Samsung Galaxy Z Fold5 review

Introduction

Gapless design, Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 for Galaxy and Gorilla Glass Victus 2 – that’s the Samsung Galaxy Z Fold5 in a nutshell. But could the small step for the Fold lineup become a giant leap for the foldable segment.

The Galaxy Z Fold5 addresses one of the major issues of the lineup so far – the unsightly and impractical V-shaped gap when closed shut is finally gone and you get the gap-free body to finally match the competition.

It is still only matched by the Huawei Mate X3 with its IPX8 rating, while its Armor aluminum frame and Victus glass exterior are the most reassuring in the market. The chipset has been upgraded to the Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 for Galaxy model with higher CPU and GPU clocks, while storage has been boosted to UFS 4.0.

The rest is copy-pasted from the Fold4. The foldable AMOLED screen remains the same – 7.6-inches of Dynamic AMOELD 2X goodness with 373ppi, 120Hz dynamic refresh rate and HDR10+. It has a clever under-display 4MP camera to avoids interruptions, and it supports S-Pen input. In fact, the new slimmer S-Pen case, while not part of the phone itself, might be one of the bigger upgrades we are getting this year.

On the outside you get the same 6.2-inch Dynamic AMOLED display with 120Hz refresh rate and HDR10+. There is a punch hole here, but no S-Pen support.

The rear camera setup is another thing to have been lifted straight from the Fold4. The 50MP OIS primary, 12MP ultrawide, and 10MP OIS 3x telephoto combo will be hoping the new Snapdragon chipset will help it improve image quality with its computational muscle.

Another area where improvements can only come from the new chipset is battery life as the Fold5 features the same 4,440mAh battery with 25W wired and 15W wireless charging support.

Samsung Galaxy Z Fold5 specs at a glance:

• Body: 154.9×129.9×6.1mm, 253g; Glass front (Gorilla Glass Victus 2) (folded), plastic front (unfolded), glass back (Gorilla Glass Victus 2), aluminum frame; IPX8 water resistant (up to 1.5m for 30 min), Armor aluminum frame with tougher drop and scratch resistance (advertised), Stylus support.
• Display: 7.60″ Foldable Dynamic AMOLED 2X, 120Hz, HDR10+, 1812x2176px resolution, 10.81:9 aspect ratio, 373ppi; Cover display:, Dynamic AMOLED 2X, 120Hz, Corning Gorilla Glass Victus 2, 6.2 inches, 904 x 2316 pixels, 23.1:9 ratio.
• Chipset: Qualcomm SM8550-AC Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 (4 nm): Octa-core (1×3.36 GHz Cortex-X3 & 2×2.8 GHz Cortex-A715 & 2×2.8 GHz Cortex-A710 & 3×2.0 GHz Cortex-A510); Adreno 740.
• Memory: 256GB 12GB RAM, 512GB 12GB RAM, 1TB 12GB RAM; UFS 4.0.
• OS/Software: Android 13, One UI 5.1.1.
• Rear camera:Wide (main): 50 MP, f/1.8, 23mm, 1.0µm, Dual Pixel PDAF, OIS; Telephoto: 10 MP, f/2.4, PDAF, OIS, 3x optical zoom; Ultra wide angle: 12 MP, f/2.2, 123˚, 12mm, 1.12µm.
• Front camera:Under Display: 4 MP, f/1.8, 26mm, 2.0µm; Cover camera: 10 MP, f/2.2, 24mm, 1/3″, 1.22µm.
• Video capture:Rear camera: 8K@24fps, 4K@60fps, 1080p@60/240fps (gyro-EIS), 720p@960fps (gyro-EIS), HDR10+; Front camera: 4K@30/60fps, 1080p@30/60fps, gyro-EIS.
• Battery: 4400mAh; 25W wired, 50% in 30 min (advertised), 15W wireless, 4.5W reverse wireless.
• Connectivity: 5G; eSIM; Dual SIM; Wi-Fi 6e; BT 5.3, aptX HD; NFC.
• Misc: Fingerprint reader (side-mounted); stereo speakers; Bixby natural language commands and dictation, Samsung DeX (desktop experience support), Samsung Pay (Visa, MasterCard certified), Ultra Wideband (UWB) support.

If it ain’t broke don’t fix it was probably written on the wall in the Fold5 R&D labs. The ugly gap is gone, but the Fold5 still feels more like a facelift than an entirely new model. A Galaxy Fold 4s, if you will.

Could there be more to this new phone then meets the eye then? Has Samsung focused on under-the-hood tweaks that improve the user experience without making the specs sheet? Let’s take a look inside the box and find out.

Unboxing the Galaxy Z Fold5

The Galaxy Z Fold5 ships into one of those eco-friendly, but severely under-equipped boxes containing the phone and a USB-C cable.

If you need a charger, case, or headphones – well, you better get shopping.

