Review: Samsung Galaxy Z Flip 6 looks and acts futuristic

If you are a gadget geek like I am, a flip phone makes you feel special. Every time you need to use it, and you flip it open to access the main screen, and then flip it closed after you’re done, it provides a “Beam-me-up-Scotty” vibe — like you’re a character from Star Trek with a teleporter in your hand who has just carried out a covert mission on a hostile new enemy planet and will now soon be sucked into the Enterprise and “rematerialised”.

The Samsung Galaxy Z Flip 6 gives you these sci-fi vibes, especially because of its Artificial intelligence (AI) features that make it seem like this is a phone from the future, which it probably is, except that that future is now.

While AI-enabled phones are a thing now, and every brand and its uncle are packing their models with various degrees of AI, we have seldom seen another phone that is able to make use of its AI features in such a practical and useful way as the Galaxy Z Flip 6. And this is because of the way it exploits the possibilities of its folding or “Flip” design.

Let’s take the Interpreter app, for example. On the Flip 6, this AI-enabled feature takes full advantage of the phone’s small outer screen and its folding main one. Suppose you need to converse with a person with whom you do not share a language in common: Fold the phone in half like a laptop with the inner screen facing you, holding its bottom half so that the top half is propped up like a laptop screen with the outer screen facing the other person. Then just speak in your own languages towards the phone, which will do the rest, translating your speech into the text of the language you select for the person you are conversing with on the outer screen, which they can then read off that screen held out towards them, while their speech is translated into text in your language for you to read off the big inner screen that faces you where it is displayed.

The conversations went surprisingly seamlessly when I tried this feature with some colleagues in our typical multinational Dubai office setting, although you still cannot expect the AI to translate the subtleties and nuances of a language accurately, so do not expect parts of speech such as metaphors or even sarcasm to go through. But no matter how the AI performs, this still remains a brilliant exploitation of the gadget’s design by making the flip-up feature work for both parties in the conversation.

Then there are AI features like Circle to Search, where, as the name suggests, you circle a section of text or a picture on a browser window to let the phone know you want to search for more information on it, which it duly does, opening another browser window with the search results.

Other noteworthy AI features include photographic tricks such as Portrait Studio, for instance, which turns the picture of any person into a quirky artwork. While this is not nearly as useful a feature as the AI Interpreter, it’s still fun nevertheless, turning your friends’ faces into various types of pictures, just for a laugh. While it’s fun to have such features, they are mainly for decorative purposes and not things that you will find necessary or useful on a day-to-day setting.

A useful feature, on the other hand, is the nifty auto zoom. Which brings us to the Z Flip 6’s camera. And here Samsung has some serious upgrades. The selfie camera on the main screen is still the same 10MP as the Z Flip 5 but the external 12MP ultrawide now has an upgraded sensor on the Z Flip 6. And, best of all, the main camera is now a new 50MP shooter, similar to the Samsung’s flagship Galaxy S24 series. Among cameras on flip phones, this may be the best we have yet used.

The main camera returns images with sharpness and detail, with colours and contrast that are both good enough to appear natural. And the ultrawide lens also performs well, capturing dramatically wide panoramas without any stretched and skewed fish-eye effect.

But the AI-enabled auto zoom feature is the standout. We half-opened the phone like a mini laptop set it up in that position on a tabletop and moved back to pose for a picture using the external cameras. The AI kicked in, zooming in and out to compose the shot depending on the background and foreground settings and the people in the frame, switching between the two front lenses — the main zoom and the ultrawide — until it got the best framing. We could see the entire process happening on the front screen as the AI composed the shot and were invariably pleased with the final results time and again, whether the setting was indoors or out. This is definitely one of the best implementations of AI in a phone camera yet, and again it takes advantage of the Z Flip 6’s folding form factor.

That form factor brings us to the design. For this latest iteration of its flip phone, Samsung has seemingly hewn the Z Flip 6 out of a single block of material and given it a matte finish that is more stylish and sophisticated than the gloss of its predecessors and feels wonderful to the touch. It feels like a solid chunk of metal when closed and shuts with just the right amount of firmness that allows for no play or looseness of the top and bottom parts once closed. And the resistance when opening or closing the flip top is just right — neither too tight or too loose — and feels like it will last years of being flipped open and closed.

Dust and water ingress through the hinge can be the Achilles heel of flip and folding phones, but Samsung has you relatively covered in this one with an IP48 rating for dust and water resistance. The Z Flip 6 can withstand submersion under 1.5 metres of water for up to 30 minutes and can resist the ingress of dust particles of a millimetre and larger. This still leaves it susceptible to finer particles, but it’s still among the best protection that flip phones can manage.

The Z Flip 6 also has a smaller hinge, which reduce the crease on the internal screen somewhat, but, though better than previous Samsungs, it still cannot hold a candle to the MotoRazr in this department.

Despite the crease, that screen is a stellar one, supporting a 120Hz refresh rate on its 6.7 inches and reaching a peak brightness of 2,600 nits, which made it particularly clear and pleasing to look at on bright sunny days. The screen is also tall and slender in its aspect ratio, which is again useful for split-screen use with one app each on its top and bottom halves.

The 3.4-inch cover screen on the outside is smaller than the competition but we were able to run most apps on it after fiddling with the set-ups, though the 60Hz refresh rate made it slow to use. Also unwelcome were heat issues, with the top screen occasionally getting surprisingly hot very quickly, which could also be felt on the bezel.

Priced at Dh3,499 for the 256GB and Dh3,999 for the 512GB variants, the Galaxy Z Flip 6 is indeed on the pricier side of the mobile phone market, even when compared to other flip phones. But with its design, futuristic form factor, features and finish, I’d recommend it to any gadget fan who wants the occasional delight of being able to hold it and mutter “Beam me up Scotty” under his breath in a little make-believe personal sci-fi moment. Now, if only it could teleport us to an alternative universe where it was more reasonably priced.

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Samsung Galaxy Z Flip 6

• Review: Samsung Galaxy Z Flip 6 looks and acts futuristic