Hands-on experience with Samsung’s slim book-style Galaxy Z Fold 6

The best thing about Samsung’s new Galaxy Z Fold 6? It actually feels more like a regular, stick-shaped smartphone. Announced at its Unpacked event on July 10, the company’s new foldable book has a larger front display and a lighter build – two seemingly small changes that could go a long way toward making the Z Fold feel less bulky and more natural.

But those changes, along with an improved processor, some new software tricks, and a better ultra-wide camera, will cost you. The Galaxy Z Fold 6 starts at $1,900, making it $100 more expensive than last year’s Galaxy Z Fold 5. Both the Z Fold 6 and Z Flip 6 will be available for pre-order starting July 10, and will be generally available starting July 24.

With the Galaxy Z Fold 6 and Z Flip 6, Samsung is trying to achieve two specific goals: to prove that there’s less of a trade-off between phones that bend in the middle and those that don’t, and to demonstrate how generative AI can make our phones more intuitive. Both ambitions are important because foldable phones make up a fraction of overall phone shipments, and rival Huawei recently overtook Samsung as the largest foldable phone maker. The tech world has been fixated on generative AI since ChatGPT captured the public’s imagination in late 2022, prompting Samsung and other tech giants to pivot their products around the technology.

It’s impossible to say whether Samsung succeeds on either front without spending a lot of time with the Z Fold 6 and Z Flip 6. Still, from what I’ve seen so far, Samsung’s design changes suggest the Z Fold lineup is moving in a promising direction. At the same time, I’m still hoping for more dramatic software changes that really set foldables apart from traditional bar phones.

Read more: Apple and Samsung have different visions regarding AI for our phones

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Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 6 gets a design upgrade

The first thing I noticed about the Galaxy Z Fold 6 was its light weight. It weighs 239 grams compared to the 253-gram Galaxy Z Fold 5, making Samsung’s new foldable device only slightly heavier than the Galaxy S24 Ultra. Samsung has also given the Galaxy Z Fold 6 sharper, boxier edges that resemble those of the Galaxy S24 Ultra – a fitting similarity for Samsung’s two most expensive phones.

More importantly, Samsung also increased the size of the Galaxy Z Fold’s cover screen from 6.2 inches on the Galaxy Z Fold 5 to 6.3 inches on the Z Fold 6. This may sound like a small difference, but it’s very important with such a small display.

Other physical changes include a stronger hinge and improved layers on the inner screen to reduce the crease, though that horizontal line is unfortunately still visible. But the lighter build, more angular design, and slightly larger cover screen make this feel like the slimmest Z Fold yet. These updates may seem superficial, but they’re a big deal for a phone like the Z Fold, which in its early generations felt more like two phones squashed together. The new, more compact feel could have a big impact on the Z Fold’s usability, potentially making it more appealing to those who have dismissed foldables in the past.

Samsung packs the Z Fold 6 with Galaxy AI

Samsung made its AI ambitions clear earlier this year when it introduced Galaxy AI along with the Galaxy S24 series. This also applies to the new foldable devices.

Photo editing, productivity and language translation continue to be three of the biggest focus areas for Samsung when it comes to AI features. Standout new features include Portrait Studio, which creates versions of photos in different styles, such as watercolor, cartoon or comic. Samsung’s creations weren’t great at creating stylized portraits that resembled me when I tried it out with a quick selfie, but I only had a few minutes to play with it.

You can also sketch on an image and let Samsung’s AI naturally work it into the photo. When I doodled a balloon in the background of a photo taken outdoors with one of Samsung’s demo devices, a white balloon was added to the image. The announcement comes after Apple announced some new image generation tools last month as part of its Apple Intelligence features.

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Samsung also wants to make better use of the Galaxy Z Fold’s dual screens when it comes to language translation. A new conversation mode in the Interpreter app allows the front and inner screens to be used simultaneously, so the person you’re talking to can see what you’re saying in their native language, and vice versa. If this sounds familiar, it’s because Google previously introduced a very similar feature to the Pixel Fold. This seemed to work well in a demo between two Samsung employees, though I’m curious to see if there will be any inconveniences when implemented in the real world.

Since Samsung has positioned the Z Fold as a productivity device thanks to its large 7.6-inch interior screen, there are also a handful of new features aimed at reading and writing. When translating a PDF file, Samsung says the translation should perfectly match the original text. Samsung’s keyboard also suggests words when writing emails, texts and social media posts, building on the AI ​​writing tools the company introduced earlier this year.

In the future, I hope to see more AI features that feel unique to the Galaxy Z Fold. As I’ve written in the past, the most exciting aspect of a foldable phone isn’t the fact that it folds in half, but that you have two screens that can serve different purposes. That opens up the possibility for Samsung to do some really interesting things with Galaxy AI, and so far it doesn’t seem like it’s being explored in depth beyond language translation. Instead, there’s a greater focus on using the internal screen as a larger canvas for tasks like transcribing recordings, editing photos, and using Google’s Gemini assistant in multi-window mode.

All current general hardware updates of the Z Fold 6

The Galaxy Z Fold 6 also includes a handful of routine upgrades you’d expect from a new phone, particularly in terms of processor and camera. The Z Fold 6 has:

• Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 processor for Galaxy, just like the Galaxy S24 series
• A larger vapor chamber to keep the phone cool while gaming
• A brighter 2,600 nit screen
• A new 12-megapixel ultra-wide-angle camera sensor for better low-light shooting
• Seven years of software upgrades for Z Fold 6 and Z Flip 6

With the Galaxy Z Fold 6, Samsung seems to be getting closer to the balance of offering a phone that can also be used as a tablet without sacrificing what makes a great phone. The downside is that you’ll have to pay an even prettier penny for that experience. Regardless, now that the hardware has evolved, I hope there’s even more emphasis on software in the future.