Design, build quality, handling

A new hinge that enables gapless closing of the two halves is the defining feature of the Galaxy Z Fold5. It’s not only the most obvious change, but also addresses an issue that has drawn criticism for years now.

The gap made the Folds look outright ancient when standing next to other horizontal foldables, but it was also a usability issue since it enabled dust and other unpleasantries such as sand to get in. And with the relatively soft flexible screen inside hard particles could lead to scratching if you weren’t careful enough.

Beyond the new hinge it’s a very familiar device, only with an updated glass sheets over the cover screen and back. The new Galaxy Z Fold5 uses the latest Gorilla Glass Victus 2 panels for its exterior, compared to the Victus+ on the previous Fold. Meanwhile, the armor aluminum frame and the plastic protector over the foldable screen appear to have stayed the same.

The Galaxy Z Fold5 is IPX8-rated for water resistance. There is no dust rating because the Flex hinge cannot be made dust-proof just yet.

The fact that it closes flat makes the Z Fold5 up to 2mm thinner in its folded state, while the new hinge has helped shed 10g compared to the Z Fold4 and the Fold5 tips the scales at 253 g. That’s not light by any stretch, but it’s not far off the iPhone 14 Pro Max’s 240 g for example.

Finally, while we are talking about the Fold5 and Fold4 differences, we can also mention the LED flash placement – it is now outside of the camera island, making the island itself a bit shorter.

The Fold5 looks almost compact when closed, with a tall but narrow cover display. It is the same 6.2-inch Dynamic AMOLED 2X panel with 23:9 aspect ratio, 120Hz refresh rate and a tiny punch hole for the 10MP selfie camera as on the Fold4. The Gorilla Glass Victus 2 sheet on top should make it extra resistant to scratching and shuttering.

The rear panel is also covered by Gorilla Glass Victus 2 with the three-camera metal housing is jutting out a bit, as usual. Each of the camera lenses has a slightly elevated metal ring around it for some extra protection, but the result is a phone that wobbles if used closed on a flat surface.

As we mentioned before, the LED flash is now outside the camera island, flush with the back.

The left side of the Fold5 is all glossy and with Samsung’s logo. It disappears completely in open state.

The bottom of the Fold5 has one of the speakers, the mouthpiece, and the USB-C port.

The top houses a total of three microphones and the other speaker. There is also a small, almost invisible outlet above the cover screen for earpiece purposes.

Finally, the right side of the Fold5 accommodates the dual-SIM tray, the volume control key, and the power/lock button that also houses the always-on fingerprint scanner. This sensor is quite fast and reliable.

Now let’s have a look at the Galaxy Z Fold5 unfolded.

The 7.6-inch Dynamic AMOLED 2X screen offers truly wonderful experience when it comes to multimedia, gaming, and most importantly – multi-tasking. It is sharp, bright, and colorful. And immersive, of course!

There are no interruptions like perforations or notches, with the 4MP camera sitting under the display in the top left part. The thinning of the screen pixels above it is barely visible and most of the time we did not notice it.

The foldable screen is covered by a plastic film, one that you are not supposed to peel off yourself according to the official warning. However, Samsung has made those replaceable for the past few years, so if something was to happen to it you can get a new one installed at a service center.

There is also a slightly bulging plastic housing around the large screen. It doesn’t get in the way of working with the phone, but the kind of thick bezels take a bit of the futuristic experience of the foldable away.

Now is probably the moment to talk about the crease and the two ways to look at it. The Galaxy Z Fold5 has by far the most prominent crease of any foldable currently in the market and it’s immediately noticeable when you open the phone. You can feel it too, although scrolling in the middle of the huge screen is a rare occurrence as your fingers rarely go that far.

On the other hand, everyone that’s spent some time with a Galaxy Fold will confirm that you get used to it quite quickly and you stop seeing or feeling it a week or two into using the phone.

The Z Fold5 comes in new colorways, too. Phantom Black remains an option, and it is now joined by Icy Blue and Cream in place of the Graygreen and Beige of the previous generation.

There are also two more hues exclusive to Samsung.com – Gray and Blue. They feature dark graphite satin-finished frames as opposed to the glossy ones on the mainstream color options.

Samsung Galaxy Z Fold5 is comfortable to work with in both opened and closed states. And it sure looks luxurious and unique. It is a bit thick and heavy smartphone to carry around your pocket compared to other smartphones, but it’s a price many will gladly pay for the tablet-sized display.

This year Samsung has launched a new Slim S-Pen Case, which is exactly what the name suggests. It’s a protective case that fits nicely on both of the Fold5 sides and the rear part also houses a handy holster for the pen with slide-to-eject functionality. And it’s miles more compact than the options previous Galaxy Folds enjoyed.

A limitation that carries over is that only the foldable (internal) display supports this S Pen for Fold Edition with its retractable tip. S Pens for glass-covered Galaxies are incompatible as they might scratch the foldable screen. The Z Fold5’s cover display continues to be incompatible with any of Samsung’s styluses, which introduces a feeling of disconnect when you’ve got your S Pen out and need to switch between displays for one reason or another.

