Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 2: More Refined, Stuffed with New Features, Same Price
Context
Samsung first announced the Galaxy Z Fold 2 at a virtual Unpacked event, alongside the Galaxy Note20 Ultra. We covered both devices and Samsung’s smartphone segmentation in our report, Samsung Unpacked 2020: Putting Samsung’s New Phones In Context, but Samsung held off the full Galaxy Z Fold 2 reveal until today, at a sequel Unpacked event. Samsung also provided pricing for the Galaxy Tab S7 and S7+ and showed off some of its use cases, but Techsponential and a handful of reviewers got an early hands-on with the S7+ (see Samsung’s Galaxy Tab S7 hands on) so the foldable is the real news.
[This report was first published Sept 1 just as Techsponential received a review unit; it has since been updated with hands-on experience with the phone and its software.]
Why Fold
Smartphones are mostly a mature category, and it is clear that the most efficient design is the bar. It is easy to manufacture and can be produced at price points from under $50 to over $1000. Chemically reinforced glass and inexpensive cases can make bar phones fairly durable. With modest bezels and small cutouts for cameras, the front of the bar can become a blank canvas for media, information, communication, and more. Bar designs are great, and they aren’t going anywhere.
However, there are limitations to the bar. It can only get so big before it is hard to hold and impossible to fit in a pocket or a small purse. There are use cases that depend on having even more screen real estate for multitasking, more sophisticated user interfaces, or truly immersive content. (There is also the novelty factor, but novelty does not sell phones for long.) While bars are likely to be the majority of the smartphones sold over the next decade, folding display technology opens up new segments of the market. Ever since the digital TV transition, Samsung has tied its brand to being first with new technologies, and foldables are no different. Of course, being first often means launching products with imperfect technology or design elements, and one key concern with early foldables has been durability.
Failures with early Galaxy Fold review units gave the foldable category a bad reputation before it launched, but the actual Galaxy Fold that Samsung modified and then shipped to consumers appears to have held up well overall. Samsung offered an inexpensive screen replacement warranty, but there was no huge groundswell of complaints on social media that you would expect if people had to take advantage of it. Techsponential has had a Galaxy Fold review unit from AT&T since shortly after launch last year, and our model has had no problems at all. We have actually spent far more time using its sister product, Samsung’s Galaxy Z Flip, than the original Fold, but the positive experience there as well bodes really well for the Galaxy Z Fold 2, which borrows heavily from the Z Flip. In the two weeks we have had our Galaxy Z Fold 2 review unit, we have had no problems, either.
What’s New
While the Galaxy Z Fold 2 is still an expensive, thick device that lacks official waterproofing, Samsung addressed nearly every other criticism of the original.
Samsung has taken the Galaxy Z Flip’s incredible ultra-thin folding glass display and moved it to the Galaxy Z Fold 2, along with nylon brush elements of the Z Flips’ hinge mechanism. The design and materials science for the folding display is amazing, but this is not rigid gorilla glass. The ultra-thin glass is sandwiched among plastic layers, those plastic layers can still acquire scratches if mishandled, and there is still a crease that runs down the middle. Other improvements to the interior and exterior displays will have a bigger impact on the consumer experience. On the Galaxy Fold, the front display is so small and narrow that it only really serves as a notifications display and app launchpad for the interior screen. The Galaxy Z Fold 2’s 6.2” exterior display now covers most of the front of the phone. It looks more like a standard phone, and, with a few exceptions due to its narrow form factor, you can genuinely use the Galaxy Z Fold 2 as a one-handed bar phone. Then, when you are ready for a more immersive or multi-window experience, open it up.
The Galaxy Z Fold 2 is just a tiny bit thinner when closed, but it still looks and feels like a large chunky candy bar. The inner display is now larger (7.6” diagonally in a squarish 22.5:18 layout) with just a single, small selfie camera cutout. Like the Galaxy Note20 Ultra and Galaxy Tab S7+, the Galaxy Z Fold 2’s interior display has variable refresh rate of up to 120 Hz, which makes scrolling around the big screen much smoother. This seems like a subtle technical detail, but it’s not: faster refresh rates are noticeable and make devices more pleasant to use. This goes double for such a large display where the improvement is even more obvious.
The cameras have been upgraded so there is less of a delta between the Fold, S, and Note lines. We took the Galaxy Note20 Ultra and Galaxy Z Fold 2 to the Bronx Zoo a few weeks apart. The Galaxy Note20 Ultra’s main camera produced slightly more detailed HDR images than the Galaxy Z Fold 2, but the biggest difference between them was the level of zoom, where the Galaxy Note20 Ultra has the clear advantage. One area where the Galaxy Z Fold 2’s form factor helps it beat its siblings — and most other smartphones — is a mode to use the front display and main camera for selfies.
