If you’ve followed the Galaxy Z Fold line over the years, you’ll know that this is the series that proved foldables could be mainstream devices. My first foldable was Samsung’s Galaxy Z Fold 3, and since then, the Z Fold lineup hasn’t changed all that much, at least visually.
Enter theGalaxy Z Fold 6, which, let’s face it, looks to be another incremental update over the past two generations. However, there is certainly more to this year’s phone than meets the eye. From performance to battery and software, I think Samsung’s focus on the core user experience feels more consistent than ever, and that’s reflected in the hardware, too.
Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 6
The Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 6 is a foldable smartphone that merges the utility of a tablet with the ease of a phone. Its expansive, flexible internal screen seamlessly continues your activities from the cover display. This device epitomizes mobile productivity and entertainment, boasting advanced multitasking features, robust performance, and enhanced Galaxy AI functionalities.
Price and Availability
The Galaxy Z Fold 6 is available at every major carrier and directly through Samsung’s web store and major online retailers, including Amazon and Best Buy. Storage options start at 256 GB, and a larger variant of 1 TB is available as well. The Z Fold 6 has color options in Silver Shadow, Pink, and Navy, and Samsung online exclusive variants in Crafted Black and White.
Specifications
Flatter and Lighter Design
The new flattened design stands out when you pick up the Galaxy Z Fold 6. Since the Fold3, the Galaxy Z Fold series has gradually flattened out the sides, but this year, Samsung went all out, mimicking the design language of the Galaxy S24 Ultra, and I must say, I love it. New this year is the inclusion of a dust rating, which means the Galaxy Z Fold 6 is now IP48 certified and can provide minor dust resistance while maintaining its water resistance up to 1.5 meters for about a half-hour.
My biggest concern continues to be long-term durability because, at the end of the day, this is still a very large device that sports a foldable screen, which can easily scratch with just your fingernails. Samsung is using a more durable formulation for its screen protector this year, and it certainly feels much closer to regular glass than before, but they still will likely tend to peel over time, and for a phone that now offers seven years of software updates, it’s not a guarantee that your new very expensive phone will live up to those seven software cycles without strong physical protection.
The Galaxy Z Fold 6 opts to use aluminum for the sides, unlike the titanium Galaxy S24, but I’m really happy they opted to make it a matte finish this year unlike the Galaxy Fold 5 from last year. This goes for the hinge too, which now picks up on less visible fingerprints as you use the phone.
Speaking of the hinge, it’s as small as ever, and that’s apparent when you’re using the cover display. Unlike previous generations, where the hinge would aggressively bulge out on one side, the Galaxy Fold 6 essentially eliminates this and makes using the outer display feel more like a typical phone.
Despite the smaller footprint, this is still the best hinge on any foldable I’ve tried thus far, including that of the OnePlus Open and Google’s Pixel 9 Pro Fold. It is gapless and has the best fluidity between opening and closing and the tightest tolerances for using the phone in Flex Mode.
That said, Samsung continues to lag in terms of the crease visibility compared to the likes of OnePlus. Much like the Galaxy Fold 4 and 5, the crease isn’t visible or bothersome when viewing content directly straight ahead, but as soon you catch a reflection or view the phone from an angle, it’s very visible.
Screens Are Brighter, Sharper, and More Usable Outdoors
Moving onto the displays, Samsung continues to excel in quality and sharpness with the Z Fold 6. Much like the flattened-out design, the displays receive similar treatment, with the corners losing their rounded edges as seen in previous iterations.
While the rounded edges give the device a softer appearance, I much prefer the completely straight-angled approach this year, especially with the outer display, which finally receives consistent corner bezels on all four corners. This makes the design look more consistent and eliminates the weird extra bezel on the hinge side of the phone, which always had to accommodate for the rounding of the display corners.
The cover display is now slightly larger and wider than before at 6.3 inches, and this subtle change makes it feel much more like a traditional smartphone, especially with the elimination of the hinge bulge. As someone who spends most of my time using the cover screen, this change makes the Z Fold 6 far more practical for consuming content. It’s a pretty decent quality-of-life improvement that extends the device’s battery life since you’re not constantly unfolding to use the bigger phone screen.
The 7.6-inch Foldable Dynamic AMOLED 2X panel also receives the sharp corner treatment but largely stays the same as before. Samsung hasn’t made any major improvements to the crease or the under-display selfie camera, which is quite a shame because this is otherwise a fantastic viewing experience.
The resolutions of the Fold 6 remain sharp at 1856 x 2160 on the main display and 968 x 2376 on the cover display, with both panels maintaining 120Hz adaptive refresh rates and HDR10+. Both displays are much brighter than before, reaching a peak brightness of 2,600 nits compared to 1,750 nits on the Fold 5.
The Fold 5 displays were perfectly visible in my testing with them last year, but having this higher ceiling on the Fold 6 allows it to be much more versatile in consuming content in direct sunlight or bright environments. Its slightly less than the 2,700 nit display of the Google Pixel 9 Pro Fold or the 2,800 nit display on the OnePlus Open.
Regardless, Samsung continues to provide one of the best displays for content consumption on any phone, and I doubt that a higher peak brightness would make any major differences to what is otherwise a very flagship pair of panels.
Cameras Are Consistent but Largely Unchanged
The camera hardware on the Galaxy Z Fold 6 remains largely the same as last year’s Z Fold 5, but Samsung has introduced some processing enhancements to improve image quality. The rear camera array features a 50MP wide-angle lens, a 10MP telephoto lens with 3x optical zoom, and a 12MP ultra-wide lens with a 123-degree field of view.