Two excellent screens, identical to the Fold4’s

On paper the Galaxy Z Fold5 has the same cover and foldable displays as the ones on the Fold4. The inner display uses a foldable 7.6-inch foldable Dynamic AMOLED 2X panel with 1,812 x 2,176 pixel resolution for 373ppi density and 5:6 aspect ratio. It supports adaptive 120Hz refresh rate and HDR10+ streaming. The protection is a plastic film om top of the panel.

The cover screen uses a 6.2-inch Dynamic AMOLED 2X panel of 904 x 2316 pixels or 401ppi and 23.1:9 aspect ratio. This panel also supports dynamic 120Hz refresh rate and HDR10+ streaming. A sheet of Gorilla Glass Victus 2 keeps it safe.

We measured 481 nits of brightness in manual mode without the Extra Brightness Boost and 789 nits with said Boost enabled.

In automatic mode brightness reaches 1101 nits. The minimum brightness at point white was just 1 nit, so no worries about bliding yourself when using the Fold5 in a dark room.

The cover screen is incredibly consistent with the inner one and we want to applaud Samsung for keeping identical brightness (and color accuracy) on both when using the manual control.

So, the cover screen offers a maximum of 450nits brightness without the boost and 735nits with Boost. The maximum automatic brightness was 1143nits, while the minimum brightness at point white was 0.9nit.

Color accuracy

The Galaxy Z Fold5 offers two color modes – Vivid (wide color, DCI-P3) and Natural (standard color, sRGB). The accuracy of both is consistently great across both displays – both modes are accurate towards DCI-P3 (average deltaE of 3.8) and sRGB targets (average deltaE of 2.3).

The Vivid mode has a slightly cooler color temperature compared to the Natural one, but you can tune the temperature via a dedicated slider and get similar results.

You can also tune RGB saturation to your liking if that’s your thing.

Refresh rate

The Samsung Galaxy Z Fold5 has two Motion Smoothness modes – Adaptive and Standard. According to the description, the Adaptive one switches automatically between different modes and can do up to 120Hz, while the Standard one does the same, but only goes up to 60Hz for longer battery life.

According to the device hardware scanning apps, the screen supports these fixed steps – 10Hz, 24Hz, 30Hz, 48Hz, 60Hz, 96Hz and 120Hz – that’s consistent with previous high-end Galaxy phones.

When using the Adaptive mode, we saw the screen use 120Hz across the interface and all compatible apps and many games (excluding those limited to 60fps of 90fps). When the picture is static, then the software usually dials down to 24Hz.

Video streaming and playback are done in an adaptive fashion, too, depending on the actual video. For example, 24fps videos are shown at 24Hz refresh, 30fps use 30Hz, 48fps – 48Hz (the Cover screen used 60Hz here), and 60Hz for 60fps videos. And throwing a 120fps video will result in the expected refresh 120Hz.

The Always-on display works at 24Hz refresh rate and that’s the lowest we saw with the Fold5.

When using the Standard mode, the refresh rate behaves as in Adaptive – using 24Hz, 30Hz, and 60Hz where applicable. Games and videos playback will not use 120Hz modes if Standard is selected.

Streaming and HDR

The Samsung Galaxy Z Fold5 displays support HDR10+, which is recognized by all popular streaming apps. And thanks to the Widevine L1 support, they all stream high resolution HDR10 content hassle-free.

Battery life

The Galaxy Z Fold5 is powered by a 4,400mAh battery, the same as the one inside the Z Fold4, and less than most of the other large-size foldables. The OnePlus Open, for example, stands at 4805mAh, essentially the same as the Pixel Fold (4821mAh) and the Huawei Mate X3, while others like the Honor Magic V2 are at the 5,000mAh mark.

The Z Fold5 earned essentially the same Active Use Score as that OnePlus Open, but the two phones arrived there in two different ways. The Open lasted longer in our web browsing test – quite significantly so, while the Galaxy did better in gaming and voice calls.

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Charging speed

The Samsung Galaxy Z Fold5 supports up to 25W wired charging. 15W wireless charging is available, too, as well as up to 4.5W reversed wireless charging.

The Z Fold5 ships without a charger, as usual. You can use any PD/PPS, of course and odds are those will support the admitedly limited top speed of the latest Samsung foldable.

We did our charging test with the original 25W Samsung PD/PPS charger.

It recharged 30% of the Galaxy Z Fold5 battery in 15 minutes, while another 15 minutes will get you to 50%. A full charge requires 84 minutes. Those numbers are in line with the Galaxy Z Fold4, but far behind any other foldable out there except for the Google Pixel Fold.

The battery options include features like Power Saving mode, Adaptive Battery (puts some apps to sleep automatically), enable/disable fast wired and wireless charging. There is also the Protect Battery option, which limits the maximum charge of the battery to 85% for prolonged maximum lifespan.

