Samsung Galaxy Z Flip5 Review – The Much Needed Evolution of Flips

Unboxing the Samsung Galaxy Z Flip5

Samsung Galaxy Z Flip5 Review – Box

The Samsung Galaxy Z Flip5 comes in your standard black box that’s standard for their premium offerings. The box is thin, so you can tell immediately that no chargers are included, though that shouldn’t be a surprise in this day and age. Inside the box, you can find the following items:

Samsung Galaxy Z Flip5 Review – Box content

Inside the box, you can find the following items:

• Quick start guide
• Warranty card
• USB-C to USB-C cable
• SIM ejector tool
• The Samsung Galaxy Z Flip5 smartphone itself

Specifications

Performance

Samsung Galaxy Z Flip5 Review – Antutu v10

Starting off with Antutu v10, the Samsung Galaxy Z Flip5, had a very strong showing, currently sitting as the second runner up in our list of benchmarked devices thus far. The difference between this and the first runner up is negligible, though the tablet likely achieved a notably higher score due to there being more surface area so heat is managed better.

Samsung Galaxy Z Flip5 Review – Geekbench 6

As for Geekbench 6, it once again came in with impressive scores. This time around, you can see more comparisons with other Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 devices. So far so good for the new flip phone in terms of CPU power for both single and multi core portions.

Samsung Galaxy Z Flip5 Review – 3DMark Wild Life Unlimited

Moving on to 3DMark’s Wild Life Unlimited, the Samsung Galaxy Z Flip5 managed to once again garner high scores but that shouldn’t be surprise given the flagship Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 chip powering it. What I want to draw attention is what I got with the stability rating, which is 35.1%. This means that as it continued running numerous instances of the benchmark, performance dropped significantly. I believe this is due to heat as the chip can get pretty hot with resource-intensive apps. Given its compact foldable nature, it would be hard to implement an effective cooling system similar to the S23 Ultra.

Samsung Galaxy Z Flip5 Review – PCMark Work 3.0

Lastly on PCMark’s Work 3.0 benchmark, the Samsung Galaxy Z Flip5 excelled yet again, proving it to be more than enough as a daily driver. After all, it does work like a normal Android smartphone when it’s flipped open, so together with the power that the chip offers, you shouldn’t have any issues compared to any other flagship out there in terms of performance, regardless of whether it’s personal or professional tasks.

Samsung Galaxy Z Flip5 Review – Battery endurance test

In case you’re wondering about the battery life, the Samsung Galaxy Z Flip5 had a decent showing, lasting 8 hours and 14 minutes (514 minutes). This means that at worst, you should get at least 8 hours of screen on time even on the higher brightness settings. If we compare to the much older Z Flip3, it’s interesting to see how much it has improved but keep in mind that it has a bigger battery as that only got upgraded in the Z Flip4.

For what it is, it’s good enough but it is noticeably shorter than most smartphones launched within the past year, including Samsung’s own. I would like to see a bump in its battery capacity in future models, perhaps at least a 4,500mAh if 5,000mAh is too difficult to fit in. As for charging speeds, this is what we got with a 3rd party 100W charger from 2%:

• 15 minutes = 28%
• 30 minutes = 51%
• 45 minutes = 69%
• 60 minutes = 85%
• 75 minutes = 100%

Keep in mind that it only supports up to 25W for charging.

Camera

One common complaint you’d find online on this smartphone is that the camera hardware is the same as last year. However, don’t let that preemptively disappoint you as the dual camera system is already pretty good. The amount of details it can capture along with how vibrant pictures turn out is just top-tier. Its biggest weakness is clearly the zoom, but you’d only see it when lighting isn’t good. In broad daylight, even its maximum 10x zoom looks fantastic, relatively speaking. Furthermore, it doesn’t have a telephoto sensor, only a wide and ultrawide. While I would personally prefer telephoto over ultrawide, it’s already a practical and effective camera setup.

Samsung Galaxy Z Flip5 Review – Selfie #1

Samsung Galaxy Z Flip5 Review – Selfie #2

I’d also like to bring attention to two specific selfies here, because one is taken by the front facing camera within the main display and the other is from the rear wide angle camera when it’s flipped close. Both are shot at the exact same location with the exact same background, captured within seconds of each other. While I did not specify which one is which, I’m sure you can easily tell based on the quality the picture.

Still not sure? The first selfie is from the front-facing camera, and it’s easy to spot as the color looks more washed out, as if there’s a white tint covering the picture whereas the second one is more vibrant. Furthermore, the finer details like my hair and skin are more defined in the second picture. While it’s obvious which camera sensor would perform better, I’m bringing this up mostly because it’s so much easier to take selfies (and vlogs) with the new Flex Window, and you’ll likely stick to using it given the sheer difference in quality. The front-facing camera wouldn’t be completely ignored however as it would still be useful for video calls.

If you want something bigger to complement this compact smartphone, check out the Samsung Galaxy Tab S9 Ultra review by clicking right here.