Like nearly all of Samsung’s premium phones in 2020, the Galaxy Z Fold 2 has 5G with mmWave support for future-proofing. The battery size has been increased. Battery life on the original was a highlight, and the Galaxy Z Fold 2 nearly matches it, despite the more power-hungry displays. There is wireless charging, and wireless DeX for treating the phone as a computing or presentation device. Samsung even managed to include UWB (Ultra Wideband) - a technology found only on the Galaxy Note20 Ultra that will eventually let you find your keys with precision or unlock your car without a key. I was able to transfer files from the Galaxy Note20 Ultra to the Galaxy Z Fold 2 over UWB, but at present this is only a viable use case for analysts with an abundance of review devices.
The software is more refined, too. Samsung has adopted the Adaptive Flex Mode hinge and software from the Galaxy Z Flip to bring tent mode, tripod, and new angles for viewing photos. This is fun. You can snap different apps to sides of the main display, and even set up groups of two or three apps to launch together automatically. This is not an intuitive process - Samsung has a secondary side tray that acts as a staging ground for multitasking, and the end result are a pair of very tall and narrow areas for apps. Some apps work fine in this mode - Twitter is a natural - while other apps really need more room to breathe.
The primary reason to turn a phone into a tablet isn’t to multitask, it’s to get a more immersive app experience. On the Galaxy Fold, many Android apps looked silly, as they were just phone apps that were stretched to fill the larger display. The Galaxy Z Fold 2 can signal apps to run in tablet mode, better using the full size of the main screen by adding different user interface elements or increasing information density. Microsoft’s email and productivity apps take full advantage of this as do some from Samsung and Google (pro tip: turning the Galaxy Z Fold sideways gives apps more room to display columns).
The Galaxy Z Fold 2 software isn’t perfect, but the problems now lie less with Samsung and more with Android developers better supporting large display formats. Most Android apps still don’t run in tablet mode, making the overall user experience somewhat unpredictable. Even so, several of the most egregious apps behave much better on the Galaxy Z Fold 2 than they did on the Galaxy Fold. Instagram looked ridiculous before; now it runs with pillarboxes on either side. Facebook does this as well. And apps that always looked good taking up the full screen — Kindle, YouTube, Play Movies & TV, etc. — have more room to shine than before. Microsoft’s cloud gaming service is also supported, which ought to be a fun way to use bigger screen (we haven’t had a chance to test this yet).
The Competition
Huawei’s $2700 Mate Xs also folds from a regular size phone into a tablet, but it differs in availability, design, and software. The primary market for the Mate Xs is China, and Samsung is selling the Galaxy Z Fold 2 mostly in places that are not China. Huawei’s foldable leaves the display exposed at all times, while Samsung’s does not. As long as Huawei is on the U.S. Entity list, it will be at a software deficit for anyone who needs Google apps and Play Store infrastructure.
Microsoft’s $1400 Surface Duo is certainly a contender for deep-pocketed early adopters, but we expect that the Surface Duo and Galaxy Z Fold 2 will find different buyers. First, there are availability differences; Samsung is selling the Galaxy Z Fold 2 globally, while Microsoft is limiting the Surface Duo launch to the U.S. For details, see Techsponential’s report on Microsoft’s Surface Duo strategy and separate Surface Duo Review, which includes use case and user interface comparisons.)
The Price
The original Galaxy Fold cost $1980. The Galaxy Z Fold 2 is better in every way and costs $2000. The price is not a problem.
In the U.S., the Galaxy Fold was available directly from Samsung or at AT&T; the Galaxy Z Fold 2 will be available at Verizon and T-Mobile as well. AT&T will finance the phone over 30 months, but is offering no other incentives. Verizon is offering discounts, but they aren’t especially generous, as they require trade-ins and additional lines. [As of Sept 10, T-Mobile has not announced pricing or incentives.] The carriers clearly believe that, for the right customer, the Galaxy Z Fold 2 is fairly priced from the outset.
$2000 is not a mainstream price point, and the Galaxy Z Fold 2 is not a mainstream product. It also is not launching into a normal economic environment. Samsung has plenty of phones for people who need a traditional bar phones at a wide range of prices. The Galaxy Z Fold 2 is for people who can afford it, saw the original, and said, “what if Samsung just did… [insert wish list item here].” Well, Samsung did that. And a few other things, as well.
Photos: Techsponential
Photos: Samsung stock images
Updates and Corrections:
Sept 1, 2020 10:00 AM - original post
Sept 1, 2020 5:20 PM - updated with unboxing, Galaxy Note20 Ultra, and Surface Duo comparison photos
Sept 10, 2020 - Updated with T-Mobile US availability
Sept 11, 2020 - Updates throughout report with hands-on review experiences
Sept 13, 2020 - Correction: report originally listed Galaxy S20 Ultra as the comparison device for photographs. While Techsponential does have a Galaxy S20 Ultra on hand, the comparison was actually done with the Galaxy Note20 Ultra.