Speakers

The Galaxy Z Fold5 has two symmetrically placed stereo speakers. Their grilles are at the top and bottom of the left side of the foldable screen. There is also a thin outlet above the cover selfie camera so it can serve as an earpiece when the Fold5 is closed.

The Z Fold5 scored a Very Good loudness mark in both open and closed state and its audio quality is very good, too, with some bass, good vocals, and well-presented high frequencies.

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(Dolby Atmos)”: 100004,”Asus ROG Phone 7 Ultimate (with subwoofer)”: 100005,};

Use the Playback controls to listen to the phone sample recordings (best use headphones). We measure the average loudness of the speakers in LUFS. A lower absolute value means a louder sound. A look at the frequency response chart will tell you how far off the ideal “0db” flat line is the reproduction of the bass, treble, and mid frequencies. You can add more phones to compare how they differ. The scores and ratings are not comparable with our older loudspeaker test. Learn more about how we test here.

Android 13 with One UI 5.1.1

The Galaxy Z Fold5 runs Android 13 with Samsung’s One UI 5.1.1 on top. The final .1 marks the company’s foldable-specific version of One UI.

The latest One UI brings improved multi-tasking, updated file sharing, better camera controls, and numerous minor tweaks and tricks to enhance your experience. All Android 13 features we’ve seen on previous Galaxy flagships are here too. And unlike the Flip5, the Fold5 does support DeX mode.

The Fold5 unlocks via the side-mounted fingerprint scanner or via PIN/password. A less secure Face Unlock is also available.

Let’s start the software tour with the Always On display, because it’s the first thing you normally see before unlocking the Fold.

It’s a good example of a feature that works identically on both the inside and the cover display, depending on whether the Z Fold5 is open or not. That applies to most of the display settings, including refresh rate, brightness and color. S Pen support aside, Samsung has done an exceptional job of aligning the user experience between the two where it makes sense to minimize breaking the general UX flow.

The lock screen is also shared between the two displays in pretty much all of its aspects, including the clock style, widget selection, and notification logic. All except for the wallpaper selection, which can (but doesn’t need to) be done on an individual basis for the two panels.

The Home screen and App drawer, however, are superb examples of Samsung seamlessly separating out customization for the two panels. While the options here may look deceptively identical, you get to set them independently while the Z Fold5 is open and while it is closed. This includes everything from the app grid, widget selection, layout, and wallpapers. You can even have entirely different shortcuts on the two panels.

However, should you prefer to have the layout the same between the two, it’s as easy as enabling the Screen mirroring feature. That will sync changes between the two screens, and thanks to the internal display being essentially two cover screens side by side, you’ll basically always see two outer home screens next to each other on the inner screen.

The Taskbar is one of the main features of the Android for foldables and it has been further improved in this latest iteration. This is a bar that shows a minimized view of the dock icons when you’re away from the homescreen. You can also have it display recently used apps (now up to four), and you can drag apps from there to the screen to launch them in multi-window mode (also supportring up to four apps). There’s also a shortcut to the app drawer in the left corner.

One of the Fold5’s main strengths is the ability to have several apps displayed simultaneously in a number of configurations and it’s something other foldables can’t match. For example, the simpler dual-split can either be horizontal or vertical, and no other phone seems to be allowing a top-and-bottom view.

You can control the split one way or the other by simply dragging the separating bar. Dragging is also how you can quickly and easily get content from one window to the other. The list of supported content types has been expanding and will likely continue to do so. Text and picture dragging, likely the most commonly used, is supported almost universally.

The Fold5 and its latest software allow for up to four active apps in multi-tasking at once. Three can split the screen mode and you can always change their configuration to your liking – and the fourth is within Pop-up View mode.

Samsung refers to this floating window as Pop-up View. Some apps won’t cooperate fully, and some rare ones will outright refuse to go into this mode. To address that, however, One UI does include a Labs tab inside the Advanced features menu, with a toggle switch that can force multi-window and pop-up view on any app even if the developer didn’t include support.

There is a new option to hide/put away a pop-up app for a while – just drag it to the end of the screen. And when you need it back – you can tap on its semi-transparent edge to bring it back.

You can drag content around in every multi-tasking setup and basically jump from app to app instantly. It is important to note that some apps won’t necessarily be able to run concurrently while in this mode. Notable limitations include the ability to only have one video streaming playing (you can have Gallery Video and YouTube or Netflix, though). Some apps that do real-time updating might do it slower or put it on pause while in a small window and not in focus.

Nevertheless, you can even go beyond these four apps and rake multitasking even further with more Pop-up View windows. You can pile up to five of these on top of a three-way split, making for a total of 8 active apps at the same time. We can’t really think of a use case for that, but it’s still cool that a phone is able to do that. More usefully you can run two instances of the same app such as two Chrome browsers side by side.

