Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 6 review: First impressions of the flagship folding phone

This year’s foldable gets a faster chipset and a range of smart new AI features

The Galaxy Z Fold 6 was unveiled at Samsung’s annual Unpacked showcase in Paris and launched 24 July (The Independent)

Samsung has just launched the Galaxy Z Fold 6, the latest in its series of high-performance, flagship folding phones. The book-style Galaxy Z Fold 6 is available to buy now for £1,799.

If you were hoping for a radical reinvention of Samsung’s top-tier device in 2024, keep on hoping. Just like last year, and the year before that, the new Galaxy Z Fold 6 offers just an incremental upgrade over the 2023 version – small tweaks to keep it feeling current, fast and fresh.

Samsung’s Fold and Flip phones remain undisputed champions in their category, but rivals are now catching up with their own designs, such as Google’s Pixel Fold. The new Galaxy Z Fold 6 is the best folding phone Samsung has ever made, but with the foldable space busier than ever, these small annual upgrades might not be enough to keep the Korean tech giant in the top spot for much longer.

We’ve been testing the Galaxy Z Fold 6 to bring you our initial impressions ahead of a full review – here’s everything you need to know about Samsung’s new flagship.

Where to buy the Galaxy Z Fold 6

• Sky
• Vodafone
• Three
• O2
• Very
• Currys
• Argos

How we tested

This year’s Fold is wider and shorter (Steve Hogarty)

We’ve been testing the Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 6 since its reveal at Samsung Unpacked in early July. During testing, we pay attention to the folding phone’s build quality, screen improvements, changes since the previous model, new AI-powered features and battery performance.

Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 6: £72 per month, £85 up front, Fonehouse.co.uk

(Samsung)

The best deal we’ve spotted on the Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 6 is at Fonehouse, where you can grab a contract with Three for £72 per month and £85 paid up front. The 24 month contract gives you 300GB of data when you choose the 256GB variant of the phone.

Buy now

Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 6: From £1,799, Samsung.com

In time-honoured Samsung tradition, this year’s Fold is being treated to just a few minor hardware tweaks to keep it current for 2024. Under the hood, the Galaxy Z Fold 6 runs on the newest Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 chipset and uses a 1.6x larger vapour chamber for improved performance during demanding tasks like gaming.

Screen dimensions have been refined ever so slightly to make this year’s Fold shorter and wider, which goes a small way towards addressing concerns about Samsung’s cover display feeling too narrow in the hand. The cover display is 2.7mm bigger and a millimetre wider, while the phone itself is 1.4mm shorter and 14g lighter.

Other small tweaks include a more squared-off edge surrounding the display, as well as a new brushed metal finish on the rings surrounding the camera, which catches the light in a more dramatic way. Battery capacity and cameras have remained unchanged since last year. The Galaxy Z Fold 6 comes in three colourways: blue, silver and pink.

Buy the Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 6 now

Galaxy AI features

Samsung has gradually introduced a bunch of AI features to its foldables under its Galaxy AI banner – some of them new, and many of them we’ve already seen on other Galaxy devices like the S24 range, Samsung’s tablets, and the previous generation Flip 5 and Fold 5 devices.

(The Independent/Steve Hogarty)

While they were showcased as part of the Galaxy Z Flip 6 and Fold 6 launch at Unpacked, these features will likely be available across the entire range of Galaxy AI capable devices. Here are a few highlights.

Interpreter

A returning feature for Samsung’s foldables, this lets you prop your Flip or Fold open on a table to hold a face-to-face conversation in two different languages. Your spoken words will appear as translated text on the screen facing your friend, and vice-versa, like live subtitles.

Sketch to Image

New to Galaxy AI this year, Sketch to Image lets you doodle on your photos and have your drawing appear as a photorealistic edit. Samsung demonstrated it by sketching some glasses on a dog. We tested it by doodling some crude sunflowers into a photo of an empty flower pot, and a cowboy hat on a photo of a friend. The results were impressively believable, and great fun too.

Buy the Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 6 now

Live Translate

An existing Galaxy AI feature launched last year, Live Translate allows two people speaking different languages to hold a conversation over the phone in real-time. Previously only available on the built-in Samsung Phone app, the feature can now be used in other calling apps like WhatsApp.

Suggested replies

This feature appears on other Samsung devices – like the new Samsung Galaxy Watch – but should be especially useful on the small display of the Fold 6.

The Galaxy Z Fold 6 comes in blue, silver and pink (Steve Hogarty)

Rather than giving you a choice of plain-sounding stock responses when you get a message, Galaxy AI can analyse your most recent messages to suggest quick replies that are more relevant to your conversation. Samsung says this feature will also analyse your tone in different conversations, so the suggested replies to your partner will be different to the suggested replies to your boss.

Note Assist

First appearing on the S24 range, Note Assist transcribes and translates meetings and conversations between multiple speakers (up to 30 or 40, Samsung claims), then organises and summarises your transcription into neatly formatted notes with auto-generated covers.

Buy the Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 6 now

Voucher codes

For the latest discounts on phones and tablets, try the links below:

• Currys discount codes
• AO discount codes
• Apple discount codes

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