The Samsung Galaxy Z Flip3 5G was one of the most prominent updates in the Galaxy Samsung Z Flip series lineup, which I enjoy using very much as my daily driver. After one year, Samsung introduced the new Samsung Galaxy Z Flip4 5G. At first, I did not see any revolutionary overhaul in terms of design. Instead, it’s more of a refinement of the Galaxy Z Flip3.

I won’t be talking much about the design as I have covered it in my first impression of the device.

Here’s my review and thoughts after using the Samsung Galaxy Z Flip4 5G for a good 2 weeks.

Design & Built

The Samsung Galaxy Z Flip4 5G has the best glass protection when folded as it slabs with Corning’s strongest Gorillas Glass Victus+. The hinge mechanism feels solid and has enough resistance to hold the screen at variable angles for Flex Mode to work.

The not-so-obvious slimmer hinge doesn’t only add more space for battery headroom and the crease on the primary screen is less noticeable.

Samsung is the only brand that offers IPX8 water resistance for foldable smartphones, including the Z Flip4 5G. This is something that no other foldable in the market able to offer.

Cover Display

The 1.9″ Cover Display receives enhanced functionality, we can read notifications and reply via preset message templates and add new widgets like Direct Dial, Calendar, and Samsung SmartThings for quick access and action.

Double pressing the power button would activate the camera for us to use the Cover Display as a viewfinder. This enabled us to take advantage of the better rear camera quality for selfies or even groupfie. Samsung also fixed the odd 1:1 ratio selfie-taking with the Cover Display.

Folding Display

On paper, there isn’t any new update to the 6.7″ 2X Dynamic AMOLED display that does up to 120Hz refresh rate. Samsung has used a more advanced panel that can switch down to 1Hz to conserve battery.

The tall 22:9 panel is HDR10+ supports and has up to 1,200 nits peak brightness. Although it sports a large 6.7″ display, due to the tall screen ratio, there are huge black bars on the sides when I stream videos on YouTube and movies that play in 16:9. The Samsung Galaxy A73 5G with 6.7″ feels bigger when coming to movie watching.

Overall the Samsung Galaxy Z Flip4 5G offers pretty good color accuracy, inky black, punchy color with good visibility under bright daylight conditions.

Performance

Paired with the most powerful processor to date, a 4nm process Qualcomm Snapdragon 8+ Gen 1 5G, that uses on major brands’ flagship and gaming smartphones. The review unit has 8GB of LPDDR5 memory and 128GB of UFS 3.1 storage.

Coming to the synthetic benchmark tests, the Galaxy Z Flip4 5G performed close to or on par with other Snapdragon 8+ Gen 1 powered smartphones and the temperatures are pretty decent.

Below are the result tests on AnTuTu V9, Geekbench 5, and PC Mark;

There are no issues running intensive 3D graphics games like Asphalt 9 and Genshin Impact on high graphic settings without being toasty to hold.

With Samsung’s software and security update policy, the device will enjoy the longevity of security update protection and Android update all the way to Android 16. If you do not particularly upgrade phones, this upgrade policy will ensure you get updated throughout your ownership.

Camera

Although it only bears a 12-megapixels sensor on its both main and ultrawide, the outputs of the photos and videos are impressively good. This is thanks to the Optical Image Stabilization, huge 1/1.76″, 1.8µm sensor, and speedy Dual Pixel PDAF on the primary camera.

I wish that Samsung would use a more versatile ultrawide that does autofocus. Don’t get me wrong, the ultrawide camera has solid but adding autofocus allows it to shoot sharper close-up ultrawide and macro.

Here are some photos were taken out of the box from the Samsung Galaxy Z Flip4 5G;

You can access high-resolution photos on GDrive.

Battery

TBH, in my review of the Galaxy Z Flip3 5G, the only disappointment was the battery life. I’m getting under 3 hours of screen-on-time, and I need to tether it to the wall plug by afternoon.

The Samsung Galaxy Z Flip4 5G gets a 12% battery bump from 3,300 mAh to 3,700 mAh battery capacity. With the 4nm SoC power efficiency, I can get 4 hours of screen-on-time. If I’m using it cautiously, it could last me until late evening. I’m happy that Samsung has upgraded its charging speed; 15W wired to 25W and 10W wireless to 15W.

Reliability

As a user of the first gen of Samsung Galaxy Fold and now with Galaxy Z Flip4 5G, the build and reliability have improved significantly. I didn’t baby the device when flipping open the screen or worry about scratching the display with my fingernails.

Samsung is so confident with their foldable, that they even offer an additional 1-years of warranty and two years of Samsung Care+. On top of that, Samsung is giving three times FREE film protection replacement.