Samsung Z Flip 5 - Biggest Upgrade Ever

this is the just announced Samsung Galaxy Z flip 5 and when
you first look at it it doesn't make any sense compared to Samsung's very
highest end phones which can be had for like the same price now every camera is
smaller and less capable you can expect your battery to take longer to charge and
deplete about20 faster there's less room for calling so the chip won't perform
as well and yeah this is more compact it folds right well not really 

I mean it is
shorter but it is also thicker so the actual volume being taken up is about the
same and yeteven with all of thiswhy am I drawn to the z-flip 5 so muchwhy is
it that my curiosity was sosparked when I saw that first one orthat I very
nearly switched over to itwhen I tested the z-flip 4 last year andthat now we
have the five I've decidedthat I'm actually going to try and usethis thing on a
day-to-day basis welllet's start with what's new the storagehas doubled from
128 gigabytes to 256.although the price has also gone up tooso that's not
really a perk the buildthough is a win it's thinner forstarters about 

two
millimeters thinnerwhen folded up but the best part of thisis how they've
achieved that thinnessit's a new hinge one that for the veryfirst time on a
Samsung flip can praisethe Lord close without a gap wellthere's a tiny little
hole here but it'sbasically gapless and thisbig deal because it's not just that
itlooks better and it's a less weird shapeand it takes up less space but it
alsocreates less room for rogue particlesand pocket dust to just find their wayinside
which trust me use any foldingphone for a period of time is a problemand it's
probably also one of the maincauses of you just ending up with ascuffed inner
screen 

no matter howcareful you think you're being speakingof which this inner
screen is now 25more resistant to scratches and theouter body is protected by
armoraluminum and Gorilla Glass victus 2which I'm told Has the strength ofceramic
which is pretty cool consideringthat ceramic has long been reserved forthe
highest end luxury phones because ofits scratch resistance the only thing Idon't
like and this has kind of been anongoing pet peeve of mine is that whenyou open
the phone it doesn't snap intothat fully open position it's still justlike a
tiny bit flaccid which also meansa 

tiny bit bent they really should makeit so
that opening it feels just astactile and satisfying as closing itbecause that
is fun but then the screenis I would say not just a big but thebiggest jump
since the very first flipspecifically this cover screen I meanjust compared to
Samsung's last phone itis 278 bigger it now looks like a folderand it can do a
lot more used to be ableto have a peek at your notificationscheck your calendar
and make a quickvoice recording but we're talking like10 20 of the overall
functionality ofthe phone nowI'd call it 50. there's 13 differentwidgets
available at launch and they saythere's more on 

their way andessentially each
one is its own homescreen you swipe between them and if youwant to move quickly
you pinch out andyou pick the one you want plus you canswipe to the left to check
yournotifications and down to fiddle withquick settings it's all very smooth
andSlick for what is effectively asecondary custom operating system on thesame
phone and the other thing that I'mnoticing about the way this whole thingis
Being Framed is that it's all aboutthe personality Samsung's not reallytrying
to pitch this front screen as away to quickly check things it's more asa tool
for self-expression and that itachieves 

I actually cannot believe howmuch you
can customize it everythingfrom the battery percentage indicator tohow to
display notifications to theexact shade of color that you want andin what way
it fades to another coloryou could absolutely lose yourself in itand I plan to
do exactly that side noteyou can also see how much Samsung ispushing this whole
fashion angle herewith the sheer number of cases beingoffered including these
rather fancysmart ones that when applied will syncthe wallpaper on your phone
and evenyour Galaxy watch to match plus you cannow use apps on the front not
all appswhich 

Samsung could have allowed you todo but I guess they want you to
only usethe apps that have been specificallyoptimized to make the most of thisstrange
folder-like shape so there'sonly like 10 at launch the screen is nowbig enough
though to get a full qwertykeyboard on which means you can alsomessage it's a
little fiddly butcompletely usable with one hand which isa luxury that I almost
forgotten waseven possible okay there's a couple ofthings that I do don't like
not you I'mso sorry Milo's been replaced by hischunkier London counterparts
there'sstill a crease on this main display theysay

 it's improved but it's still
verynoticeable and I just think doesn'texactly scream hey I'm a market leadingfifth
generation product and then whilethis inner panel is a 120 hertz displaythat
can ramp its refresh rate all theway down to one Hertz the cover screenwhich is
my other gripe is locked at 60.and so what this means is that even whenyou're
trying to use it in this superlow power always on State this screen isrefreshing
like 60 times more than itneeds to so it wastes battery there's anupgraded chip 

the Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 4Galaxy which is basically the sameSnapdragon chip you
see in all top endAndroid phones this year but with alittle boost to how fast
it runs I'mactually quite excited about this notbecause the phone necessarily
needs itmore because these flip phones feel soperfect for game emulation which
I planto do a lot of and is super demandingand then this chip also has a
slightlytweaked image signal processor whichallows the phone to take the data
fromthe camera and process it in a way thatSamsung likes and that is 

