything I’ve ever seen before. On the outside, when the Fold is closed, you have this very weird looking Phone that reminds me of the old Nokia 7280, if you guys remember that? That very odd phone that was extremely tall and had this very small and narrow Display. The Fold, when closed, is sort of like that. It has an extremely small 4.6” Display, with a very tall 21:9 Aspect Ratio some insanely massive Bezels, they’re even putting the Bezels of the very first iPhone to shame. It’s crazy thick as well, at 17.1mm at the thickest point and 15.7mm at the thinnest, the Galaxy Fold is actually very comparable to a Nokia 3310, which had a thickness of 22mm.
I really wish that Samsung would redesign the Hinge so that it would close perfectly flat. This way, the Smartphone would be 1.4mm thinner. Samsung has improved the Hinge heavily with the Z Flip, which closes almost entirely flat. I’m confident that when the Fold 2 launches, it will also have a design similar to that.
Is it a Smartphone? Is it a Tablet? Well, it’s both (sort of).
Once you unfold it, that’s where the magic happens as you’re greeted with a massive 7.3” Display with a 4.2:3 Aspect Ratio, which is absolutely gorgeous to look at. The Fold now becomes much thinner at just 6.9mm, making it considerably thinner than even the S20 Ultra, for example. So, while the Fold does indeed look very outdated from the Front, when compared to other Smartphones, once you open it, that’s when it truly shows its value. Having what is essentially the equivalent of an iPad Mini right in your pocket, is just unbelievable.
Now, because of how small the Outer Display is and how massive the Bezels are, you can indeed use the Fold closed with one hand, which is perfect for when you’re outdoors and in a hurry. However, I found that unless I really had to, I was using the Fold purely in Tablet Mode. I was really only using the outer Display when I was out shopping and I had my shopping bag in my other hand. But other than that, this is a Foldable Tablet and not a Foldable Phone.
On the bottom, we have the Speaker, a Microphone and the USB C Charging Port. On the right, we have the Fingerprint Sensor, which strangely enough is actually not built into the Display or even the Power Button, like on many other Smartphones. It is instead a separate Sensor. We then have the Power Button as well as the Volume Buttons. On the top, we have another Microphone and the second Speaker. Finally, on the left, we have the SIM Slot, which only supports a Single Nano-Sim.
In terms of how the Fold fits in my pocket, it does feel gigantic. It’s almost like carrying a TV Remote all of the time, just one that’s a bit thinner than usual. It’s also very heavy, at 263g, the Fold is one of the heaviest “Smartphones” that you can carry in your pocket in 2020. The Huawei Mate XS is a bit heavier though, at 300g. I personally don’t have a problem with how thick and heavy it is in my pocket, mostly because of how much this Smartphone has to offer. For now, I’m ok with that tradeoff.
But something that I do want to mention here is that accessories are pretty hard to find. While D-Brand do make a few Skins and Spigen do make some Cases, other than that, you’re pretty much out of luck. If you’re looking for a car mount when open, the Fold is just too big for a regular Smartphone mount, so you’ll need to buy a Tablet mount. When it is closed, the Fold is just too narrow. It will definitely take some time until accessory makers will start making accessories for Foldable Smartphones, so until then, choices are pretty limited.
Display
Moving on to the Display, we have a 4.6” AMOLED, 21:9 Aspect Ratio, 720x1680 Resolution Display with a PPI of 399 on the outside. On the inside, there is a 7.3” AMOLED, 4.2:3 Aspect Ratio, 2152x1536 Resolution Display with a PPI of 362. Some of you might be wondering, why hasn’t Samsung made the Fold so that it folds on the outside? This way, you would’ve been able to use half of that massive Inner Display, as the outer Display. Huawei has done it on the Mate X, so why hasn’t Samsung done the same?
