Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 3 w/ S-Pen Hands-on! By XDA

So Samsung just announced two new foldable phones, the galaxy z43 and z, flip three and with no Galaxy Note phone coming this year. These two foldable phones are more important than ever for Samsung because they represent the company's only flagship release for the second half of 2021, at least. As far as we know, I had a chance to test both of these phones for about an hour and a half, and my impressions coming away from me is that I think I see a clear business strategy for Samsung, because Samsung's clearly trying to make these two foldable phones more appealing to mainstream audiences' hi, I'm Ben, and you're, watching data. So in this video, we'll take a look at the bigger brother, the galaxy z43 first. So, let's backtrack a little when I tested the galaxy z42 last year, I was completely blown away because, in my opinion, the galaxy z42 which I have here represents the biggest single generation to generation improvement in smartphone history, meaning I think the z42 improved on z-fold one more than any other smartphone has improved on its predecessor. The zfo2 had a much better hinge, much more sturdy and actually stayed halfway in place that allows you to take photos like without a tripod.

The outside screen got a huge improvement. It spent the entire front of the phone, whereas the original z41 had a tiny outside screen. In fact, the second you saw the z42, the z phone. One looked like a toy, it just didn't, look like a phone worth owning anymore. Now, unfortunately, the z-fold 3 does not improve on the z-for 2 in such a drastic eye-catching way.

In fact, if you look at the z-fold 3 next to z-42, you might not even know where the improvements are. The dimensions of the screen are exactly the same resolution, all that exactly the same too, so whether you're looking at the phone from the outside or you open it up, and you look at it from the inside. You hold the two phones side by side. It's hard to see where the improvements are, but Samsung did make improvements. They were just of the more practical variety instead of the eye-catching variety, so the first improvement, the gauss's z4 3, a lot of the z flip 3 are without the most durable foldable phones ever because both phones, the flip 3 and the 43, now have ipx8 water resistance, that's huge.

So that means now. If you actually drop your phone in the swimming pool or down the toilet, you can pick up the phone and expect the phone to work. It's not going to die on you like the fold one or four two may have. The second improvement is that the hinge material of the fold three and the flip three are now made with a material that Samsung calls armor aluminum Samsung says it's like 10 to 15 percent stronger than the previous aluminum used in gauss's z, fold too. But the part that needs protecting most is the inside folding screen, and here Samsung says the full 3 and flip 3 also uses a new film material that makes the screen more durable.

Now I only got to test the full 3 and flip 3 for about an hour and a half so far. So obviously, I couldn't really test the durability claims, but I think we can take Samsung's word for it and also to be fair. The xefo2 is not exactly fragile. I've been using this phone heavily for about like nine or ten months now, and my unit is still in perfect condition. The screen's fine, the hinge is fine.

Everything is fine. The second big improvement of the z43 is now it supports the s pen only on the inside screen or not the outside screen, and it only works with new s. Pens that Samsung's releasing so Samsung's, releasing two there's a galaxy s: pen pro and a galaxy s pen, fold edition, so both of these s pens will work with the z fold 3's main screen. That is it no other s. Pens from the past, like if you have a note, 20 ultra, that s pen will not work on the z for threes inside screen.

Now the galaxy s pen pro has more features than the fold edition, but the folded edition is smaller and cheaper and can be clipped onto a first party accessory that Samsung will be releasing along the phone. I have a separate video in s pen pro that you can check out after watching this video. The s pen experience on the phone 3 is perfect. It's about the same experience as the s pen. Experience on the note series, except now you have more space to take notes to draw the third-biggest improvement that makes the fold three and flip three more mainstreams.

Is that Samsung managed to lower the price of these devices? The gauss's default 3 starts at 17.99 us dollars, that's 200 cheaper than before, and at least in the U. S. Samsung has all these trading deals and pre-order gifts and, like cashback, coupons that if you factor in all that the z-for-3 is now relatively affordable, at least for people living in North America. So the combination of a lower price and increased durability should make the fall 3 more appealing to the average Joe, because up until now, I would say only enthusiasts and tech, geeks or many people with money to blow would buy affordable phone. Other people didn't buy because they were too expensive, or maybe they thought the phones were too fragile, so the full 3 and the flip 3 Samsung has at least attempted to answer both of these concerns now elsewhere.

