The Galaxy Z Fold 3 holds the ‘best foldable phone’ title, but Samsung’s grip probably won’t last forever.
The Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 3 currently holds the ‘ best foldable phone ‘ title in its grip – but it’s a weak grip, that looks set to break very soon if the company doesn’t strengthen it with its next gen foldable. When the latest foldable Samsung phone came out in August 2021, we heaped it with loads of praise, and as the bending-phone market was anemic at that time it easily took our top spot in our rankings. However, the next model, the Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 4, can’t just be an iterative update in 2022 – that’s because the foldable phone market is changing, and Samsung might not be able to keep up. The Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 3 is still at the top of our ‘best foldable phones’ list, but that doesn’t mean it actually is the best in the world. To add a phone to one of our ‘best’ lists, it has to be available in TechRadar’s core regions: the United States, the United Kingdom or Australia. Samsung sells its devices in many regions around the world, so its Galaxy Z Fold 3 easily ticks those boxes. Lots of devices don’t launch globally though, so a product might get launched but never make its way into our buying guides. That’s been the case with a lot of foldable phones, especially as some are limited to China. The recently-launched Honor Magic V has a bigger screen and better chipset than the Z Fold 3. The Oppo Find N, which we tested out, has a much less obvious screen seam than the Z Fold 3, which makes for a dramatically better user experience. Those two phones compete with the device closely, because they have the same form factor of smartphones that fold out into mini-tablets, but we’ve seen some exciting clamshell foldables too.
