Samsung Galaxy Z Flip6 Hands-On, First Impressions

At the Samsung Galaxy Unpacked event last year, Samsung revealed the new Galaxy Z Flip 5 20 and Galaxy Z Fold 5. Specifically the Flip 5 featured major changes compared to its predecessor, the Flip 4 featuring a larger cover screen and more.

So if you expected Samsung to make even more changes to the new Galaxy Z Flip6 this year, well unfortunately, that isn’t the case. In fact, the brand made more visual changes to the Galaxy Z Fold 6, which you can read our first impressions here.

Compared to the Galaxy Z Fold 6, Samsung made even more subtle changes to the new Samsung Galaxy Z Flip 6. At first glance you might think they’re basically the same phone but with new colors. And, I wouldn’t blame you if you thought of it that way.

On the outside, the only major difference between the Z Flip 5 and the Z Flip 6 are the colors. Similar to the Z Fold 6, Samsung ditched the glossy finish and instead went for a more subtle and cleaner matte finish for the entire phone.

The back panel and the frame are now finished in matte, giving it a much sleeker look. To further distinguish the Z Flip 5 from the Z Flip 6, Samsung also added color matching rings to the dual camera setup at the rear.

There’s also a black border that rounds the edge of the clamshell when closed. The only other visual change would be the speaker grille, which has been changed to a single horizontal slit as compared to the multiple vertical slits. This makes it similar to the Z Fold 6 and the ones featured in this year’s S24 series.

Although not as obvious, Samsung also made the Z Flip 6 thinner than before. It now measures only 14.9mm thin, making it 0.2mm thinner than its predecessor. Although comparing it with the Z Flip 5 I’m currently using, it’s not that obvious at all. I don’t really feel the dimensional difference even in my pocket.

Overall, I personally like the changes Samsung made, especially the matte finish since the phone is now easier to grip. It’s not as slippery in my hands anymore, especially since I’m not using it with a case.

Although I’m not too sure about the color-accented rings on the camera lenses. I find it a bit tacky and loud for my taste, but let me know what you think about the subtle redesign.

As for the displays, Samsung didn’t change a lot here. We still have a 3.4-inch outer screen like the one of the Z Flip 5. Nothing new here, although I do wish Samsung made the screen even bigger than before? I mean other flip smartphones do have larger screens now. Maybe we will have to wait for the Z Flip 7? Anyway, I digress.

We didn’t have that much time to tinker with the phone, but the changes didn’t seem that obvious, at least based on our initial impressions. Although you do have more themes and widgets to play around with, giving users more personalization options and ease of use features.

Open it up, and we are welcomed by the same 6.7-inch main display. If you’re familiar with the displays of precious Z Flip generations, you’ll feel right at home. We still get beautiful colors and deep hues, and there didn’t seem to be any changes with the Z Flip 6.

Like before, the 120Hz refresh rate is retained, supporting smooth animations within the interface. End-users will definitely feel this the most when playing games, but we didn’t have the opportunity to do so during our short time with the Z Flip 6.

When watching videos though, we can fully immerse ourselves with the beautiful colors and picture quality of the display. Despite the redesigned speaker grille, the loudspeakers still sound great, just like before.

As of writing, we are not certain if Samsung changed the speakers or drivers on the Z Flip 6. What I can say is that they’re better than a midranger’s speakers but decent at best with a nice sound stage. More importantly, they can get pretty loud when you need them to be.

So on the outside, it seems like Samsung didn’t do much to the Z Flip 6 when compared to the Z Flip 5. But there are some serious hardware upgrades under the hood..

One of the biggest changes Samsung made to the Galaxy Z Flip 6 are the main cameras. Instead of two 12MP shooters, the main shooter now uses a 50MP sensor, similar to the Z Fold 6. Meanwhile, the 12MP ultrawide has been retained.

While we did want to try it out, we were told the software was not final yet. Not to mention we were using engineering samples. As a result, we won’t be showcasing any sample shots as of yet. With that, you’ll have to wait until the full review to find out more about the new camera.

Like the Galaxy Z Fold 6, Samsung also upgraded the chipset of the Galaxy Z Flip 6. It now also sports a Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 chipset. There’s more RAM to work with too – now at 12GB as compared to the 8GB of before.

There’s no word on storage yet, but the unit we used had 512GB available. The battery is bigger too at 4000 mAh, so we should presumably have longer battery life. Given how capable the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 chipset has been on other smartphones, we expect to see good benchmark scores on this phone.

But based on our initial impressions, the chipset is more than capable of handling all the tasks we threw at the phone, even running with new AI features from OneUI 6.1.1.

Speaking of UI, the Galaxy Z Flip 6 comes with a host of new AI features. Like the S24 series, there is Google’s Circle to Search which makes it easy to look up images or text. Then there’s this AI drawing function which can turn simple sketches into something more.

But just like the Z Fold 6, in my opinion, the best Ai feature would have to be live translation. This feature effectively makes it easier to talk to someone in a foreign language. What we say will come out on the cover screen in the selected language, allowing the person you’re talking to, to read the translation on top of the voice translation.

It works both ways too. So what the other person says will come out on the main display of the Z Flip 6. With that, you have a more natural way of communicating with foreigners or if you are visiting a different country. No need to manually type in what you want to say on Google Translate anymore.

As much as I want to talk more about the new Samsung Galaxy Z Flip 6, we only had a short time with it. With that, you’ll have to wait for our full review of this fashionable flip phone to find out more.

What we do have are the prices of the new Galaxy Z Flip 6. The new Samsung Galaxy Z Flip 6 starts at PHP 70,990USD 1,210INR 102,552EUR 1,152CNY 8,810 for the 256GB variant, while the 512GB variant retails for PHP 78,990USD 1,346INR 114,109EUR 1,282CNY 9,803.

But so far, what do you think of the new Samsung Galaxy Z Flip 6? Do you like the updated styling? Share your thoughts in the comments below.