Like the Galaxy Flip 6 I reviewed previously, the color consistency across all three sensors is quite impressive, with the dual pixel PDAF and OIS ensuring fast, sharp images in most conditions, but it is nowhere near the quality of the higher-end S24 Ultra or OnePlus Open camera systems, which doesn’t use B-tier hardware.
This is most apparent in low-light photography, which still leaves room for improvement. The results are not as strong as what you’d get with the Galaxy S24 Ultra, especially when it comes to autofocus in less-than-ideal lighting scenarios.
The selfie camera has also remained the same: a 4MP under-display camera on the inner screen and a 10 MP front camera on the cover screen. Of course, you may always opt to use the main cameras with the cover screen preview as before, but I would love to have seen some new sensors across the board.
Overall, not much different is going on in terms of the camera this year, and it’s clear Samsung wants to maintain that differentiation between what it wants the Z Fold line to cover compared to the Galaxy S Ultra line. While the camera experience on the Fold 6 is not bad by any means, with competitors like Google and OnePlus entering the North American market, it’s clear that this is an area Samsung is definitively lacking in, and I hope this lousy approach won’t hold for much longer.
Flagship Performance and Battery Life With Snapdragon 8 Gen 3
Under the hood, the Z Fold 6 is equipped with the Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 chipset, which delivers flagship-level performance on par with the Galaxy S24 Ultra. There’s also 12 GB of RAM and storage options of 256 GB, 512 GB, and 1TB—all using UFS 4.0.
In real-world use, the device handles intensive tasks like a champ, and I didn’t experience any stutters or lags, even with multiple apps open at once. From editing and exporting multiple photos in Lightroom to consuming HDR content through Netflix and YouTube to even playing a bit of Minecraft, the phone did not slow down.
For users who value productivity and rely heavily on their phone for work, this foldable remains an excellent choice, and I much prefer Samsung’s suite of multitasking features compared to that of OnePlus. Things like the app dock and Edge Panel for quick access to apps make the experience feel fluid and very natural.
Realistically, I doubt anyone would notice any discernible difference in day-to-day performance from this year’s model compared to the Fold 5 because that phone also performed exceptionally well. But there is one area where I think the new chip made the biggest difference: battery life.
Despite retaining the same 4,400mAh battery as the Fold 5, the efficiency gains from the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 are noticeable. The Z Fold 6 comfortably lasts a full day of use, even with moderate inner display usage. If you rely primarily on the cover screen, you can easily extend the battery life to a day and a half.
It also feels like you can cheat to get to even better battery life on this phone, more so than previous generations. For my usage, the cover screen on my Z Fold 3 was the more used display compared to the inner foldable display, but with the Fold 6, this habit is accentuated by the wider aspect ratio that makes it easier to consume content than before. With the cover screen mimicking normal slab phones so well, I rarely felt the need to open up the phone to take advantage of the larger display unless I wanted to.
Charging speeds are still capped at 25W wired, with 50% charge in 30 minutes and 15W wireless charging. These numbers aren’t groundbreaking, but they’re sufficient for a device that prioritizes multitasking and media consumption.
Galaxy AI on Samsung’s Largest Screen
Just like every other Samsung flagship released this year, the Galaxy Z Fold 6 headlines with Galaxy AI, a suite of seven new features grouped into translation, summarization and formatting, and photo manipulation. Each feature can be toggled on or off in settings, and Samsung allows many of them to use on-device processing.
I’ve already reviewed all of these features in-depth in myGalaxy S24Ultra andGalaxy Z Flip 6reviews, but in terms of actual usage on the Z Fold 6’s larger screen, I think these features change how you interact with your phone.
For example, translation works much faster on-device, and having both Interpreter mode and text translation accessible on a wide display feels much more intuitive for multitasking. However, using translation in Flex Mode—while convenient on the Z Flip 6—feels a bit awkward on the Fold 6 because the screen facing the other person is elongated and not square like the Flip series, so you have to either bend down to catch the translation or obstruct your view to make sure the other person can read the outer display. Trust me, just use Translation on either one of the two displays without Flex Mode.
Where the Fold 6 shines is in its photo manipulation tools because you have a larger canvas and S-Pen support. Editing images on a screen of this size makes it easier to fine-tune photos, whether it’s removing unwanted objects or adjusting exposure and contrast. That said, Samsung’s AI processing isn’t as up-to-date as found on Google’s newly launched Pixel series, so the results, while still relatively good, aren’t on par with the competition.
Of course, this runs on top of Samsung’s OneUI 6.1 based on Android 14, and just like the other Samsung flagships, this is an incredibly reliable and optimized software experience across the board. While I prefer Google’s vanilla skin on the Pixel, Samsung has done a lot with OneUI to finally make it feel cohesive with the hardware it’s running on, and with a promised seven years of software updates, I have little concern about how this phone will perform long-term.
Should You Buy the Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 6?
TheSamsung Galaxy Z Fold 6builds on the success of its predecessors with a more refined design, better displays, and solid performance, though the improvements still feel incremental for those already using a previous Z Fold phone. The flatter, lighter body and the enhanced cover display alone make the Z Fold 6 a far more practical device, while the powerful Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 and efficient battery management make it a reliable workhorse for productivity-focused users.
However, the lack of significant camera upgrades still limits this phone’s ability to keep up with other significantly less expensive flagships. For those looking to upgrade from older foldables or for power users who want one of the best multitasking experiences on a smartphone, the Z Fold 6 is a compelling choice, but it doesn’t exist in Samsung’s bubble anymore.
With Google and OnePlus making a solid effort in the foldable space, Samsung’s Galaxy Z Fold line is starting to feel stale in comparison. Without meaningful changes to improve upon some core issues like the crease or the camera experience, it’ll only become harder to consider the Z Fold 6 a viable option when other devices offering superior hardware packages are available.