The cover screen supports two apps in Split Screen view and up to 5 in Pop-up View.

You can freely resize and drag these individual floating windows around and even set their transparency, although in most cases, that just adds chaos. You can also collapse the windows into what is commonly known as a “chathead”. If you collapse multiple apps in this way, they will end up grouped in a folder-like manner, which helps keep things tidy.

If you still find yourself wanting more freedom and an even more PC-like experience, the Z Fold5 does include Samsung DeX support, both wired and wireless to a monitor or TV, as well as a Windows PC, with a specific client.

On to what Samsung calls Flex mode or Flex view, a UI concept introduced on the Fold2 once the hinge could be kept stable at intermediate angles between 75 and 115 degrees. The phone is aware that it is in this state and lets the Android OS and any running app know. In this sense, Flex View is just a Samsung marketing term for triggering behavior already baked into modern versions of Android, specifically designed to make apps more aware of the current state of foldable displays, allowing them to adapt their UI.

The video player can do it, and so can the Gallery app. Both have their respective controls on the bottom and the content on the top. The Gallery app simply dedicates a trackpad-like touch area for navigating back and forward between images to the bottom half. A bit awkward and with limited usability, which honestly seems to often end up being the case with Flex View implementations.

The camera app is arguably the one to make best use of Flex View. The idea is that, again, you get to have your controls on the bottom half of the display and the viewfinder on top. This is definitely useful for taking both selfies and shorts with the main camera while the phone is sitting on a flat surface. It just feels more natural.

Some third-party apps are also on board, like YouTube, though it’s not like its Flex view implementation is particularly for anything other than a stand replacement.

For all the Fold-specific bits, a lot of the overall visual polish in the Fold’s UI is actually a function of One UI itself and its ongoing refinement over the years. In that sense, many elements can be considered a “standard” Samsung affair, and you can read about those in any remotely recent Samsung smartphone review.

One of those bits does still relate to the whole productivity theme, so we’ll say a few words about it as well – Edge panels, and specifically the Apps panel, which is the only one enabled by default (hardly an accident).

The Apps panel is convenient for a number of reasons. It holds a set of app shortcuts in two groups – ones you add there yourself and ones that it picks from your recent usage, though you can disable the latter. If you have 8 or fewer icons in the Apps panel, it will shrink to a single row saving you some screen estate.

There is also the ability to save any particular multi-tasking configuration as a shortcut there. This includes the apps, their relative position, and window size. Both dual and the newer triple-split multi-tasking setups can be saved, and recent setups also get automatically suggested.

What’s gone missing is the Apps panel’s pinning functionality, now deprecated by the Taskbar we mentioned before.

Finally, the inner screen of the Fold5 supports S-Pen and its usual features like Air Command, Air View, Screen-off Memo and Quick Note.

Performance and benchmarks

The Samsung Galaxy Z Fold5 is powered by the Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 for Galaxy – it’s the originally Samsung-exclusive version with overclocked CPU and GPU that has lately been made available to certain other manufacturers.

This chipset has 1×3.36 GHz Cortex-X3 prime core, 2×2.8 GHz Cortex-A715 heavy hitters, 2×2.8 GHz Cortex-A710 medium cores and 3×2.0 GHz Cortex-A510 power-saving units. The prime Cortex-X3 core is what’s faster compared to the regular chipset, where it is clocked at 3.2GHz.

The Adreno 740 GPU is clocked at 719MHz in the Galaxy phones, compared to 680MHz in the regular Snapdragon 8 Gen 2-powered smartphones.

The Z Fold5 uses 12GB LPDDR5X RAM and UFS 4.0 storage chips. There are three storage options available – 256GB (our), 512GB and 1TB.

Let’s see some benchmark scores now.

The Samsung Galaxy Z Fold5 has the most powerful Android processor on the market and it performs as expected.

The same goes for the GPU – the Galaxy Z Fold5 has the best thing on the market and offers superb performance across both of its screens.

The compound AnTuTu scores are also among the best out there, as expected.

Finally, let’s see some stress test results.

The ones we ran on the main screen are somewhat to be expected. The CPU retained 73% of its performance at the end of the 1-hour stress test, while the GPU – 50%. Those are the same results we got on the Fold4. While the Fold5 feels a bit cooler than the Fold4, it still gets warm enough for us to notice.

The cover screen tests results are worse as the heat dissipation is limited. Here, the CPU dropped down to 54%, while the GPU – to 42%.

Overall, the Galaxy Z Fold5 has the best hardware available to the mass market and it cools relatively well considering its form factor. The performance on the foldable display is excellent, we never found a game to make the device warm enough to throttle, which is a very good thing. So, while not the outright best device when it comes to synthetic test, we’d still rate the Fold5 as something like A-.

Same cameras as the Z Fold4 across the board

The Galaxy Z Fold5 features the same cameras as the Z Fold4. There are three cameras on the back – a 50MP wide unit with OIS, a 10MP 3x telephoto camera with OIS, and a 12MP ultrawide shooter.

