Galaxy Z Fold 6 review: Other Folds are thinner with better cameras, but Samsung's Fold is most polished

Samsung's Galaxy Z Fold 6 at a quick glance appears very similar to its predecessors. It's still a book-like foldable with roughly the same height, width, and form. But Samsung has made some subtle but important (and quite frankly, much needed) improvements that together add up to more than the sum of their parts. The Fold 6 is lighter, thinner, with screens that are slightly wider, in a much more symmetrical and balanced folded form. It feels more polished and robust, with a rock steady hinge that folds out flat.

The hardware feels like the final evolution of Samsung's pioneering vision from 2019. But the elephant in the room is that many of these improvements were long overdue because they have already been present in Chinese foldable phones for a couple of years. When it comes to cutting thickness and heft, Samsung is actually playing catch-up.

But there's more to a foldable phone than just hardware, and Samsung's foldable software is still the most intuitive and complete, with better support for the ubiquitous American apps that most of the world use. The useful Galaxy AI features launched with the S24 series have also made their way to the Fold 6.

I wish the cameras were better, or that Samsung hadn't increased the price by $100, but the Galaxy Z Fold 6 is still the most polished and most well-rounded foldable phone in the world.

About this review: Samsung provided XDA with a unit of the Fold 6 for review. It did not have input in this article.

Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 6: Pricing and availability

The Fold 6 is available for purchase right now around the world. In the US, it's available from every carrier along with retailers like Best Buy, Amazon, and Samsung's own store. The device starts at $1,899 for 12GB RAM and 256GB storage, but there are plenty of trade-in deals and offers to get that price down. The Fold 6 comes in three colors from retailers: Pink, Navy, and Silver Shadow. Samsung's online store offers two exclusive special colors: White and Crafted Black.

Hardware overview

Small upgrades here and there add up to a very polished foldable

The Galaxy Z Fold 6's hardware is basically the Fold 5's hardware but slightly better in several crucial areas. It's lighter (8.4oz vs. 8.9oz) and thinner (0.47-inch vs. 0.53-inch) than the last gen device, despite packing the same battery size, almost identical camera system, and a larger vapor cooling chamber. It's got a slightly better IP48 water and dust resistance instead of IPX8. The Fold 6's hinge does not protrude as much from the side when folded, which gives the folded device a symmetrical look for the first time in the Fold series (previous Samsung Folds all had a thicker left side than right side when folded).

The hinge is probably the one foldable hardware component where Samsung is still the undisputed king. The Fold 6's hinge is rock solid, feeling robust and sturdy in the best way possible. It requires just about the right amount of force to unfold the fold the device, and the hinge can stay open at a wider range of angles than any other foldable I've tested. It's just the most reassuring hinge of them all, and that's important.

You may also notice that the new Fold is pointier, gaining that angular corner boxy design vibe of the last few Galaxy S Ultra phones. As I wrote in the S24 Ultra review, this hard corner design looks great but does not feel great in the hand — the Fold 6's corners, especially the hinge corner when folded, jabs into my palm. A case solves this problem, but it's still jarring to me how Samsung engineers either do not care or do not notice that its top of the line phones are uncomfortable to hold in its un-cased form.

The new device's outer OLED screen measures 6.3-inches compared to 6.2-inches last year, an inconsequential difference on paper, but Samsung also gave the new screen a slightly wider 22.1:9 aspect ratio compared to 23.1:9, which means the new screen is a bit wider and less elongated. The little differences matter, with the Fold 6's screen now just wide enough that the keyboard doesn't feel cramped. I can finally two hand type on the outside cover display at nearly my peak speed. And yes, this means the main 7.6-inch folding screen is also wider. Better yet, the crease at the folding point is shallower than previous Samsung foldable screens. The groove is still quite significant compared to Chinese foldables which use a different folding mechanism, but it's less of an eyesore. The main screen, at 2,160 x 1856 resolution and reaching a maximum 3,000 nits, looks gorgeous as expected. While Samsung makes no mention of this, I also feel like the "ultra-thin glass" layer that covers the flexible OLED panel feels even more like glass than before. But this could just be me imagining things, since Samsung marketing makes no mention of it.

The Fold 6's hinge is the best-in-class, the most reassuring hinge of them all

The silicon got the expected annual bump to the Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Gen 3, but the 4,400 mAh cell remains unchanged, and it's disappointing. I understand that Samsung is conservative about batteries ever since the Note 7 fiasco, but every Chinese foldable phone packs a much larger battery. In fact, Xiaomi has a new flip phone that somehow packs a larger battery than the Fold 6. The good news is that battery life for the Fold 6 is fine, a testament to Samsung's optimization and the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3's efficient performance.

The optics remain almost entirely unchanged: you still have a triple lens main camera system along with two selfie cameras (one on each screen). The only new camera hardware here is the ultra-wide camera, which uses a newer sensor. But Samsung's image processing has improved, as the cameras of the Fold 6 are fine, and can be even considered good for a foldable phone (if you ignore the China-only Vivo X Fold 3 Pro which is amazing).

Software overview

Excellent multitasking and performance, but it's all about AI again

The Fold 6 runs Android 14 with OneUI 6.1.1 on top. I find OneUI's overall aesthetic (animations, app icon designs) a bit uninspired, and I really dislike OneUI's horizontal scrolling app tray. But other than these minor nitpicks, OneUI is reliable and functional software with some of the best multitasking around. The taskbar at the bottom of the home screen that allows quick cycling through apps is much welcomed, and the ability to open three apps in a grid, or multiple apps in floating windows that can be shoved around the screen, makes doing work on this phone far less frustrating than on an iPhone or Pixel phone.

But the Fold 6 software's biggest upgrade, just like the S24 Ultra, comes via its AI features. I still have a hard time deciphering which of these AI tools are actually Samsung's creations or Google's, but whatever the case,

the AI stuff works well. Circle to Search from the S24 series is here, and it's a feature I use about a dozen times a day. Live two-way interpretation/translation is also here, and it even supports more niche languages like Cantonese. The Fold 6 can also summarize websites or chunks of text on the Samsung Notes app, or translate handwritten text from one language to another.

Generative AI photo editing is also here, and for the Fold and Flip 6 there is also a new feature called Sketch to Image, which essentially allows you to draw a basic sketch — even a very simplistic, crude one — and then use generative AI to turn the scribble into either artwork (if you're doing so on Samsung Notes) or a photorealistic looking thing (if you're doing it on a real life image). Sketch to Image works very well — it's scary good.