More than 20 days have now passed in the company of Samsung Galaxy Z Flip 3 and the time has come to tell you about it in its complete review. After trying both past generations of Samsung branded clamshell foldables, will this third model be able to fully convince me?
After the first attempts in a market that is still unclear and in which users still struggle to enter, Galaxy Z Flip 3 tries to improve what was wrong seen last year with its two predecessors, offering itself with an even higher list price low and catchy. But will it be sufficient, or will the limitations due to this strange form-factor still be too many to push me to recommend it to an increasingly wider audience and not more than just enthusiasts?
Z Flip 3, you choose it for its design
It is clear that if you are here reading this review, you will know well how the interest in a foldable device lies mainly in its design and in its related potential. Whether it's devices capable of expanding their dimensions, as in the case of the Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 3, or reducing them to provide a more compact and easily transportable form-factor, just like in the case of the Z Flip 3, the construction and design is the main factor in choosing these smartphones.
From this point of view, I can confirm how over the months, and therefore with the arrival of the new generations, the technology of the displays and hinges has become increasingly reliable and safe, allowing me to enjoy the opening and closing mechanism of this Z Flip 3 in complete tranquility and serenity.
Obviously my tests and trials, in the company of this new model as well as the previous ones, are mostly limited to a few weeks: therefore I cannot give you an account of how these details can or cannot resist over the course of months and years of constant openings and closings, but on this the Samsung laboratory tests try to offer an important guarantee, with a hypothesized resistance value of up to five years counting about 100 daily openings.
However, the great improvement of the folding technology made by Samsung is not limited to my "feeling" due to the use of the various models over the months, but also to new implementations capable of elevating these products to a higher level than at the beginning.
The reference goes to the introduction of the IPX8 resistance standard (where the X indicates a lack of resistance to dust damage while the number 8 indicates the level of resistance to liquid damage with guaranteed immersions up to 30 minutes at 1.5m deep), able to mark a very important turning point in the leaflet market, which is therefore getting closer and closer to that of traditional smartphones.
In the specific case of this Z Flip 3, the improvement is also to be found in the protective layer inserted above the folding panel, with the much-famous protective film that marks a great step-up compared to the past, with a sensation to the touch during the much better use. Obviously, a different visual sensation remains compared to a device equipped with a glass panel (with the possibility of leaving marks even through normal use, with nails for example), with the central area where the hinge resides still showing a strange artifact both to the eye and to the touch, by passing your finger over it.
This aspect perhaps remains the most limiting for those who want to approach the leaflet market after years of using traditional devices. On the other hand, however, I can truly say that this strange sensation will not accompany you for more than a few hours or at most a few days, becoming no more than an element like the others (the reference goes, for example, to the internal notch for the camera which has now become standard in the smartphone market) obviously waiting to be able to see the arrival of new and increasingly refined technologies in the next generations capable of guaranteeing better sensations to the eye and to use.
On the quality front, however, I can't find any real criticisms to address to Samsung. In fact, net of the greater reflections dictated by the fold, the colors reproduced are on a par with any non-foldable Samsung both in terms of vivacity and sharpness, with excellent contrasts and a visual pleasure truly at the top to which the company has accustomed us.
The presence of dynamic refresh rate support up to 120Hz is yet another proof of how real and important the company's efforts are in making Foldable products increasingly similar to traditional ones, for a final result that I consider increasingly ripe.
If on the one hand the internal display can therefore still show some differences and limitations, on the outside it is where this Z Flip 3 proves to have listened to the criticisms of users against previous models. The small external window seen on the first Flips is in fact replaced by a much larger 1.9-inch screen capable of proving to be much more useful and enjoyable (although still far from perfect, as we will explain shortly), allowing the user to not having to resort to opening the terminal even for trivial operations such as checking notifications, the weather or music playback.
A true top of the range (with two notes)
The design, as often told in the course of the various reviews, would be nothing without a good hardware base to support it. In this case Galaxy Z Flip 3 is proposed on the market as a real top of the range to read the data sheet, with almost all the ticks in every sector and very few tangible limitations.
However, the fact that it is such a particular and unique device due to its particular ability, still allows us to highlight some shortcomings compared to its "non-foldable" brothers, capable of making the most fanatics of the components turn up their noses hardware.
| Smartphone | Geekbench 5 | Geekbench ML | < td>3DMarkPCMark Work 3.0 | Speedometer 2.0 | Jetstream 2 | |||||
| Single-core | Multi-core | CPU | GPU | NNAPI | Wild Life | Wild LifeStress Test | Performance | – | – | |
| Z Flip 3 | 794 | 2594 | 339 | 1581 | 969 | 4113 (24.60 fps) | 4484-3445 (76.8%) | 10695 | 60.7(±1.1) | 64560 |
| 1127 | 3618 | 415 | 1666 | 416 | 5692 (34.10 fps) | 5709 – 3182 (55.7%) | 13194 | 19.3 (±0.90) | 23707 | |
| Pixel 6 Pro | 1006 | 2630 | 327 | 1381 | 1731 | 6534 (39.10 fps) | 6506 – 3820 (58.7%) | 11314 | 95.9 (±7.4) | 80917 |
The data analysis of benchmarks, which by themselves are not able to return a complete picture of the performance of a product, help us to understand some aspects of the same. In the case of this Samsung Galaxy Z Flip 3, in fact, although the basic data sheet is shared with other models based on the same architecture, the calculation and power data are lower than expected.
