Samsung Galaxy Z Flip 6 Review: Finishing Touches With AI And A Price Bump

The flip-style foldable game in the U.S. has changed. Suddenly, in the last year, there are two serious contenders in this race, and both launched their latest phones in the last couple of weeks. Samsung has been all-in on the foldable game for many years now, and to be perfectly frank, that shows in the Samsung Galaxy Z Flip 6 that launched at Unpacked last week. The level of refinement and care that went into building this foldable is obvious from the jump — Samsung came here to play, kids.

However, the difference between last year's Galaxy Z Flip 5 and this year's Galaxy Z Flip 6 is not obvious at all. There are some new cameras, and a few new software tricks, but a lot of what Samsung offers is very similar to what it offered a year ago...but this time for a $100 more than its predecessor's starting price. That's right, the cherry on top of Samsung Flip sundae is an extra Benjamin out of your pocket — which might be a good reason to skip the upgrade this time around.

But there are some notable improvements here on the design side and on the software side, and most especially on the camera side, so let's dive in and see what's flipping. I've been using a Samsung Galaxy Z Flip 6 (provided by Samsung for testing) for a little over a week, and this is my full review.

On the hardware side, the bad news is that not a lot has changed from the previous generation. The good news is that what has changed is lovely. Starting with the cosmetic, new accent rings adorn the cameras on the cover screen in the color of the phone. Phones like my blue model really appreciate that extra little touch.

Those cameras themselves are new as well. There's a 50-megapixel main shooter along with a 12-magepixel ultrawide camera. The cameras match those in the Galaxy Fold 6, which means you're not stepping down by going with the smaller foldable, which is a nice surprise.

Unfortunately, Samsung did not pick the lowest hanging fruit and kept the same 3.4-inch cover screen as last year's foldable, which we will discuss in more detail later. Bottom line, it's easier to tell the difference between last year's foldable and this year's foldable because it has those cosmetic changes, which are delightful.

The software on the inside is more of the same, either from last year's foldable or from this year's Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra (and the rest of the Galaxy S family) and that comes in the form of Galaxy AI. Starting on the outside first, the biggest improvement is a new gallery of widgets that you can add to your cover screen, and unlike last year, depending on the size of the widgets, you can add more than one on the same screen. That's a good step forward, but it still rankles a little bit.

As for apps on the external screen, there are only four that have been cleared by Samsung to run right out the gate: Maps, Messages, Netflix, and YouTube. To get other apps on the outside screen, you need to go through almost a dozen extra steps to enable the launch through an app called GoodLock. Once you go through those steps, the act of using an app on the external screen becomes similar to using it on the Motorola Razr+ — and just as fun. But it's that initial gatekeeping that rankles.

Fundamentally, Samsung wants a more curated experience for its base users, while leaving the door open for its more advanced users to play. There's nothing wrong with that approach, but when there's a new feature like a cover screen, the more you encourage your users to use it, the more adoption it will see, and the more innovation it will engender. It's Samsung's ball, so we'll play by Samsung's rules, but that doesn't mean we won't wish for a different game entirely.

Of course, it's 2024, so there must be AI going on in here, right? Yes, indeed there is, and it's a lot, and still not very good. Of particular note is the AI transcription that the phone can generate. If you record something with the voice recorder, or even if you import another sound file, the AI on board can generate a transcription of the recording. The only problem is, the AI didn't generate a very accurate transcription of the file I imported.

Some of it was accurate, sure, but there were a lot of wrong words in there. Google has been doing transcription for a few years now, and I found it to be far more accurate. Meanwhile, the transcription summary didn't turn out all that great, since a lot of the transcription itself was inaccurate. So, not a fan.

Adam Doud/SlashGear

There are some other generative AI playthings you can futz with, such as drawing on a photo and letting AI turn your sketch into a thing. It's pretty darn cool to be perfectly honest. I sketched up this white dog, and I'm using the term dog here very loosely (as you can see in the picture) and Samsung AI not only generated a white dog, but also matched the shadow pattern on the ground. That's messed up. The AI image has a watermark on it to indicate that it's AI, but that's easily cropped out (as it is in the photo above).

