Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 6 Review: Is Samsung Still King Of The Foldables?

The Samsung Galaxy Z Fold6 is a very nice foldable phone for those who like the small tablet form factor, though Samsung hasn’t done much to switch it up year on year – and with the Pixel 9 Pro Fold directly competing with it, you’ve got some interesting choices to make if you’re after a larger foldable phone.

Pros	Cons
Elegant premium design	Super expensive
Excellent processor performance	Cameras are only good, not great (for the price)
Seven years of Android updates	S-Pen still isn’t included as standard

Score: 4/5

 

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In this review

Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 6 Specifications
Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 6 Design
Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 6 Camera
Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 6 Performance
Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 6 Battery
Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 6 Conclusion

In terms of foldable phones, I’ve long described myself as a “fold guy”. That’s not a commentary on my poker habits, but instead that I’ve always figured if you’re going to spend the kind of money that foldable phones command, you may as well go for the model that gives you the most screen space possible.

Yes, I’ve somewhat come around to the value of flip phones, but my heart belongs to the larger foldables, which in Australia has equated out to Samsung’s Galaxy Fold series, and not much else besides. Huawei had a few stabs at it, Oppo has a model I’ve never been able to get in for review, and then there’s… tumbleweeds.

As an aside, if you’re curious about the Oppo Find N3, there’s a fine review of it over at Pickr. Tell Leigh I sent you. It’ll amuse him (I think).

That’s changed since the Galaxy Z Fold 6 launched, with Google announcing that its Pixel 9 Pro Fold will launch on these shores (review coming soon!) in early September, giving you some choice. Samsung’s got the pedigree in foldables – but is it still the king?

While the Galaxy Z Fold 6 came to the Australian market some time ago, it’s only just now landed in my test labs at essentially the same time as Google’s new Pixel 9 Pro Fold phone did.

I’ve held off this review ever so slightly in order to be able to compare them head-to-head in some aspects, as well as for my video review below:

Also read:

Google Pixel 9 Pro Fold Review
Google Pixel 9 Pro Fold vs Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 6

Design

The design of the Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 6 has undergone gradual changes over the years, from the early models with their definitely-too-small external cover displays to more pleasing units like last year’s Galaxy Z Fold 5.

Gradual is definitely the word to use to describe the changes for this year’s iteration, the Galaxy Z Fold 6. It’s slightly thinner, the corners are a little more pronounced and it is wrapped in slightly more protective aluminium that gives it a more premium, but business-like feel.

It certainly looks premium and it absolutely should for this kind of price. Samsung sent me the “Silver Shadow” colour to review, though you can also get it in Pink, Navy, Crafted Black or White finishes.

The whole point of foldable phones like this is that you’re getting what amounts to three phone screens overall. Unfolded, you’re faced with a 7.6 inch Dynamic Amoled 2X display that’s technically changed from last year’s model, because the screen resolution has changed from 2176x1812 on the Galaxy Z Fold 5 to 2160x1856 here.

Are you going to spot or miss those individual pixels on a day to day basis? Not without a microscope and a very pedantic attitude; you’re still faced with a 7.6 inch square-ish display with a crease running down the middle.

As I noted in my review of the Galaxy Z Flip 6, Samsung’s done some work over the years to reduce the impact of the mid-screen crease, but it’s still noticeably there, and on a bigger screen it’s even more apparent.

Fold it up and you’re faced with a 6.3 inch display, a little better than last year’s 6.2 inch display, which is impressive engineering when you consider that the Galaxy Z Fold 6 does this in a frame that’s smaller and thinner than last year’s model. It’s still oddly and notably vertical though, which is why it has the distinctly unusual resolution of 2376x968.

One benefit of a thinner foldable here is that it does fit more easily into most pockets for on-the-go usage. Unlike the Galaxy Z Flip 6, this isn’t just a simple notification display, but instead a full (albeit skinny) Android display, though it's considerably smaller in terms of usable area than the competing Pixel 9 Pro Fold's external display.

Yes, they're both 6.3 inch screens, but that's a diagonal measurement; the Galaxy Z Fold 6 is "taller" but as a result less wide on the sides -- and that gives the Google phone more of a regular look compared to the tower that is the Fold 6's cover display.