There is a 10MP selfie camera inside the perforation on the cover screen and an almost invisible 4MP under-display camera sits behind the foldable OLED.

The primary camera on the back is based on the 50MP Samsung GN3 sensor – it is a 1/1.56″ imager with 1.0µm pixels, and a Tetrapixel filter array (Quad Bayer in Sony speak). The lens here is a 23mm f/1.8, stabilized (OIS), and the focus is Dual Pixel AF.

The ultrawide camera uses the 12MP Sony IMX 258 – a fairly ancient imager with a 1/3.06″ optical format and 1.12µm pixels. Its native resolution is 13MP, but Samsung lists it at 12MP, and that’s the size of images it outputs. This sensor sits behind a 13mm f/2.2 lens. While the module has AF in some implementatinos, the Fold5 doesn’t support it.

The telephoto camera relies on a Samsung S5K3K1 sensor (1/3.94″, 10MP, 1.0µm) with a 66mm f/2.4 stabilized (OIS) lens.

On the selfie side of things, we have a traditional 10MP punch-hole unit on the cover screen. That one has been the same since the Fold2 – a Sony IMX 374 (1/3″, 1.22µm) paired with a fixed-focus lens with an equivalent focal length (as per EXIF data) of 25mm and an f/2.2 aperture.

Finally, there’s the under-display camera that hides behind the folding screen. A chessboard array of display pixels and transparent patches let just enough light for the 16MP sensor underneath (IMX 471, 1/3″, 1.0µm) to output 4MP still images and 1080p video. The lens reports the same 25mm equivalent focal length and an f/1.8 aperture.

Camera app

If you keep the Z Fold5 folded, its camera app UI is essentially the same as on any other Samsung, with only the unusual aspect ratio making things appear slightly different. Swiping left and right will switch between all available modes, and there’s an option to re-arrange or remove some of the modes from the viewfinder. Vertical swipes in either direction will switch between the rear cameras and the cover selfie camera.

The settings icon is located in the upper left corner of the screen, and you don’t get separate setting screens for photos and videos since the options aren’t that many in total. Grid lines, location data, Screen optimizer, etc. – the usual stuff can be found there. The full resolution mode on the primary camera is triggered from the aspect options, which is a rather unintuitive bit, but that’s how Samsung does it.

There’s a Pro mode, too, where you get granular exposure controls (ISO and shutter speed, plus exposure compensation), manual focus with peaking, and live histogram. The Pro mode works on all but the under-display camera.

The one thing that sets the UI apart from other Samsungs is the ‘Selfie’ icon in the top left corner above the settings cogwheel – that enables the rear-camera selfie mode. It asks you to unfold the phone, after which it transfers the UI and viewfinder on the cover screen for easy operation while mostly disabling the now-unfolded main display – which now faces away from you.

Holding the phone in this mode with one hand and tapping on the UI isn’t super convenient, but you can just about work your way to pressing the shutter release with the right index finger or left thumb – more complex operations are best done with both hands. Naturally, ‘palm shutter’ is available, and, if you’re serious about this whole thing, an additional Bluetooth remote release is always an option.

Then there’s the viewfinder on the large screen. Taking pictures this way does transport you into that frowned-upon territory of tablet photography, but it does enable the other useful aspect of the form factor – letting your subjects preview the picture as it is taken. Enabling the cover screen is a tap away, and in that mode, there are no actionable controls on it – just a live feed from the sensor. That is to say, there’s only one button – for going into the rear selfie mode, with controls on the cover screen.

Daylight photo quality

The main camera on the Z Fold5 saves very Samsungy photos. The default 12MP ones are easily likable – they offer plenty of detail, mature processing and low noise. We particularly appreciate the natural looking foliage and the lack of excessive over-sharpening here.

The colors are popping and a bit over-saturated, but not too extreme do make us dislike the color presentation.

Finally, the dynamic range is pretty wide across the photos, but not too much, hence the still contrasty photos. Overall, one solid processing across the board, and a typical popping look.

You can lose the extra saturation if you shoot in 50MP. The high-res photos still have low noise, and incredibly nice random detail rendering. The colors are true to life, and the dynamic range is wide.

The telephoto camera offers 3x optical zoom over the main one, and even if it uses a 10MP sensor, it saves 12MP pictures. This means the phone upscales the photos to match the primary camera resolution – something that has become common among the manufacturers for some reason.

Anyway, the zoomed photos are plenty good – they are detailed, noise-free, and with accurate colors. The fine detail remains well rendered in most scenes and we cannot tell that those have been upscaled from a bit lower resolution.

The dynamic range across the zoomed photos is wide, wider than we would have liked it though, and the contrast has suffered from this. These photos can benefit from higher contrast and better judgment on the tonal extremes.

The 12MP shots from the ultrawide-angle camera are alright. The offer the same popping colors as the main camera, the contrast here is high and the dynamic range is enough, but not over the top like on the telephoto camera.

