Samsung's New Galaxy Z Flip 3: Everything You Need to Know | Mashable Hands-On By Mashable

- Wow. Hey everyone, it's Brenda Stolyar, Mashable's tech reporter. And today we are going to go through the five things you should know about Samsung's new Galaxy Z Flip 3. To start, Samsung made the Z Flip 3 a lot more durable this time around. Even though it didn't have as many issues as the original Fold did, the original Flip was pretty durable. I don't really remember hearing that many complaints about it, but as a precaution, Samsung added something called armor aluminum to the outside.

And the company claims it's its strongest aluminum ever on a Galaxy phone. So that should help to protect it in case you drop it. The display has Samsung's Ultra Thin Glass on it, plus Gorilla Glass Victus, which is Corning's strongest glass yet. It can survive drops from up to six and a half feet. So overall, you really don't have to worry about this one as much as its predecessor.

I mean, it remains to be seen as far as pushing the limit in terms of drop tests, but the average person doesn't have to worry about breaking this thing easily. Another thing is cover screen. So Samsung increased it from 1.1 inches on the original Flip to 1.9 inches on the new Flip, which allows you to see a lot more at once. On the last version, it was like this ticker. So your notifications would literally scroll by.

But with this, you can see up to four lines of notifications at once, and then you can scroll up to see more. So another thing you can do is add widgets to the cover display. So you're going to go into your Settings and then you're going to find Cover Screen. And here there is a tab for Widgets. So all you have to do is tap on it and then toggle on whichever ones you want to add.

Then to access the widgets, all you have to do is swipe through. So here's the timer. There was the music. So when you have music playing, it'll obviously appear. Another fun thing that you can add to the cover display is these little animations.

You can also change the clock color. So I'm going to change it to, let's do purple. And then he moves. That probably takes up battery life, but it's still cute. Oh my God, now there's a bunny.

And now it's a, do they change? I think they just change every, they change every time. Samsung also added the ability to take video right from the cover display using its quick shot feature. So originally with the Z Flip, you could take a quick photo from the cover display, and now you can also shoot video. All you have to do is press the power button twice and then swipe through to video and you can start recording. Now I'm recording from the cover display.

So as with the Fold 3, Samsung also added the same adaptive 120 Hertz refresh rate to the Flip 3. So when we say adaptive, what we basically mean is that it'll ramp up for things where 120 Hertz is necessary like mobile gaming. And then for things like static webpages or emails, it will decrease. So that way you're not using up that battery life when you're constantly on 120 Hertz, because you don't always need it. Next let's talk about colors.

The Z Flip 3 comes in four colors. You have a cream. There's also lavender, phantom black, and green. They're more opaque I'd say than last year's versions, which were super metallic-y and I'd say a lot more fun. There was like a metallic purple I remember.

That was one that I got to test out. Samsung was also able to make the Z Flip 3 a lot cheaper than the original version, which costs $1,450. This one will cost you $999. So I'd say that's a significant decrease, especially if you've been hesitant to get a foldable, specifically because of the price. It's worth noting that the $999 price is for the base model, which gets you eight gigabytes of RAM and 128 gigabytes of internal storage.

The other configuration is eight gigabytes with 256 gigabytes of storage, which increases the price to $1,050. So it's still cheaper than last year, even if you opt for more memory. It's a hopeful sign that foldables will become more affordable and more accessible as the years go on. So I will be spending a lot more time with the Z Flip 3 over the coming weeks, so be sure to check back at Mashable for our full review.

Source : Mashable