Well, you see, glass doesn’t fold. In order for the Inner Display to fold, Samsung would have had to use a plastic Display. Even on the new Galaxy Z Flip, where Samsung claims that they’re using glass, JerryRigEverything showed that it’s still just plastic in the end. Plastic is also far more susceptible to scratches and damage, than glass. This is why we had those big warning signs when we unboxed the Phone and is why Samsung chose to have that very sensitive plastic Display on the inside. If they had put it on the outside, any keys, coins or anything sharp in your pocket, could’ve permanently damaged the Display. This way, since it folds on the inside, it is always protected. The Display on the outside is standard Gorilla Glass, similar to what you would find on regular Smartphones.
You can set preferences for the App Switch on an App-by-App basis.
So, how does the App Switch work? By default, if you have an App open on the Outer Display and you open up the Fold, that App will continue on the Inner Display. When you close the Inner Display, just like on those old Clamshell Smartphones, it would shut that Display off. If you go into the Settings, you can indeed enable continuity on an app-by-app basis so that when you close the Inner Display, the app continues on the Outer Display too. YouTube, for example, works flawlessly and many others do as well. You can have a video playing on the Inner Display, close it, and it will continue playing back on the Outer Display right from where it left off.
I’m using a tool called ‘GoodLock’. Harry, our Video Creative & 3D Concept Designer, who also has a Fold himself, recommended that App to me. With GoodLock you can force all Apps to continue to the outer Display, which is what I’ve done and it works really well.
Interestingly enough, Samsung’s Launcher is considering each Display as a separate device, in a way. They both have their own specific Home-Screens so even when you change the Wallpaper, you have to do it for the Home-Screen and the Lock-Screen of each Display. So in that case, you have four Wallpapers that you can assign. However, if you use a third party Launcher, both Displays will match, in terms of App layout.
Also, pro tip, I highly recommend adjusting the text size to ‘Small’. This way, not only will the DPI Scaling be higher, but some Apps (such as Chrome) would recognise the Fold as a Tablet, rather than a Smartphone. You would get a Tablet UI with Browser Tabs and more.
Other than that, both Displays are a standard 60Hz Panel, so no high Refresh Rate here. However, both Displays have excellent Colour Reproduction. The Brightness is good too, but I do wish that the Inner Display could go brighter, to match the Brightness of the S20 line for example. We measured the peak Brightness on a Full-Screen White Window, using the ‘Xrite i1Display Plus’ Professional Display Calibrator.
Now, since this is a folding device, there is a crease in the middle. Personally, that never really bothered me. I do feel that it’s there and I do see it at certain angles but it hasn’t really been an issue for me. It’s been like the Notch on the iPhone or the Camera Cutout, where you get used to it very quickly.
Speaking of Notches, for those of you who thought that the iPhone or the Pixel 3 XL had the biggest Notch out there, think again because the Galaxy Fold has one humongous Notch on the inside. This holds the Dual Front-Facing Camera as well as the Light Sensor, it’s pretty massive. I did forget about this after using it, it just took me way longer to forget that this massive Notch was there, compared to the crease.
Camera
When it comes to the Camera. The Galaxy Fold doesn’t have a Single Camera, but instead it comes with six Cameras, which sounds crazy. On the front, when the Fold is closed, we have a 10MP Selfie Camera, which has an f/2.2 Aperture and 1.22μm Pixels. This is literally the exact same Front-Facing Camera Sensor as on the regular Galaxy S10, just with a smaller f/2.2 Aperture, rather than f/1.9.
When we open up the Fold, on the inside, we have Two more Selfie Cameras. The one on the left is the same Camera as on the outside. On the right we have an 8MP RGB Depth Camera, with 1.12μm Pixels and an f/1.9 Aperture. Essentially, on the Inside Display, we get the same Front Camera System as on the Galaxy S10+ from last year, with that Depth Sensor.
Despite being pretty similar to the S10, the Cameras on the Fold hold up very nicely. They’re certainly better than the S20 Ultra’s.
