(techno music)
- Ever since Samsung has announced this phone
that I'm reviewing the Galaxy Z Fold 3,
I've seen two basic kinds of reactions.
Well, three, if you count the fact
that everybody still thinks $1,800 is a lot of money.
The first reaction is, wow.
I really do want the biggest screen possible in my pocket.
And if Samsung can make this thing right,
I am in.
The second reaction is
stop trying to make folding phones happen Samsung.
They're not gonna happen.
And even though those two reactions
seem completely contradictory,
I don't think I can prove either one wrong.
So, let's talk about this phone
or tablet.
Fold.
Even though this is the Z fold 3,
it's the fourth version of the Galaxy Fold
that I have reviewed.
That's because during my very first review
of the very first Galaxy Fold,
it broke
on its own without me doing anything to it.
So Samsung delayed the launch
and it made a bunch of changes to that very first Fold
before officially releasing it.
And ever since then,
the story for the Z Fold
has been Samsung making a bunch of changes
to make this phone more durable
and also to address some of the really obvious complaints
with the previous generation.
It's just been a relentless iteration
on the same basic idea and form factor.
It's one that Samsung really seems to believe in.
All of which brings us to this, the Z Fold 3,
which I think is about as good as the core idea can get.
It's actually faster and easier to talk about the features
this Fold is missing
than it is to talk about the things that it has.
In fact, I can just do that right now.
It's missing a top to your camera system
and dust resistance.
Otherwise, Samsung has checked so many boxes here.
It has added S pen support.
It's given the outer screen a high refresh rate.
It's put a Snapdragon 888 high-end processor in it.
It's improved the software for multitasking
to the point where
I actually like it.
But more importantly, Samsung
is still iterating on durability.
So it made this thing, IP X8 waterproof.
Like.
I did not think that this was going to be the year
where I could do this
(water pouring)
with a folding phone.
Now it's just in a vase.
Samsung also used a custom aluminum alloy
to reduce the weight and make it stronger.
It rearranged all the layers on the folding screen
and made the top layer a PET screen protector
that actually feels normal
and does a better job of resisting indentations.
The earlier Galaxy Fold screens are honestly kind of gummy.
I really don't have any complaints about
the 7.6 inch inner tablet screen here.
The new screen protector really does change the feel of it.
And yes, it still does have a crease,
but I really only notice it
when I'm holding the thing at off angles.
Most of the time it goes away from me,
but I do have one major complaint.
And it's the one place where I think
Samsung overextended itself with this phone.
The inside selfie camera.
It is an under screen selfie camera
and it's only four megapixels,
but I don't really care about that junky quality.
I'm just using it for video calls.
If I want to take a good selfie,
I'll take a selfie with the good outside cameras,
either on the back or the one that's here on the front.
Now, the thing that annoys me about
that under screen selfie camera is that
when the screen has something bright on it,
like a white background,
it is super distracting.
It has this low res screen door look
and if you move your head or the tablet,
even just a little bit,
it has this moir effect that draws your eye to it.
It just pulls it up there.
There is no setting to just bring back the holepunch back
and so it's just there.
And I really think that
it's too experimental of a feature for Samsung
to have put on an $1,800 flagship device.
That's my biggest hardware complaint.
And I don't really have a lot of others.
I mean, you know, I wish it was thinner when it was closed
and there was no gap here,
but I wish for a lot of other things
that aren't physically possible.
And the phones that I've seen that
have gotten rid of the gap have been weird.
Anyway, speaking of physics,
let's talk about the cameras 'cause,
I don't know, light physics, whatever.
They're okay.
The three in the back are all 12 megapixels.
And really the only new thing compared to the last Fold
is the 2X telephoto has optical image stabilization.
The pictures it takes are a step below
Samsung's Galaxy S21 phones.
Samsung's processing is still too bright
and too vivid and sometimes over sharpens,
but the night mode is decent and the main selfie camera
on the front screen, which has 12 megapixels is good enough.
I mean, I could go on,
but really the bottom line on the cameras
is they're good enough.
And they're just not the point on this phone,
so Samsung, didn't put a lot into them.
They're not what you're paying the 1800 bucks for.
Instead, Samsung put effort into S pen compatibility.
This S pen is sold separately
and no, you can't use the old S pens.
This new one is 50 bucks or 80
when it's bundled with a case that can hold it
right here behind the hinge.
But, you know, Samsung has sales all the time,
so you'll probably end up paying less for this thing.