Samsung also made minor improvements to the full three. Like I said at the beginning of the video these improvements here, they don't really uh grab your intention, the way the full two improve on the fold one. So you got the processor bump. Of course, the faux three runs on the snapdragon triple a faux. Three is also a little lighter and a little thinner than the faux two, so it measures 16 millimeters at its thickest point compared to the full tier which measure I think, 16.8 millimeter. The faux three also weighs 271 grams compared to the full twos 283 grams.

Now you may be thinking shaving like 0.8 millimeter and 12 grams off the phone. It's not really that big a deal, and I would agree partly if you hold the full three and the four two side by side. You know it's not like the full threes in the field, noticeably thinner and lighter. However, I do think this is again a step in the right direction, a step in making the foldable phone more mainstream, because another complaint people had been that follower phones were a little thick and chunky. Now the camera system, with the faux three unfortunately kinds of disappoint me.

They are almost exactly the same hardware as the z42 camera. So you have a triple camera system, all 12 megapixels, covering the wide ultra-wide and telephoto focal length, so that telephoto zoom lens is only a two time zoom lens, and you can only max out 10 times, digital zoom, that's pretty weak zoom. Comparing to you, know, android flash phones, I've been using like the galaxy s21 ultra. Now you may be thinking it's not fair to compare the camera system of a slab phone and a foldable phone, because you're, probably thinking a foldable phone is much more complicated to build. But I have here the Huawei Mate x2 and Huawei managed to put a periscope zoom camera in here, along with a 50 megapixel main camera, with a large image sensor.

The photos, camera hardware just- cannot keep up with all these other phones. I just mentioned. However, the camera experience of the photo 3 should still be pretty solid and pretty fun to use, for example, flex mode the ability to leave a phone call halfway photo like this has been so useful for me because I've a lot of times, I need to film myself shooting b-rolls, so I just put a 4-2 on a table like this, and I can film myself doing whatever I need to do, and the 4-3 will also obviously be able to do that. And if you have an s pen pro, it also supports Bluetooth control of the camera. So you can further just take photos of yourself without name to go touch the phone, so the battery of the photo is 4 400 William hour.

So it's a little smaller than last year's. On top of the fact that the outside screen is now 120 hertz battery life may not be as good as the full two there are 12 gigs of ram in there and the phone comes in either 256 or 512 gigs of internal storage. Now one more thing I haven't talked about yet is that the gauss's z photo 3 has a selfie camera on the main screen, but it is the first under screen camera from Samsung. The reason I haven't really mentioned it up until now is because I'm not quite impressed by how it works. So, first that sensor, it's a four megapixel sensor and also when you have the phone over white background, let's say you're on a web page.

You actually see the under screen camera flicker a little. So it's not a perfect solution and I feel like there's a little of Samsung fixing something that wasn't broke because the hole punch camera on the z42 is small enough to not be a distraction. I would rather have a 10 megapixel selfie camera here than a 4 megapixel under screen camera that may not work as well. So ultimately, the z43 improves on the z42 in all the practical areas. Like I said, it's more durable, it's more affordable, it supports s pen, but it does not bring necessarily next generation improvements in display or camera performance.

So for some of us we may be slightly disappointed at that. But ultimately I think Samsung made the right decision, because if Samsung had chased, you know bleeding edge technology to put the s21 ultra's camera system into the full three that may push the four degrees price over two thousand dollars. I think for most people they would rather pay eighteen hundred for a pretty good camera than 2200 for an awesome camera. So that's about it for this hands-on, the galaxy z43. I have more videos on the z, flip 3 and the s pen pro.

So please go check that out. If you want more galaxy unpacked content visit xd8developers. com, we have a lot more stuff. That's it for now, thanks for watching.

Source : XDA