Samsung Galaxy Z Flip

• 256GB 8GB RAM PKR 153,999.

Samsung Galaxy Z Flip price in Pakistan & specs:

Samsung just announced their latest folding phone – the Galaxy Z Flip – at the Galaxy Unpacked event held in San Francisco. In the past, the Galaxy Fold was a big disappointment when it was released for initial market distribution. However, this time the company has promised that the Galaxy Z Flip won’t be plagued with the same problems as the Galaxy Fold.

The Z Flip is Samsung’s second foldable phone, following last year’s Galaxy Fold. The Z Flip’s 6.7-inch display folds into a pocketable square shape, and the phone has an ultra-thin flexible glass display that should resist scratches better than the plastic screen it currently uses on the Galaxy Fold.

Samsung has suggested that the new phone can be folded and unfolded over 200,000 times without any hinge-y glitches. The hinge itself has had a number of new adjustments – since the initial Galaxy Fold fiasco – with an additional layer of fibers inside that space that creates a ‘fiber shield’ to trap stray and unwanted particles.

However, a few warning signs were noticed when a rare commercial about the phone showed a small crease in the center of the main screen. But the bosses at Samsung have stated that it is a natural characteristic of the screen and doesn’t affect the pristine nature of the phone in any way.

Well, of course, a crease is bothersome, but it is a redundant thing if that’s all the Z Flip owners have to worry about. Consider that this phone comes in the wake of Samsung’s Galaxy Fold, which was a disaster when review units were shipped out last year. There were reports of screens breaking after a day or two, hinge problems that damaged the phone’s flexible OLED panel, and tiny crevices that allowed dust to get under the screen. After some tweaks, the second version of the Galaxy Fold fixed up these issues, but it’s still built with a plastic screen that was soft and would easily get dinged up.

That is just a little opinion-based first impression of the phone – and impressions tend to change, no matter the occasion. Let’s have a look at what we’ve got and get going from that direction.

Design:

Naturally, the first thing we need to talk about is the Galaxy Z Flip’s folding mechanism. As mentioned earlier, the Fold version was severely brittle, with problems related to fragility causing the phone staggering release dates. The Z Flip has taken big steps to prevent all that using a hideaway hinge to seal vital components from dust and grime. The phone has been claimed to last long and certainly, doesn’t feel weird to open and close – like come on Motorola; this is a big problem for you!

In one of the coolest twists of the phone’s folding design, the hinge works like a laptop rather than switching between “open” and “shut”. Called “flex mode” by Samsung, the free-stop hinge splits the screen, allowing you to keep watching a video and post a comment simultaneously, or use the phone as a free-standing camera. It feels robust and stable on handling it. However, as you might expect, beyond a certain angle and the screen naturally falls into “closed” or “open” mode depending on which way the screen tilts. This, apart from the folding-experience, is the only frustrating part of using the Z Flip foldable phone.

The external 1.1-inch display (ouch) provides connection even in closed mode: calls, alarms, times and notifications are displayed on the slender piece of reflexive glass. All of this remarkably feels reminiscent of a retro-flip-phone – the kind of phone which would show calls and texts on the closed LCD screen – which also reminds us of the past Motorola Razr.

Stepping aside from the mechanical hoopla, the phone is compact, with a large 6.7” screen folding down to a wallet-sized soft-cornered square. Those rumors regarding the inspiration of the phone being folding make-up cases were right on the money, but it also reminds us strongly of an old GameBoy Advance SP. I mean I had one when I was a kid, hence the similarity!

The Galaxy Z Flip comes in three colorways – mirror purple, mirror black and in certain countries, mirror gold – and all of them have been designed to catch the light. I guess the phone would look great for showing off to your friends but, blimey, for being discreet in dodgy neighborhoods… Good luck with that part as well!.

Camera:

Even though the phone comes equipped with a punch-hole 10MP selfie camera sensor, you can bet you’d be using the 12MP rear cameras with 8x digital zoom more often – you can snap photos/selfies with them in closed mode, that’s why. In a neat twist, the external one-inch display can be used as a viewfinder, allowing you to position the camera accurately while the phone is closed. It’s actually very simple to use: tap the power button twice in closed mode to open the viewfinder, and the volume button once to snap the pic.
When in Flex mode, the Samsung Galaxy Z Flip is one of the first phones with its own free-standing mechanism. Leave it on the table for an hour (but don’t leave the expensive hardware unattended PLEASE) and take a time-lapse of a sunset, for example.

It’s a neat trick that uses the folding function as more than a novelty, but the cameras inevitably don’t pack the punch of the Samsung Galaxy S20, which is built around its much-lauded 64MP cameras mounted on that impressive rectangular module. Even then, I’d say you don’t get to make comparisons here. This is, like, ‘pure jewelry’ we’re talking about!
While we read around what the cameras are capable of, which is beyond impressive, the majority of the Galaxy Unpacked event was centered around the folding function. Time will tell whether the cameras can hold up side-by-side with other popular phones in its price bracket, although it obviously doesn’t have the impressive capabilities of the iPhone 11 Pro or S20 Ultra.