The resolved detail is somewhat lower than the other two camera, which could be an issue with the Auto HDR and the multi-stacking processing. Still, even as is, the detail is adequate.

We tried shooting selfies with the rear cameras and those are quite nice and of high quality (detail, colors, contrast, overall processing). Bear in mind that the primary camera sometimes has a hard time focusing on you and chooses to focus on the background instead. Better tap on your mug just to be safe.

The 10MP selfies from the camera inside the cover screen are solid with mature processing – their detail is superb, and so are the contrast, colors, and dynamic range. The subject is always well exposed and the noise is minimal, at least when sufficient lighting is present.

The under-display selfie camera is not intended for selfies, but rather for video calls. You can, of course, snap photos and capture videos, but they have a hazy look to them.

You can also have a look at our gallery of samples that we shot on the Galaxy Z Fold5 while still on location in Seoul.

Portrait mode

The Portrait mode on Fold5 gives you options to shoot at 1x, 2x, and 3x zoom levels. The 1x and 2x are shot on the main camera, while the 3x photos come from the zoom camera.

All three types of portraits are great – the detail is plentiful, the subject looks excellent with popping colors, and the background blur is convincing. The separation is also proficient unless you have a really complex haircut.

Low-light photo quality

The Galaxy Z Fold5 supports Auto Night Shot and it often chooses to use it. It is indicated by a crescent icon in the viewfinder. You can enable and disable it on a per-scene basis. There is a dedicated Night Mode, too.

The Night Shot triggered in all seven scenes we shot and it usually took about a second or two for it to finish processing. The images are excellent with good detail, expertly cleaned of noise, vivid colors and wide dynamic range. Those are bit brighter than reality, but that is usually the case with any Night Mode.

It was quite a windy night here and this is why you may spot some smeared foliage.

And here are the same scenes taken without Night Mode. The photos look nicely realistic with accurate colors and exposure, high level of detail, and good contrast and dynamic range. The noise is kept low and the minor visible amount doesn’t get in the way at all.

The Night Shot works very well on the telephoto camera as well. The photos are bright, with lively colors, good contrast, wide enough dynamic range, and low noise. The detail is average if you look at them at pixel level, but still passable.

The telephoto photos without Night Mode are noisy and underexposed, though still usable. The Night Shot on this camera should be turned off only when moving objects are in the frame, otherwise we do not recommend it.

The ultrawide camera with Night Shot offers good photos with popping colors, wide dynamic range and bright exposure. Their detail is poor though as the noise reduction destroys a lot of the fine detail.

In contrast, the ultrawide photos without Night Shot are poor – soft, dark, and noisy.

And here’s how the main camera stacks up against the competition in our extensive Photo compare database.

Video capturing

The Samsung Galaxy Z Fold5 supports video recording up to 8K@30fps with its primary camera, up from 24fps on Fold4. Both the main and the telephoto can do 4K at 30fps and 60fps, while the ultrawide maxes out at 4K at 30fps.

The inner selfie camera supports 1080p recording at 30fps and 60fps, though we can’t see why you’d be using that particular unit for recording video. The outer selfie camera, makes slightly more sense as a recording device and supports 4K at 30fps and 60fps.

Video stabilization is available in all modes on all cameras, and it can be disabled if you have your own means to stabilize your footage. There’s an option to use the h.265 codec, as opposed to the default h.264, and 8K footage is only encoded using h.265. Audio is always recorded in stereo at 256kbps.

The 8K daylight footage is very good – the frame rate is steady and the sound is excellent, the colors are lively and accurate, the dynamic range is wide, and the contrast is superb. There is no visible noise either.

On a per-pixel level the detail is average, though it still reveals intricate bit (like license plates and text) that were previously impossible to make out in 4K resolution.

Unfortunately, the 8K low-light video is horrible – it has extremely poor detail, everything is soft and smeared. It looks even worse than upscaled 4K footage. You should just stay away from 8K at nighttime.

The 4K day videos from the main camera are superb – they are detailed, with accurate colors, high contrast and wide enough dynamic range. The overall processing is balanced, there is no over-sharpening.

We think Samsung could have extracted a bit more detail here with gentler noise reduction, but even as is the video is great.

The 4K low-light clip from the main camera is alright – the detail levels are adequate, the noise is tolerable, the color saturation is great and the dynamic range is decent. It’s not the best low-light footage we’ve seen, but far from the worst, too.

The telephoto camera captured excellent 4K videos. The detail there is abundant, colors are consistently accurate, and the dynamic range and the contrast are great. Absolutely no complaints here.

The zoomed night videos are mediocre – they are soft and with poor detail, even if they are well exposed and with lively colors.

The ultrawide camera also records likable 4K videos. They have the same good color rendition and contrast, wide dynamic range and low noise. The resolved detail is somewhat average, though.