So, that’s three Cameras so far. On the back, we get three more, which are the exact same Camera Systems as on the Galaxy S10 line, from last year. That means that we’re getting a 12MP Main Camera with that Variable f/1.5-f/2.4 Aperture and 1.4μm Pixels. We then get a 12MP Telephoto (Zoom) Module, with an f/2.4 Aperture and 1μm Pixels and finally, we’re also getting a 16MP Ultra Wide Angle Module with an f/2.2 Aperture and 1μm Pixels. While this might seem quite disappointing, when you compare it to the 108MP Sensor of the S20 Ultra, or the 100X Space Zoom of the Ultra, the results actually point to the contrary. I’m not going to cover the Ultra’s Camera as I’ve already done that in the S20 Ultra Review. But ironically, the Fold, with last year’s Cameras, is actually performing better than the Ultra does.
Night shots are better. Night video is better. HDR Processing doesn’t have any of the issues, such as the crushed blacks and blown out Highlights that the Ultra has. So overall, this is a very good Camera. The regular S20 does indeed have better Cameras than this with, not just 8K video recording, but also 4K 60 on the Front, where the Fold is limited to 4K 30. But, most people don’t care about those and for how good this Camera is, it will easily satisfy all of your needs.
Also, another pro–tip, on the Fold you can easily install the Google Camera APK and get those awesome Pixel style photos, just like on a Pixel 4. Unfortunately, since this isn’t an official App that you can install, but rather a tweak, it would only work on the small Outer Display.
Performance
When it comes to the performance, unlike the regular Galaxy line, which comes with either a Snapdragon or an Exynos Processor based on the region that you buy it from, the Fold only comes with a Snapdragon Processor. This is pretty awesome. There have been many issues with the Exynos versions of Samsung Smartphones ranging from Battery Life issues, to performance issues and even Camera issues. I talk about those comprehensively in my S20 Ultra Review so once again, definitely give that a watch.
But, I’m glad to say that none of those are an issue with the Fold, having that Snapdragon Processor is the reason why we can indeed run the Google Camera APK. This wouldn’t have worked if we had an Exynos variant. So, thanks to the Snapdragon 855 Processor, as well as 12GB of RAM, performance on the Fold has been excellent. Things are snappy and Navigation is fast & fluid. Since you have those 12GB of RAM, I haven’t had any issues with Apps closing in the background and in fact, you can even lock certain Apps in the background so that they never reload and always stay open.
Software
But performance really means nothing if you cannot take full use of that power. I’m happy to say that the Fold fully utilises that performance, which combined with massive 7.3” Display, you can open three Apps at the same time and use them fully. You can even have one more as a floating App, for a total of four. These can all be running at the very same time and all of them are usable in real time.
You might think that I’m always on my Smartphone because…I review Smartphones, but that’s actually not the case at all. I spent almost my entire day in front of my computer, I only use my Smartphone when I’m at home and even then, I still prefer using my Laptop. However, when I’m traveling or on the go, this is when I spend all of my time on a Smartphone. This isn’t just for communicating but also for doing actual work such as replying to emails, setting up my calendar and scheduling content, all of that. Because of this, I need a large-screen Smartphone.
The Fold runs Android 10 and gets more than enough updates to keep it going.
I remember this one specific time, when I was travelling to IFA last September and I had a PDF with all of my activities for the week. I had to put events from that PDF onto my Calendar. But, on my iPhone, I couldn’t do that at all because you cannot run split-screen Apps. You have to constantly go back and forward between them and remember the info that you had in the previous one, which is an absolute nightmare. This is why I was always using my Note 10+, whenever I was traveling, because of that massive Display & S-Pen. The Fold is just an even bigger Note 10+, which is even more perfect for what I do. This is really the best productivity based Smartphone, I just wish it had an S-Pen.
Samsung’s OneUI 2.0 looks incredible. It’s by far my favourite Android Skin. I love the ability to have Folders in the App Drawer as well as on my Home-Screen as it gives me an extra layer of customisation. One-handed usability is also there as you are able to bring down the Notification Panel by swiping down anywhere on the screen.
Samsung have finally started releasing more updates for their Smartphones. The Fold now runs on Android 10 and while it is not getting as many updates as the Note or the Galaxy S line, it is still receiving more updates than all of my other Android Smartphones, with the exception of Pixel and OnePlus devices.
