Pros | Cons |
Good display quality | Bulky and heavy |
Easy to multitask | Very pricey |
Excellent camera | |
Samsung Galaxy Fold4
Price: RM 6,799
What happens when you combine the portability of a smartphone with the multitasking convenience of a tablet? You get yourself a Samsung Galaxy Fold4, the latest foldable smartphone in Samsung’s Galaxy lineup. Does the Galaxy Fold4 live up to its flagship status? Read on to find out.
Design
Weighing 263g, the Samsung Galaxy Fold4 is heavier than most smartphones due to its dual foldable screen. It also has a thickness of 15.8mm when folded and 6.3mm when unfolded.
The phone has a drop and scratch resistance aluminium frame that has a Gorilla Glass Vitus+ for the front and back when folded. When it is unfolded, it has a plastic front. It also has an IPX8 waterproof rating that can handle up to 1.5m of water for 30 minutes.
The power button, volume button and SIM card tray are located on the right side of the phone when folded. The SIM card tray moves to the left side when unfolded. The type-C USB port is located at the bottom of the phone.
The Galaxy Fold4 also supports the S Pen, allowing you to take notes or draw on the go similar to styluses seen on tablets. Unfortunately, the unit I received didn’t include it so I was unable to test it.
I honestly feel like the overall design of the phone feels somewhat bulky. Adding to the heaviness of the phone, it feels like you’re holding a small brick in your hand.
Display & Audio
For the phone’s foldable display, it has a Foldable Dynamic AMOLED 2X display with 120Hz, HDR10+ and peak brightness of 1200 nits. It also has a 2176x1812 resolution with a 90.9% screen-to-body ratio, allowing for a much better viewing experience.
The cover display has a Dynamic AMOLED 2X display with 120Hz, 2316x904 resolution and a 23.1:9 screen ratio.
The primary feature of the Galaxy Fold4 is the foldable screen that has a Multi-Active Window feature. This allows you to open and use two apps at once, making multi-tasking a breeze.
It also features a taskbar at the bottom of the screen that allows you to switch between apps instantly.
Also included is Flex Mode, which moves the app you’re using to the top of the screen while displaying the controls at the bottom. An example of this would be using the Youtube app to show the video at the top of the screen while the bottom displays the comments section. The Flex Mode also comes with a trackpad for the bottom screen that imitates a laptop.
I found the Multi-Active Window feature extremely convenient when casually browsing. While browsing Facebook, I can easily message someone through Messenger on the other screen without closing the app.
While I also found the Flex Mode feature comfortable to use, especially for watching Youtube videos. However, not all apps are optimised for this feature. When I try playing a game using Flex Mode, it messed with the resolution and became extremely blurry.
For the audio, it has a 32-bit, 384kHZ audio loudspeaker that has decent sound quality when I watched videos and listened to music.
Camera
Coming with a triple rear camera setup, the phone has a 50MP, f/1.8 wide camera that has Dual Pixel autofocus and optical image stabilisation. It also has a 10MP f/2.4 telephoto camera with 3x optical zoom and a 12MP ultra-wide camera.
It also has a dual front camera setup, coming with a 4MP, f/1.8 wide under-display camera and a 10MP, f/2.2 cover camera.
A selfie taken with the phone's under display camera
I feel that the camera quality is top-notch, especially for extreme close-up shots of objects, the image is clear even at 30x zoom.
Performance
The Galaxy Fold4 comes with a Qualcomm SM8475 Snapdragon 8+ Gen 1 processor and an Adreno 730 GPU. It also comes with 256GB of storage and 12GB of RAM.
Performing a benchmark test with Geekbench, it gave the phone a single-core score of 1267 and a multi-core score of 3941.
Testing the phone's graphics using 3DMark's Wild Life benchmark, it gave an overall score of 7887 an average frame rate of 47.20.
Testing the performance with Genshin Impact, the game ran well on medium settings at 30 FPS. Unfortunately, anything higher than that would cause occasional frame rate drops.
Software
The phone runs on Android 12L, an OS specifically made for wider and foldable screens. Since it was optimised for the multitasking nature of the Galaxy Fold4, running multiple apps using Multi-Active Window didn’t slow the phone down at all.
Another neat feature when running two apps side by side is the ability to drag and drop images and links. For example, you can drag a photo from the Gallery app straight into Gmail without having to manually upload it.
Charging
With a 4400 mAh battery, the phone can last most of the day without charging. Its Super Fast Charging with Fast Wireless Charging 2.0 allows up to 50% of battery charge in just 30 minutes. Given the fact the Galaxy Fold4 consumes more battery because of its multiple displays, I honestly wish that it had a slightly larger battery to compensate.
Buy or no buy
To conclude, I feel that the Samsung Galaxy Fold4 is an exceptional phone that would satisfy the needs of anyone. However, the bulkiness of it due to the foldable screens might prove inconvenient to some people. Its retail price of an eye-watering RM 6,799 also makes it difficult for me to recommend it to anyone in the market for a new smartphone.
If you have the money to spare and don’t mind the design, the Galaxy Fold4 is an option you can consider.