This reduction in real everyday life does not involve either a great loss or a net tangible difference in performance, but it is the symptom that something in Samsung has been designed to put a potential patch on an otherwise uncontrolled criticality, i.e. the 'autonomy.
If therefore the adoption of a top-of-the-range processor and a series of excellent internal components could lead to a substantially positive judgment, there are two main areas of criticism that can be contested with this Z Flip 3. the reference is to the camera compartment (with a final result that we will see in detail shortly and which basically does not differ so much from what can be obtained with a normal current mid-range smartphone) and to the battery and autonomy compartment, with only 3300 mAh which are absolutely not able to match the performance of almost all of its competitors in the high-end market. I will shortly report the analysis with my data and my results during the various days in his company.
Multimedia sector, a wasted opportunity?
I'm not an engineer and I don't know in detail what challenges Samsung has had to face in the creation of this line of folding products, done however, the cameras on board this Z Flip 3 do not do justice to the product itself, especially if we contextualize the results to the list price requested by the manufacturer for this smartphone.
Let me be clear, the shots are not to be thrown away and thanks above all to a great software work, getting bad photos will be really difficult in every context and with all the different lighting. However, the fact of not being able to count on any of the most recent hardware implementations seen in the smartphone market recently, for example the dedicated zoom cameras or the super macro ones, further highlights all the limits of the two "simple" 12MP lenses at the rear, which in the end always offer results in line with their modest expectations, without ever overdoing it.
Even on the video side, as far as the shots with the front camera are concerned, the results are well below those that we can find with other devices with a price list of over a thousand euros, with a general feeling therefore far from ideal.
During the use of the photographic and multimedia sector, I then happened in more than one context to encounter episodes of overheating at the rear, thus contributing to further highlighting the second major flaw of this Z Flip 3.
Autonomy to forget
The already anticipated second major defect of the Z Flip 3 is precisely the poor attitude of the device to accompany you throughout the day. I really tried them all, starting from activating the software energy savings to setting the panel to 60Hz, without ever being able to cover any of my intense days on a single charge, with results that in some contexts showed even less than three hours of screen on before the battery reached 0%.
This is not an ideal situation, which however is (unfortunately) largely in line with the general technical data sheet, with the 3300 mAh combination and a very energy-intensive processor that could only give these results. On days of little or in any case not very intense use, I managed to get a maximum of four and a half hours of display on, with prevalent use of Wi-Fi.
These data are simply insufficient and in relative even worse than the analyzes of the camera sector, since a terminal so handsome and also so pleasant to use, which sees its "death" by 7 pm, undermines all possible general reasoning, offering the public much more than one reason not to be considered.
Being forced to recharge at least twice a day is a flaw that is highlighted even more by Samsung's strange choice to equip this foldable with only 15W of wired charging speed (which drops to 10W via wireless). It is a frankly incomprehensible choice in a market that travels at at least triple speeds and which will force us to carefully study our days in relation to longer recharge times.
At least in this respect, the "only" 3300 mAh battery capacity would not have forced us to wait too long: a nice ultra-fast recharge would have allowed us to forget (or at least make it much less heavy) with just 15 minutes. all the autonomy problems of this device.
Classic Samsung software, with some goodies for the second display
Looking forward to Android 12 and Samsung's new OneUI 4 interface, still expected later this year, my proof of this Z Flip 3 saw the combination of Android 11 and OneUI 3.1.
This is a well-tested and well-optimized package (in the autonomy discussions just concluded, I also offer you a figure of only 2% download time if left in stand-by with all connections active), which offers the end user many customization options with many apps and services preloaded by Samsung designed for the different uses and needs of users.
During this review, therefore, I want to focus on the unique options of this terminal, all mostly dedicated to interaction with the external panel. As mentioned in the initial phase of this review, it is a big step forward compared to previous models, unfortunately not yet exploited properly via software.
The extra space available allows us to interact in a better way with incoming notifications and with other services (called widgets by Samung and settable via software), without however being able to represent a real alternative to having to open the main display to complete the operation.
Here I am mainly referring to notifications, which can be shown and collected in a dedicated area of the secondary panel, but which cannot be answered in any way, not even with pre-set messages. An improvement therefore in half, with the hope that Andorid 12 will perhaps bring an external keyboard (digital or vocal) capable of solving this problem.
Z Flip 3: The best folding experience?
So in conclusion, what are my final thoughts for this Z Flip 3? Probably the main feeling that remains with me after all the days in his company is that of displeasure. After all, the step forward in the evolution of this technology, increasingly reliable and convincing in terms of aesthetics and construction, is evident, especially for me who have had the opportunity to touch the various generations of leaflets firsthand.
On the other hand, the many limitations present unfortunately perhaps cannot simply be overcome in this historical technological period. I am referring once again not only to the cameras and the battery (both in terms of duration and recharging technology), two areas that alone could drive away all those looking for a complete and pleasant top of the range, but also to the quality itself of the display panel, still far from the current top of the category.
The turning point is therefore only represented by all those either looking for a simply "cool" product, able to still leave all non-experts and non-enthusiasts stunned, or those who manage to grasp the various promotional options that often see this terminal as the protagonist.
If it is true that 1099 euros is a lot and the critical areas are too obvious, all these sorrows and limits at 599 euros (price reached in this recent period of Black Friday 2021) could take on another contour, making the Galaxy Z Flip 3 suddenly more attractive and appreciable. But be careful, even at promotional prices, consider the purchase of a nice powerbank ...