Probably the best part about OneUI is DeX. So, when you connect the Fold to a monitor, it would boot into this Desktop UI Mode where you can connect a Keyboard, a Mouse and really use the Fold like you would use your desktop PC. You can run the Desktop versions of Chrome and Microsoft Office, so if you can’t be bothered buying a PC for your home, the Fold can actually replace three devices now. It’s a Smartphone, a Tablet and a Desktop PC (for very casual users).
My only complaint, software wise, is that the the Wallpaper sometimes glitches out and sometimes I do have some frame-drops. I didn’t really had this before the Android 10 update, so I’m hoping that these would be fixed in a future software update. But, nothing too major.
Special Features
Moving on to special features, let’s talk about the ones that the Fold lacks because there’s quite a few of those. To start with, the Galaxy Fold has no Water Resistance at all. Because of that Hinge design, Samsung couldn’t water-proof this Smartphone, meaning that if rain drops hit it, it’s as good as dead. To add to that, there is no Dust Resistance either. This reminds me of Smartphones back in 2015, way before Water and Dust Resistance was even a thing.
Also, unlike the Galaxy S or Galaxy Note lines, there is no SD Card slot at all on the Fold and, like you’ve heard before, you only get support for one physical SIM. The second SIM that you add has to be an eSIM. The good news is that you get an insane 512GB of Storage and there is no higher-end version of the Fold, there’s the baseline and that’s it. This also has UFS 3.0 Storage, which is insanely fast with speeds of over 1Gb/s.
Despite all that it can do, the current Fold is still very easily damaged.
The vibration motor is very good. It seems to be the exact same one as in the Galaxy Note 10+ and the S20’s. You get an actual Haptic response every time to type or when you hit a toggle in the Settings. It gives you the impression that you’re actually pressing physical buttons on the screen.
We do get 5G, sub-6GHz and mmWave 5G, which is great. You also get something called ‘Samsung Concierge’ and ‘SamsungCare+’ with the Fold, meaning that you have access to exclusive 24/7 Help. Samsung will replace your Display for free during the first year as well as fix or replace the entire Smartphone if you’re having any issues with it or even if you accidentally drop or break it.
However, you do have to register for SamsungCare+ manually, which is quite bad in my opinion. You have 30 days to do so and in my case, I tried registering but the website is all glitched and I couldn’t click the next button to actually register. I’ve been in talks with Samsung support, but hey don’t now what the issue is and they’re currently looking into it. My only complaint here, aside from the SamsungCare+ registration, are that the Fingerprint Reader is slow and very difficult to find. So, I’m pretty much using FaceUnlock exclusively on my Fold.
The S-Pen would’ve been perfect on a device like this. We don’t have one but we’ve seen tons of leaks & rumors that the Fold 2 will indeed come with one.
Battery
Battery Life has been excellent, even with that fairly small 4380mAh Battery. It can easily last me through an entire day and we get Fast Charging, Wireless Charging and Reverse Wireless Charging, for charging things like those Galaxy Buds that we got in the box.
Value
In the end, is the Galaxy Fold worth it? Right now, no. But that’s because the Fold 2 is coming out very soon. We’ll have a video on that in the upcoming weeks so definitely subscribe and hit the bell icon for that.
But as a whole package, the Fold offers something that no other Smartphone offers. It offers a Tablet that you can put in your pocket. The Screen-Size is perfect for reading and for emailing. The typing is great, I love the more squared off Form-Factor and in the end, like I said, this is the perfect device for productivity. So, if you’re a CEO or a business person, there’s nothing better than this.
For the average person, unless you can get this for a very good deal, paying $2000 for it isn’t worth it at all. Also, keep in mind that you have to be extra careful with this Smartphone. But, I’m personally extremely happy with my Fold and I’m genuinely looking forward to the future. Because you see, this is the future of Smartphones. Just like the first iPhone, the Fold isn’t perfect but it lays the foundation for what’s yet to come.