Now this S pen is custom to the Z Fold 3,
because the tip retracts if you press hard
and you really do have to press pretty hard
for it to retract, but even so,
I don't have any marks on the screen yet from it.
Otherwise, you know,
taking notes on this big screen is really nice and fun.
It's good to draw on,
but it is really wobbly on a table
because of this camera bump, even if you have a case on it.
And the other thing you should know
is the stylus doesn't work on the outer screen.
So you can't just really quickly jot a note
like you can on a proper Galaxy Note,
The software on the Galaxy Fold 3 is One UI 3
and it,
it still does stupid Samsung things
like putting ads in apps like Samsung Pay
or Samsung Weather.
Although apparently they've promised
they're going to stop doing that eventually.
It also pushes you into using the Bixby Assistant,
which is not very good.
Now you can clean a bunch of this up
and replace a lot of Samsung apps
with the ones that you actually want,
but that's a hassle.
I think overall Samsung phones just require a little bit
too much fiddling with the software settings.
One thing I do like is you can set the outer screen
and the inner home screen to mirror each other.
So you don't have to set up two different home screens.
But!
Samsung has done something kind of special
with how it handles windowing and multi-tasking
on the Z Fold 3.
It's good.
You can do two apps, side-by-side split screen
or three apps up on the screen,
but they're much more flexible now
and easier to move around.
You can save @ combos in the doc
and if you really want,
you can even just make that doc
permanently visible on the big screen
on the right-hand side.
Samsung also has a labs feature
that will strong arm Android apps
that haven't been updated to support
tablets or windowing and force them to work in the system.
And even though it is a bit of a hack,
it actually works fairly well.
Like Instagram actually does what you would want it to do
on this screen, for once.
You can move windows around by grabbing a little lozenge
and dragging them about,
but if you don't want to learn that system,
there's little three dots you can tap on
and it'll pop up a button
that will show you all the different ways
you can rearrange your windows.
It's a lot like what's going to happen soon
with iPad on iPad iOS 15.
I mean, overall, the whole system is fluid and natural,
and I feel just as weird praising multitasking on a tablet,
an Android tablet, as you do
hearing me praise an Android tablet. I know.
It's uncomfortable.
But, at least we can still complain t
hat Android apps haven't been changed
to update their design to work on bigger screens.
They still just look like big blowed up phone apps.
I'm looking at you, Twitter and Slack and Strava
and just so many others.
So I really do like this phone,
but if you're not into the phone
that opens up into a tablet concept,
I might not have convinced you.
So let's get back to those two reactions.
The this is great reaction
and the stop trying to make folding phones happen reaction.
I admit then when this phone is closed
and you're trying to use it just as a phone,
this technically very nice screen is still
really narrow and frustrating to type on.
And that when it's open in tablet mode,
it is definitely a two handed device
and it can be awkward to use in situations
where you just want to use your phone with one hand.
It's big and it's heavy and it's super expensive.
And we don't really know if the screen will crack
after a year or two of constant use,
plus all that water sealing makes third party repair ability
a bit of a nightmare,
so you're probably to want to pay Samsung
for its extended warranty to feel really confident
in your purchase.
However,
you know how there are big phone people
and small phone people?
Well, look,
this is a big screen for big phone people
and big screens are great.
Watching movies, playing games, reading books,
actually reading PDFs without having to pan around.
It's all very nice.
Using multiple windows at once
is sometimes just icing on the cake.
You know how you're on a phone
and then sometimes you're like,
Ah, well, I guess I need to go to a real computer
with a real screen because I can't do what I want
on this little thing.
With the Fold 3, it takes me way longer
to get to that point.
What I'm saying is that if you are so into the idea
of having a little tablet with you all the time,
that you're willing to make the trade off
of having a kind of a chunky phone that costs 1800 bucks,
I don't think anything better than the Z Fold 3
is gonna to come along until there is another
technological breakthrough with folding phones.
I mean, this thing is dope.
But if you're not convinced in that trade off,
then you're not convinced.
And that's what I mean when I say that
both reactions are right.
The Z Fold 3 is about as good as it gets
for big folding phones.
For some people, that means it's time to make the jump.
For others, as good as it gets, is still not good enough.
Hey everybody.
Thanks so much for watching.
Let me know.
Do you think that folding phones are finally ready?
Do you think that waterproofing is enough to
make it worth it for you?
Talk about that down in the comments
and then like and subscribe, please.
So I can, I don't know.
I, why am I doing this?