Samsung Galaxy Z Flip6
The Samsung Galaxy Z Flip6 officially released to the public on July 24th, 2024, though Samsung shipped preorders out early in typical Samsung fashion. I did preorder mine, and it arrived the next day on release in the Crafted Black colourway alongside a clear ring case. Though since the phone is exact same size and weight as the old model, the cases are intercompatible between the 5 and 6.
Samsung forgot to add a lavender option this year, apparently, so they are on thin ice. They are very lucky the that gimmick with Crafted Black worked this year, as the textured back glass is considerably more grippy and stable than the traditional glossy glass of their past Flip phones, and the deepness of the black blends in with the true blacks of the AMOLED cover display, This is the only colourway of this phone that I considered even minimally acceptable, I might not have upgraded if this option wasn't available.
Over 2023's Galaxy Z Flip5, the Flip6 brings a number of upgrades to the Flip line, most of which were relevant to me, including:
- Notably upgraded build quality, namely around the main display bezel plastic and
- Upgraded main camera quality, from 12MP to 50MP (effectively doubling the resolution of the resulting image) Note that I quit using my Flip5 exclusively due to its poor camera and build quality
- 8% better battery capacity from ~3700mAh to ~4000mAh
- Upgraded SoC, with +4GB of RAM for a total of 12GB
- Fresh warranty, which is crucial on a folding phone (My Samsung Care+ lapsed on my Flip5, so it is financially risky to own at all now.)
- Seven years of OS updates compared to four years (this phone will see Android 20 if I decide to make this my "forever phone")
Surprise upgrades included
- Near complete elimination of the crease
Aside from the AI featureset, most of which is done server-side and thus does not constitute a higher hardware requirement, this is effectively just a cleaned up and polished version of last year's phone. Due to the durability issues of the Flip5, jumping ship to fresh hardware for less than the cost of a repair on my current phone is a no-brainer.
There's really nothing else to note about this phone. It's nothing special compared to the Flip5.