Specifications:

Although Samsung has compromised on some of the internal circuitry of hardware, most of the Z-specs remain the same as any other Samsung Galaxy flagship. The phone comes with a high-end 7nm 64-bit Octa-Core processor to keep pace with handsets in the same price range.

With 8GB of RAM and 256GB of internal storage, there has been no degradation in the memory department, but there’s no SD card option to extend that memory further. Having no SD card extension tray in the module probably feels like phones are already evolving from removable chips, towards pre-installed ones that require no extension whatsoever.
For telecom heavy-weights like Samsung, having a high-capacity battery in smartphones comes as a default constituency

. In the case of the Galaxy Z Flip, a 3300mAh battery keeps everything ticking over. The battery isn’t as powerful as other big flagship batteries, but for this phone, I believe compromises had to be made. As a bonus, the phone comes with wireless charging and power-share capabilities – as standard – and these functions have yet to be tested to reveal more about how they perform.

Full Specs:

It does come as shock but the new phone isn’t 5G enabled. So, we’d have to wait to see if Samsung releases a Z Flip variant adaptive to the 5G network.

Samsung Galaxy Z Flip
Displays Main: 6.7-inch Dynamic AMOLED Infinity Flex
2,636 x 1,080 resolution
21.9:9 aspect ratio
425ppi
Secondary: 1.1-inch Super AMOLED
300 x 112 resolution
303ppi
Processor Qualcomm Snapdragon 855 Plus
RAM 8GB
Storage 256GB UFS 3.0 internal
No microSD card slot
Battery 3,300mAh
Quick-charge up to 15W
Qi wireless charging up to 9W
Cameras Rear cameras:
– Wide-angle: 12MP dual-pixel sensor, ƒ/ 1.8 aperture, Super Speed Dual Pixel AF, OIS, 1.4μm, 78-degree field-of-view
– Ultra-wide: 12MP ultra-wide, ƒ/ 2.2 aperture, 1.12μm, 123-degree field-of-view
Front camera:
– 10MP dual-pixel sensor, ƒ/ 2.4 aperture, 1.22μm, 80-degree field-of-view
Sensors Capacitive fingerprint sensor (side)
Accelerometer
Barometer
Gyro sensor
Geomagnetic sensor
Hall sensor (digital, analog)
Proximity sensor
RGB Light sensor
Network Enhanced 2X2 MIMO, 5CA, LTE Cat.16 Up to 1.0Gbps Download
LTE Cat.13 Up to 150Mbps Upload
Up to 1.0Gbps Download / Up to 150Mbps Upload
Connectivity Wi-Fi 802.11 a/b/g/n/ac (2.4/5GHz), VHT80 MU-MIMO, 256QAM
Bluetooth 5.0 (LE up to 2Mbps), ANT+, USB Type-C, NFC, Location (GPS, Galileo, Glonass, BeiDou)
Software Android 10
Samsung One UI 2.0
Dimensions Open: 167.9 x 73.6 x 7.2-6.9mm
Closed: 167.9 x 73.6 x 17.3-15.4mm
Weight 183g
Colors Black, purple

The presence of a dual-lens rear camera, side-mounted fingerprint scanner, Snapdragon 855 Plus, and a 3,300mAh battery make it clear that the Samsung Galaxy Z Flip is not prioritizing raw specs. Instead, Samsung appears to be going after general consumers here — people who might like the idea of a cool foldable phone but care more about price than specs.

Features:

Let’s keep this one straight: Samsung did something weird at the Unpacked event:
They didn’t talk much about features!
Generally, the Z Flip will run Android 10, bringing with it all of the standard features from Google and Samsung. Outside of demoing Flex mode, the company didn’t spend a lot of time going over Z Flip features.

Now about that Thin Glass:

The Galaxy Z Flip display is made from Samsung’s rumored ‘Ultra-Thin Glass’ which seems to be an upgrade to the ones we’ve seen from other foldable phones. It feels smooth to swipe across – with a frictionless feel. The zero-dot slickness feels like the Corning Gorilla, something found on non-folding phones. For a typical user besides the enthusiast, it would be easy to forget the difference between the new and old technology.

The glass feels pretty durable, even fairly hard and it felt like the device wasn’t at any risk of breaking into pieces. No drop-tests have been made as of yet, but signs of durability are definitely strong.

There is one potential hiccup as far as the Ultra-Thin Glass is concerned: There is a crease on the inside. The crease isn’t as ‘dramatic’ as on the Galaxy Fold, so you’d probably learn to ignore it.

Early Verdict:

The Z Flip doesn’t predominantly showcase a pivot in Samsung’s foldable product range – it feels more like just another experiment with unidentified designs and possibilities. Probably one for the future?

With the launch of this phone, there are many things that the Z Flip gets right that Motorola got wrong, including stuffing a big battery and thin glass, non-plastic, to protect the inner display. However, that isn’t enough of a reason to pay so much money for a phone that’s as pricey as the Galaxy S20 Ultra – which has better camera and performance specifications.

You may conclude that the Z Flip series is a bold idea and not evidence for the future of foldable phones. It’s a flexible gamble, and no one’s at the losing end of it.
If you like what you’ve read in this article, stay tuned to future developments regarding the Samsung Galaxy Z Flip Series. We might have some exciting new updates for you to see!