Adding Googly eyes to the Galaxy Z Fold 6 definitely gives it a "Zany" feel.

That’s a touch more challenging, because while it does work, a lot of apps display slightly oddly on such a tall screen. I definitely felt the urge to open up the phone whenever I could while testing, not just because it’s kind of aesthetically enjoyable as an action, but also so I could use a more regular screen shape for multi-tasking apps, or an expanded one for full-screen variants.

In terms of durability, the Galaxy Z Fold 6 is Samsung’s first foldable to start incorporating a level of dust resistance along with water resistance.

Prior models were IPX8, able to survive limited water immersion but with no dust protection, but the Galaxy Z Fold 6 offers up IP48 resistance. That’s basically protection against small objects or insect, not so much beach sand or your vault full of vintage talcum powders from history, so there’s still work to do – but this is nice to see.

Camera

It feels frustratingly redundant to say it – because I’ve been saying it for years – but it makes absolutely zero sense to me that the phone that Samsung sells for the most money of any of its handsets doesn’t have Samsung’s best camera hardware in it.

Indeed, it feels like very little has changed at all. Yes, you do still technically get five cameras in all, more than any other camera, but that’s the nature of folding phones, with three primary “rear” cameras (whether folded or unfolded), a single “selfie” camera on the cover display and an under-display camera on the primary screen.

At a megapixel count level nothing’s changed, with 50MP wide, 12MP ultra-wide and 10MP 3x telephoto to pick from, 10MP selfie and 4MP under-camera lenses in play too.

Compare that against something like the Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra’s 200MP wide sensor, 12MP ultra-wide and dual telephoto10MP 3x and 50MP 3x sensors… and something doesn’t entirely make sense to me, given the S24 Ultra is cheaper than the Galaxy Z Fold 6 in every storage size!

Rather predictably, given that not that much outside of Samsung’s much-touted “Galaxy AI” has changed in Samsung’s camera world, there’s not much new to say about the Galaxy Z Fold 6’s camera performance.

It’s fine for everyday shooting, which it totally should be, and the inclusion of ultra-wide and 3x telephoto (up to a maximum of 30x hybrid) zoom gives me some scope for creativity. It’s just that for this price, I really don’t think it’s out of order to ask Samsung why we’re not getting a little more?

Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 6 Sample Photos

Performance

The Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 6 is built around Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 processors, but like the S24 Ultra, it’s an (as per Samsung) more finely tuned processor, specifically the “Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 For Galaxy”, with the claim being that it’s offering up absolutely best-in-class performance against other Android smartphones.

How true is that? I knew going in that the Samsung was likely to rule the roost given the Pixel 9 Pro Fold is running the same Tensor G4 hardware as the Pixel 9 Pro XL, but it's still interesting to see the comparison play out.

So how do your choices compare? Here’s how it measures up using Geekbench 6’s CPU test:

On the GPU front, using 3DMark’s Wild Life benchmark, here’s how it compares:

Like the S24 Ultra, it’s hard to argue with the proposition that the Galaxy Z Fold 6 isn’t a very powerful phone. It’s also in the very rare category where all that extra power makes a lot of sense, because the nature of the larger internal display means that you’re much more easily able to multitask and do so well given all the processing power you’ve got to play with.

Like the prior Galaxy Z Fold generations, the Galaxy Z Fold 6 is also S-Pen compatible. I find it slightly irksome again that the S-Pen isn’t standard for the Galaxy Z Fold line, partially because of the cost of the phone, but mostly because it does make a lot of sense as a simple jotting pad when open if you have a compatible S-Pen.

If you are keen, bear in mind that the relevant S-Pen will run you $109 on top of the Galaxy Z Fold 6’s asking price, or $169 with an included case. It also only works on the internal display, a truly odd choice on Samsung’s part. The S-Pen for Fold is only usable on fold devices, but prior generations of Fold S-Pens will still work – I know, I tested with one that originally came with the Galaxy Z Fold 3!

