The new Galaxy Z Fold 4 is Samsung’s most accomplished foldable phone yet, but we’re betting the Z Flip 4 will be the more popular choice.
Samsung’s latest foldables — the Galaxy Z Fold 4 and Galaxy Z Flip 4 — are almost polar opposites when it comes to their target market. On the one hand, the Fold is built for the business and power user, placing maximum screen real estate and state-of-the-art multitasking software at your fingertips, size and bulk be damned. The Flip is comparatively dainty and understated; it doesn’t claim to be brilliant at everything, instead leaning on its aesthetics and the enduring popularity of social media to make its case.
Depending on your outlook on what the ideal foldable phone “should” be, it may or may not come as a surprise that the Flip is by far the more popular of Samsung’s two foldable form factors. In late 2021, Samsung noted that the Galaxy Z Flip 3 accounted for 70% of its foldable sales in Korea, then reaffirmed the handset’s popularity during its most recent launch.
There’s no denying that, from a technological standpoint, the Galaxy Z Fold 4 is the superior handset. It offers a more powerful multitasking setup, with a huge 7.6-inch internal display and the new taskbar as part of Android 12L. Samsung has also addressed a few lingering bugbears, upgrading the camera package with more competitive hardware, even if it’s not quite the best setup in the business. The exterior display is a little wider for one-handed typing, and wireless charging is faster too.
For the first time, Samsung has managed to squeeze almost all of its flagship-tier smartphone tech into a foldable form factor. There are still a few compromises, such as the so-so battery size and slow charging, but far fewer than with the Flip. Broadly speaking, customers no longer have to choose between specs and form factor; they can now have both. That’s a tantalizing reality, especially for those who have been hesitant about whether to leap based on trade-offs in previous generations.