AI is getting creepy, folks.

The Galaxy Z Flip 6 comes with a 4,000 mAh battery which is slightly larger than last year and the same size that comes in the Galaxy S24. Battery life is fine, in the same way that battery life on the Motorola Razr+ is fine — as long as you do some of what you want to do on the cover screen, you'll have no problem getting through a day on this phone. My usage was typically in the neighborhood of around 30% of my interactions on the phone happened on the cover screen, so as long as you don't mind that you'll be in good shape.

As for performance, the phone ships with Qualcomm's latest and greatest Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 for Galaxy processor which is basically an overclocked S8G3. As far as how that translates to actual performance, it is great. Gaming is a ton of fun, and where the processor really holds up well is in the AI functions. They generate fast, within seconds, which is largely attributed to the processor's NPU.

On the benchmark side, the Flip 6 scores an 2,082 and 6,663 on the single and multi-core tests which doesn't keep up with the iPhone 15 Pro, but tops most Android phones these days. Suffice it to say, this phone packs a punch.

Both cameras on the Galaxy Z Flip 6 are new this year, and they match the Fold 6. The main shooter is a 50-megapixel sensor with f/1.8 aperture, and the ultrawide sensor is a 12-megapixel sensor with f/2.2 aperture and 123-degree field of view. Samsung spent a good amount of time talking about the improved night performance of the ultrawide sensor.

In practice, both cameras perform quite well in good lighting, without much of a color difference between the two sensors. The main way to tell that you're using the ultrawide sensor is the fish eye effect that is noticeable in the ultrawide shots. Samsung could fix this with a bit more processing, so it's possible this won't always be the case. For now, though it is. Video during the day is also quite good both with the main cameras and the 10-megapixel selfie camera. Footage is great and stability is very solid. There are no complaints there.

At night, the sensors, save the front facing selfie camera all perform very well. Even night video is what I'd call "not bad" — and that's just about as good a classification as nighttime video footage ever gets. It's still quite a bit grainy, but there's none of the typical judder I see when walking. 

The ultrawide camera is fine at night, though not to the extent that Samsung liked to talk about it. You still lose quite a bit of detail in things like grass and trees, but that's more likely due to the smaller sensor size. Photographs and video are both very usable at night, Samsung did a very good job here.

Adam Doud/SlashGear

The only area where Samsung still has work to do is in moving subjects. Even burst mode fails to capture moving subjects that range anywhere from a flag waving on a soon-to-be-storming evening to a former gymnast doing a one-handed cartwheel. Honestly, that's not surprising. Considering how well Samsung did on night videography, I'd held out hope that moving subjects might be okay, but I was disappointed. I can't knock the camera much for that though.

Overall, Samsung has a fine phone here, with only minor foibles in its execution. Unfortunately, one of those foibles is in its price. Samsung raised the price of both its foldables by $100 this year, which puts the Galaxy Z Flip 6 at $1,099 from the official Samsung store. 

Samsung explained that, over the years, it hadn't raised the price through multiple generations of phone, so it felt it was time. We can spend the next year arguing whether it's a valid excuse or not. In this reviewer's opinion, it's not, but that's me. What I will say is plenty of phone makers don't increase their price year after year, even when significant improvements are made.

Samsung has a bunch of colors for you this year — Yellow, Silver Shadow, Mint, Blue, Black, White, and Peach, the latter three of which are Samsung.com exclusives. You can buy the phone basically anywhere. Throw a sack of fish in a random direction, and it'll land on a website or store that is selling the phone.

Of course, the big question is whether you should buy it, and that's not so easy. This is a great phone in just about every way. It rankles that it's more expensive, but maybe it should have been this expensive all along. I really can't point at one thing and say that it's bad, except for that price increase. So yes, it's worth buying, even if you already have a Samsung Galaxy Z Flip 5 – if for no better reason than there's a good chance that Flip 5 will fetch a very good trade in value. The Samsung Galaxy Z Flip 6 feels like the final layer of polish on an already great phone.