the final
keyupgrade the cameras not so much in termsof Hardware I mean there's a new
lensthat's a little bit clearer and reducessunflowers but it's more the
softwareyou can double tap the power button tobring it up immediately you've
got newportrait modes and better qualityportrait modes you can mess around withzoom
when you're on the cover I couldn'tdo that before plus you've just got morespace
to see yourself and frame yourshot properly so while the z-flip 5might not feel
as ambitious 

asMotorola's Razer 40 Ultra and its edgeto edge cover screen or
the crease-freefolding design of oppo's N2 flip at thesame time you can't say
Samsung'sresting on their Laurels doing nothingthis is a big upgrade and this
companyis still widely regarded as having thebest foldable software with thislaunching
on Android 13l the very latestwith a promise of four full years ofmajor Android
updates and the mostseamless integration of foldablefeatures into third-party
apps like justfor example this thing has a 

camerafeature that tracks your face
to alwayskeep you in the middle which is alreadycool for making like an
Instagram reelbut then the feature can factor in whenyou fold the phone adapt
around it sothat you can still see yourself in thetop half and then even work
nativelywithin these other apps like Instagramso you can even go live using it
so youhave a level of continuity here thatothers are still catching up with ohyeah
and the flex mode is updated sowhen you fold up an app that supports iteverything
adapts so 

that you cancontrol your entire phone using just thelower half all of
this stuff is cool itmakes the most of what the phone is butnone of it really
explains why the phoneeven exists in the first place why is itthat people keep
paying this premium tocompromise on specs for a phone thattakes up basically
the same volumeaccording to Samsung's 70 of thecustomers buying foldable phones
arechoosing 

this flip style over thetechnically higher end fold style arethey
crazy wellno but what is crazy is that we overtookSamsung and subscribers a
long time agoand we're now this close to overtakingApple so this Hub to the
channel wouldbeit's ambitiousquite proud of though I would saythere's five key
things that make thisflip as surprisingly appealing as it isthe first and the
most obvious is thestyle I'm not gonna lie 

to you this isfun flicking it open
for somethingimportant snapping it shut to end a callthere's a big part of it
that feelsalmost toy like and it's such a uniqueprospect that if you like it
there's agood chance you're gonna love it and ifyou love it you're gonna be
willing tooverlook a lot of other things to makeit work and thankfully while
the camerasare one of those things that you willhave to 

forgive because there's
no wayyou can fit a modern large camera sensorinto the depth of one of these
halvesthey do also benefit from the ability tofold in that you can use the same
set ofpretty good cameras for both the rearand the front so if we say that theGalaxy
s23 Ultra has a 10 out of 10camera system on the rear then itsselfie camera is
about a five whereaswith the Z flip you're getting a sevenon both with full 4K
60 frames persecond video plus the ability to use thebass as a sort of baked in
stand to 

propthe phone up at whatever angle you wantbut it's the mindfulness
that this phonecan give you that is what reallyinterests me the fact that you
can justkeep the phone folded up and you knowthat you're reachable but still
distancefrom your distractions is for me a gamechanger and so I really like
that hereeven though the cover screen is now morecapable and can do a lot of
technicallyfull screen phone 

things Samsung's donethis with an understanding
that theobjective is not just to make the frontscreen like the inner screen
because Imean if they're the same thing then whatwould be the point in
unfolding it soinstead what you can do here is decideon the inside which apps
you want toallow yourself access to on the outsidethis is brilliant so the way
I'm goingto set mine up for example is to allowmaps and 

WhatsApp and anything I
mightneed but keep away anything I might wantas you know a lot of people like
to havetwo separate phones one for work one forpleasure this one flip phone is
kind oflike having both of those but foldedinto one it creates this really
distinctseparation between a device that issimple and functional and notdistracting
when folded up to advicethat when you finish your work and youjust want to
chill out it's expansiveand enjoyable and indulgent it makes itfeel like a
window 

into your socialmedias and your connected life withoutbeing a door that
you can just strollthrough and get lost in before you'verealized what you're
doing plus Iactually like the fact that when someonecalls while you're in this
foldedposition it'll automatically go toloudspeaker which really suits thiswhole
hands-off vibe and that if youwant to silence it you don't even needto pick 

the
phone up if you just placeyour hand on top kind of likesuffocating it the
battery also benefitsfrom this being a flip phone I mean itsounds bad on the
face of it this is a 3700 million power cell in a market fullof phones packing
five thousand butthanks to efficiency improvements youcan get an extra hour
versus last year'sflip 4 and if you are actually planningto use a good mix of
both the innerscreen and the outer screen then becausethe outer screen is so
small you'll savea lot of battery there and finally thereis the compactness
which as 

I've alreadysaid I think is a little overrated Imean the volume
difference between thisand say this is negligible but there isone distinct
benefit to being short andstubby like this women's clothing it'sanyone I met my
fiance a few years agothat it dawned on me just how littledepth there is in
women's jeans andwomen's workout leggings so it fixesthat let me know if you
have any burningquestions about this phone I'll answeras many as I can and I
will catch you inthe next one