You also get Samsung’s “Galaxy AI” suite of features, allowing for what’s basically the same set of image manipulation features found on devices like the Galaxy Z Flip6 or Galaxy S24 Ultra.

One neat trick here is that you can use Samsung’s live translate feature on the interior screen of the fold while displaying the other “side” of the translation on the cover display, allowing you to have slightly more seamless conversations in foreign lands. It’s still prone to the same kinds of clunky mechanical translation errors that are the bane of any automatic translation engine, however.

As with Samsung's other flagship phones, you get Android 14 on board, plus the promise of seven years of both OS and security updates as well. While you won’t see those updates quite as fast as you might on a Pixel 9 Pro Fold – Google’s Android updates always come to Google phones first, and Samsung will inevitably add its OneUI optimisations on top – it’s still a great vote of confidence in the phone’s long-term durability and its value to you.

Less of a vote of confidence is that (sigh), while the Galaxy Z Fold 6 is 5G capable, models sold here in Australia only operate on the slower sub-6Ghz bands, not the faster (though far less prevalent) mmWave ones. Samsung’s yet to make the leap to mmWave, though Google has largely retreated from offering that on its premium pixels – with the notable exception of the Pixel 9 Pro Fold!

Battery

Producing a foldable phone means putting a lot more folding architecture behind the screen than on a regular phone. Samsung’s also made it even harder for itself in this respect by making the Galaxy Z Fold 6 thinner than its predecessor, giving it even less space to stuff in batteries behind the scenes.

It’s actually a bit of an engineering marvel then, that the Galaxy Z Fold 6 packs in the same 4,400mAh battery as its predecessor, given it’s got less space to do so in!

Engineering marvels aside, there’s then the question of how well the battery actually performs. Here I first turn to my standard YouTube streaming test, running a full-screen (in this case, internal display), full brightness 1080p YouTube video for an hour from a fully charged battery.

Here’s how the Galaxy Z Fold 6 compares against a very wide range of foldables going back some generations... as well as the Microsoft Surface Duo 2, a phone you probably forgot all about the existence of. I suspect Microsoft might hope you do.

The Galaxy Z Fold 6 sits neck and neck with the Pixel 9 Pro Fold in this test, a neat feat given how much more powerful the Galaxy Z Fold 6 is under the hood. It's also a huge jump up from the Z Fold 5’s performance, where it straddled the 90% line that typically denotes a phone that will struggle to last through a full day’s battery usage.

No such problem here for the Galaxy Z Fold 6, which managed a day easily in my more ad-hoc usage tests. As you might expect, if you’re using the internal display a whole lot over the course of the day, it’ll run down a little faster than if you’re more on the cover display.

On the charging front, there’s no in-box charger, but it’ll take power via USB-C or Qi, though disappointingly not Qi2.

That’s a feature that I would have liked to see in such a premium model, and it’s worth noting that the thinner shape of the Galaxy Z Fold 6 can make it a little harder to accurately place on some wireless chargers. The magnetic alignment of Qi2 could have gone a long way to solving that issue.

Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 6: Alex’s Verdict

Larger foldable phones are luxury options without a shadow of a doubt. Any time you’re talking about a phone where some variants tip over the $3,000 price point, we’re not in ordinary phone territory any more. For many, that sticker shock will be enough to keep them away, and that’s fine.

But there’s clearly a market for these larger foldables even at their impressive prices, and for the most part, the Galaxy Z Fold 6 is an impressive phone. It’s powerful, the battery life is the best I’ve seen in a Samsung Fold phone to date and the refined style does live up to its price.

At the same time, it’s hard to justify a year-on-year (or even two year) upgrade cycle, given how the cameras haven’t really changed and the external display on the Pixel 9 Pro Fold is, ultimately, a whole lot more useful in day-to-day operation.

Samsung faces some serious competition in the large scale foldables market, and that may mean that 2025 sees a Galaxy Z Fold that’s a true reinvention of the form, rather than the Galaxy Z Fold 6’s rather more gentle evolution.

Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 6: Pricing and availability

The Galaxy Z Fold 6 retails in Australia with pricing starting at $2749.

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