Galaxy Z Flip 6 review: The competition is getting too stiff for Samsung to play it this safe

Summary

• The Flip 6 upgrades with better main camera and longer battery, but still lags behind competition.
• Samsung relies on software polish, AI features to stay ahead in the foldable phone market.
• While improvements are noted, the Flip 6 faces tough competition with flashier offerings at lower prices.

After last year's semi-major upgrade, the Samsung Galaxy Z Flip 6 is back to an iterative, refinement year: the new flip phone gets an upgraded main camera, larger battery, a vapor cooling chamber, more RAM, and the expected Qualcomm silicon bump.

While the main camera getting better and battery life getting longer will be important improvements for daily use, these upgrades are also long overdue, and in fact, still lag behind the competition, especially if we look outside the US market.

But just like the S24 series, Samsung is banking on software polish, a tight partnership with Google, and AI smarts to push the Flip 6 ahead of the competition, which all actually have flashier looks with larger outside cover screens. Will it be enough to sell well though?

About this review: Samsung provided XDA with a Flip 6 for review. The company did not have input in this article.

Samsung Galaxy Z Flip 6: Pricing and availability

The Galaxy Z Flip 6 is available for purchase now at retailers around the world. In the US, you can find the Flip 6 at all major carriers as well as Best Buy, Amazon, and Samsung's online store. The phone starts at $1,099 for 12GB RAM and 256GB of storage.

Hardware overview

​​​​​​The Flip 6 looks mostly like last year's Flip 5: overall dimensions and weight are mostly unchanged, as are the screen sizes and resolution. The sides this year are slightly flatter with a matte coating, and there are metal rings around the two outside cameras which correspond to the phone's colorway.

Samsung's hinge is still best in class. It feels extremely robust and solid, can stay in place at virtually any angle without wobbling. Although Samsung's hinge beats the competition, I can't say that about the rest of the hardware.

The 60Hz, 3.7-inch outside screen, which Samsung calls "Cover Display" is smaller, lower res, with slower refresh rate than virtually all rival flip phones right now, including the Motorola Razr+ 2024 which also sells in the US.

The 6.7-inch inner screen still has a relatively deeper crease than the competition, and its PWM (pulse-width modulation) is also slower than rival flip phones. Don't get me wrong, the Flip 6 displays look great in a vacuum, and to most untrained eyes, they're gorgeous. But other flip phones just have better displays.

The Flip 6's battery has been increased to 4,000 mAh this year, 300 mAh larger than the Flip 5. While 300 mAh isn't a huge jump, battery life is noticeably better thanks to the more efficient Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 silicon and perhaps the new vapor cooling chamber which keeps the phone running cooler. In real world use, the Flip 6 can almost last a heavy 12-13-hour day out for me, while the Flip 5 would run out of juice after 10-11 hours.

​​​​​​I should mention that I am about as heavy a user as can be. I shoot dozens of photos a day, constantly edit and upload Instagram Reels, and I am physically outside running around using maps and other features. For people who live a more sedentary, 9-5 office lifestyle, the Flip 6 battery life will be even better - in this setting, it could perhaps last from one morning until lunchtime the next day.

The main camera got upgraded from 12MP to 50MP this year, still at f/1.8 aperture. This was a much-needed upgrade as the Flip 4 and 5's cameras were getting very long in the tooth. The Flip 6's main camera now has parity with the non-Ultra Samsung S24 phones. The 12MP ultra-wide and the 10MP selfie cameras are unchanged.

Software and features

The Flip 6 runs OneUI over Android 14, and this year's OneUI is all about AI features. All the stuff already introduced in the S24 series are included, such as Circle to Search and live two-way interpretation, both of which I find very useful. Less useful are things like summarizing a website's content (which doesn't work very well) and "Write Assist" which can craft a sentence or entire paragraphs. As a long-time writer of words, I find it very troubling though that people would want to use AI to help generate words in their native language. Be proud of your voice, people!

The new AI feature that I quite like (but I noticed many reviewers find it frivolous) is "Sketch to Image" which allows you to draw a basic or crude sketch, and generative AI can turn it into artwork or a realistic part of a photo. For example, the dog below in the photo is entirely AI-generated. He or she does not actually exist.

What I like

I find the Z Flip 6 very comfortable to hold (something I can't say about the Fold 6), and the rock solid hinge allows the phone's main camera to be used in creative angles. The main camera is also very good for a flip phone, with excellent dynamic range, though its depth-of-field is not as shallow as I like.

The ultra-wide is solid, details are a bit soft in the corners, but overall image quality is fine, especially for a flip phone.

Battery life, as mentioned, is good enough to a point that I don't have to stress about battery life on most normal days, which is something I could not have said about any previous Samsung flips.

What I don't like

The outside cover screen, which was the big upgrade last year, is already outdated a year later. Rival flip phones from Motorola, Xiaomi, and Honor launched this year all offer outside screens that literally almost cover the entire surface (except for leaving room for the cameras). They also have higher refresh rates and resolutions.

It's not just screen size, but the outside screen of the other three phones can also run entire apps in full out of the box. Samsung's Flip can do this with some tweaking via installation of a separate app, but by default, Samsung really wants you to just stick with the default widgets on the cover.

Should you buy the Samsung Galaxy Z Flip 6?

You should buy the Z Flip 6 if:

• You want a flip phone with the most AI features
• You want a flip phone with the most reassuring, sturdy hinge

You should not buy the Z Flip 6 if:

• You want the best value flip phone
• You want the most bleeding edge flip phone hardware
• You already own the Z Flip 5

Every year around this time, I am lucky enough to get to review Samsung's two new foldable phones, and every year it's the same story: the new Samsung foldables are very polished, and compared to direct predecessors, improve just enough to recommend. If you're on the Galaxy Z Flip 4 or older, and you upgrade to the Flip 6, you will be impressed.

But then I also cannot ignore the fact that, despite being the pioneer of foldables, Samsung's foldable hardware has actually fallen behind offerings from rivals, which are almost always thinner, lighter, with larger batteries, bigger screens, and more cameras.

For Samsung's larger Fold series, I can still find enough reasons to justify calling it "the best overall" despite the flashier competition: it's got the most polished multitasking system, S Pen support (which comes in handier than ever this year with the new Sketch to Image AI feature), and the fact that most Chinese book-like foldables are limited to the China market only.

But the Flip series doesn't have these advantages. The smaller screen negates the multitasking system, there's no stylus support to set it apart from the rest, and Chinese brands do sell their flip phones on the global market (just not in the US). Even focusing stateside only, Motorola has been selling its Razr series for four years, and the recently launched Razr Plus 2024 has an objectively more attractive outside screen and costs $200 less.

So, even in America, the competition in the flip space is heating up. If you are in regions where Xiaomi's Mix Flip 4 will sell, or Oppo's Find N3 Flip is already selling, then you'd really have to be a fan of Samsung's software to pick the Flip 6 over those guys.