The 4K night videos from the ultrawide camera are underexpoed and poor across the board – low detail, high noise, narrow dynamic range. The only thing that is okay here is the color saturation.

The (stabilized) 4K videos from the Cover selfie camera are very good – we can praise the always well-exposed subject, the wide dynamic range, the lively colors, and the overall smooth and well stabilized video (we shot with Video Stabilization enabled). The resolved detail may not be best in class, but it’s still enough and the footage has good sharpness.

The under-display camera offers 1080p videos that are just this side of usable – just like the photos, the videos appear hazy and not that contrasty, but otherwise they do offer good colors and dynamic range. These will certainly do for video calls.

Finally, here is a test of the video stabilization. It works equally great on all cameras.

Here’s how the Galaxy Z Fold5 compares to other devices in our vast video compare database.

Alternative offers

The Samsung Galaxy Z Fold5 has a MSRP of €1,900, which is €100 more expensive than the Fold4 at launch, though the pre-orders once again offered higher-tier storage at the price of the lower-tier. Still, the €1,900 price tag makes the Fold5 one of the most expensive mainstream smartphones in the world.

And now that the previous Fold4 has dropped down to the €1,200-€1,300 range, it offers far superior value to the Fold5. It doesn’t close flat, but it’s basically the same smartphone with the previous Snapdragon chipset and UFS 3.1 storage. Oh, and the glass panels use the previous Gorilla Glass Victus+ version. Do these updates cost an extra €700? We know our answer, but we will leave it for you to decide.

And if you already have a Fold4 in your pocket, it just makes no sense for you to upgrade this year.

Looking at the competition helps put the Galaxy Z Fold5 in a better light. The Google Pixel Fold, for one, costs €1,900 in Germany! It is also an IPX8-rated glass phone, but its 5.8-inch cover screen has a more typical (and useful) aspect ratio of 18:9. The inner screen seems nearly identical to Samsung’s. The Pixel runs on the inferior Tensor G2 chip and has arguably better camera experience with 5x optical zoom and the whole Pixel quality across the board. The clean Android experience does matter to some as well, but when it comes to multi-tasking, the Fold5 can run laps around it

The Honor Magic V2 should premiere next month on the global markets, and it is a phone we are really looking forward to. It has two incredibly intriguing displays – the foldable one is almost 8 inches, an LTPO OLED panel with 1B colors, 120Hz refresh, HDR10+ and IMAX support, plus stylus support. The cover one is a 6.43-inch LTPO OLED panel with a 120Hz refresh rate, and stylus support, too. The Magic V2 also uses the same Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 chip, has a similar camera experience, and offers much faster 66W charging. The Magic V2 is expected to be about €300 cheaper than the Fold5 and feature a far slimmer profile, but do bear in mind that it is not a waterproof smartphone.

If you want a more compact foldable smartphone and you have access to an Oppo store, you may want to consider the Find N2 for its pleasing size. It offers a similar all-around experience to the Fold5, but it runs on the older Snapdragon model and has no ingress protection. It’s also not available outside China, which means it’s not really an option for the majority of users.

Our verdict

The Galaxy Fold5 offers the best foldable experience on the market – while its hardware seems to trail certain competitors there’s no matching its complete software package. The new S-Pen Slim Case is an excellent addition to the Fold accessory lineup, too, and it has become an instant must-have for the power users.

The Fold5 offers ingress protection, displays, performance, even cameras. Its battery life is solid even if charging is rather slow, and so are the speakers and the connectivity options.

We applaud Samsung for the multi-tasking implementation on the Fold5 and all neat software tricks available throughout One UI 5.1.1 Plus, Android 14 with One UI 6 are not that far away and the Fold5 should be among the first to get it.

There is no denying the Fold5 is a minor update over the Fold4, but the previous model was indeed that good and now a year later we can confirm it’s plenty durable, easing off the worries caused by the early foldable phones. And it’s still great, so if the Fold5 does not fit your budget, maybe the largely similar Fold4 would.

Samsung did hold back updating the Fold5 hardware. The charging speed could have been faster and the camera system would have benefited from an update of the ultrawide camera at least. And that body, while looking pretty cool on its own is nowhere near as striking as the Honor Magic V2 or the Huawei Mate X3.

But at the end of the day the Fold5 is an easy decision for any tech-addicted user, or any power user. In most countries it runs virtually unopposed as Chinese competitors are slow to bring their horizontal foldables to global markets. And when it does finally get properly tested it can always rely on the OneUI card to keep it ahead.

Pros

• New Flex hinge for gapless design.
• IPX8-rated for water resistance.
• Outstanding OLEDs, bright, color-accurate, 120Hz.
• Impressive battery life in onscreen tests for a foldable.
• Feature-rich software with unmatched multi-tasking functionality and S Pen support.
• Excellent photo and video quality across the board, UD cam excluded.

Cons

• Charging could have been faster.
• The ultrawide camera should have been upgraded.