The Good

Samsung Galaxy Z Flip5 Review – Practically gapless

There are a number of good reasons to consider getting the Samsung Galaxy Z Flip5. For starters, the design has improved significantly. Compared to its predecessor, we now get a gapless design…somewhat. I wouldn’t call it completely gapless but effectively for what it is, you can practically consider it gapless. Furthermore, the hinge has been improved to be more firm, and it’s good to have this if you’re playing around with Flex Mode, especially to get specific camera angles.

Furthermore, it’s IPX8 rated, which means it can withstand water with depths of 1.5 meters for up to 30 minutes with no issues. Sure, it’s not dust-resistant but given the intricate mechanical nature of this form factor, it would be an incredibly tough challenge to overcome. Samsung has stated recently that they still working on adding dust resistance for their foldables, so that’s a fight they’re not to give up anytime soon. Whether we can see it in time for next year or will have to wait longer, only time will tell.

Samsung Galaxy Z Flip5 Review – Flex Window

Of course, we have the main event itself, the highly-requested Flex Window. The outer display has seen a significant increase in size, making it far more usable than before. With the use of widgets, you can do certain actions like replying messages with a full-sized keyboard, setting up your alarm clock, checking the weather, and more. For Spotify Premium and YouTube Premium users, there’s a widget that pops up when you’re playing songs / music on it, though on only the former is capable of playing videos unless you enable YouTube via the Samsung Labs menu.

On its own, the Flex Window’s display is absolutely fantastic. To me, this mostly due to it being really bright, with 1,600 nits of peak brightness, making it easily viewable even under direct sunlight, with excellent colors overall. Sure, it might not be great as the main display but it’s also not far off thanks to the Super AMOLED panel, the same panel used by their older flagships. Just like the main display, you can easily customize its look to suit your preferences.

Samsung Galaxy Z Flip5 Review – Main display

Speaking of the main display, that is also another great part about the Samsung Galaxy Z Flip5. Sure, it’s practically the same as its predecessor but its peak brightness has been boosted from 1,200 nits to 1,750 nits. It has excellent colors, contrast, good viewing angles, HDR support, and an adaptive refresh going from 120Hz all the way down to 1Hz for improved battery life. Sure, the crease is still there but once again, you won’t notice it as soon as the screen turns on. The only reason people don’t talk about this much is because it’s clearly overshadowed by the Flex Window, which isn’t a bad thing.

Lastly, the speakers is certainly on the better side of smartphones launched this year. It’s a stereo speaker setup consisting of one front-facing speaker (earpiece) and a bottom-firing one. It’s clear and loud with a smidgen of bass, which is more than enough for a smartphone. To me, it sounds more full than your average smartphone, making it great for music and videos in a very compact form. Of course if you were to listen to audio while it’s folded, you’ll only really enjoy audio from the bottom-firing speaker alone but that’s a design limitation of this form factor. The only way to address it is if the front-facing speaker is rotatable, which is rather unrealistic.

The Bad

Samsung Galaxy Z Flip5 Review

As good as the Samsung Galaxy Z Flip5, it does have its fair share of drawbacks. For starters, the Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 chip powering it does throttle quite a bit. For general use, it’s perfectly fine but when playing games like Genshin Impact and Honkai Star Rail, it does happen frequently. This is due to temperature issues as you can feel the heat rising from the Flex Window first as it slowly seeps to other parts. I believe this is a hardware limitation due to the inherent nature of the smartphone making it hard to implement a more effective cooling system like in the S23 Ultra. If you don’t really play mobile games, this wouldn’t be an issue.

While I’m impressed with the Flex Window, the number of things you can do on it is quite limited. There isn’t much options with widgets here, making it more akin to a smartwatch in terms of use. Even after going through Samsung Labs, there is only a handful of apps you can enable to run here.

Samsung Galaxy Z Flip5 Review – YouTube video running on the Flex Window

There is a way for you to run any and every app on the Flex Window, including games, which involves running a Launcher widget via the MultiStar applet (which we’ll write a guide about in another article) but this isn’t an official feature. Samsung likely did this to ensure some form of quality control as apps aren’t optimize to run through such small screens compared to the main display. There definitely needs to be some optimization work so we do expect more functions to be included in future updates.

Lastly, and this shouldn’t be a surprise as it’s the same case with last year’s model, is that there’s no Samsung DeX support. If you’re thinking about getting a really compact device that can be connected to a display for a PC-like experience, you will have to look elsewhere unfortunately. With that being said, it’s far from a dealbreaker as DeX only caters to a niche audience. When you consider the overall package, this is a drawback that can be easily swallowed by consumers, with most users likely not ever having it cross their minds.

Samsung Galaxy Z Flip5 Verdict

Samsung Galaxy Z Flip5 Review

The Samsung Galaxy Z Flip5 has brought this flip form factor to a whole new level, mainly thanks to the new Flex Window. If there was ever anything that would stop any consumer from jumping over to this is the battery life. It’s not bad and it has improved, but if they’re coming from a smartphone that launched rather recently, it would likely end up being a sacrifice they’d have to make. On an overall level, this already has all the necessary ingredients to be a reliable daily driver, and then some.

At the end of our Samsung Galaxy Z Flip5 review, I award this smartphone with our Silver Pokdeward.

Big thanks to Samsung Malaysia for sending us this smartphone for the purpose of this review.