Samsung has released the Galaxy Z Flip. Here is everything you need to know about it.

First Impressions of Samsung Galaxy Z Flip.

Samsung has released the Galaxy Z Flip. The launched in San Francisco at the company's Unpacked 2020 event.

It seems we've been fast approaching peak mobile design and innovation over the past couple of years. Displays are as fine as they need to be, cameras can show you stuff you can't see in the dark with your naked eyes, and efficiency has reached a point where phones can run exterior displays and have more RAM than most typical laptops. The big question, though, is where are we going from here?

Last year with foldable phones we caught a glimpse of what the future might hold for mobile innovation. That was a shaky start, and only two of the small few companies that revealed their products were able to start selling them to customers–and that's not without their own respective hurdles.

Last year of Samsung Galaxy Fold is a smartphone's powerhouse but we find its model isn't the most ergonomic and its price tag isn't for the weak of heart. Motorola is trying to sell you nostalgia with the 2019 Razr, but it's a fairly average-specs mid range handset, other than its folding screen.

Yesterday, at its Unpacked event in San Francisco, we had a chance to try out the heavily leaked Samsung Galaxy Z Flip and for the first time, we believe this can and should be the way forward for foldable smartphones.

First, lets get something out of the way before we immerse ourselves in the using experience.

The Samsung Galaxy Z Flip is the manufacturer's second foldable handset, priced at $1,380 (roughly Rs. 98,400) lower than the Galaxy Fold and the Moto Razr 2019. It has a 7 nm octa core processor, RAM 8 GB, internal 256 GB, wireless charging and support for eSIMs. Samsung's One UI operating system has also been updated to include unique gestures and enhancements that take advantage of the folding screen we'll get into a bit.

The Galaxy Z Flip is small when folded; about the size of a wallet with a credit card. It's also pretty thick in this area, at 17.3 mm. Unlike the Galaxy Fold, though, it's still easy to handle as a small square. good news is that when folded, there is no discernible space between the two halves which should help keep dust and lint off the display. Normally opening the phone is a two-handed affair and we struggled with one hand to get it open. The lid can, however, be kept open at almost any angle, up to 180 degrees.

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Samsung is confident of its' hide-away' hinge, completely hidden when you open up the Galaxy Z Flip all the way around. Not only, but the company also added some micro-bristles that should brush off dust particles whenever you open or close the phone. The Galaxy Z Flip is released in three colors, but the exterior surfaces are highly reflective and impossible to keep fingerprints away. Of the three, the Mirror Purple finishes we liked the most. This phone feels very durable and reliable and it feels like the hinge itself should be able to withstand the pain of daily use.

At the bottom you get a USB Type-C connector and speaker, and at the side you get a flattened power button which also houses the capacitive fingerprint scanner.

There is a small 1.1-inch OLED touchscreen on the outside to see the time, alerts, etc., but you can also use this as a view finder when you take a selfie with the out.

Inside, we're equipped with a 6.7-inch full-HD+ Dynamic AMOLED screen that looked vibrant and vivid as we checked it out indoors. It's also very big with its aspect ratio of 21.9:9, which means most videos, including Netflix shows run with black bars to the left and right of the frame. The bezels are relatively thick but that really did not bother us. Over time, we think Samsung should be able to shave them down over the years, they're the way it has with its Galaxy S flagships.

The big game changer though is that the display is actually made using an ultra-thin glass surface, which is the first on any foldable computer we have seen. So far we've only seen plastic protective layers on foldable phones that are obviously not as durable as glass, so this gonna be the biggest achievement for samsung. There's a soft crease where the panel bends but we didn't find it as pronounced as the one in the Galaxy Fold, even when we were running finger over it. This is not even noticeable when used normally.

The Galaxy Fold runs for software on One UI 2.1, which is based on Android 10. Samsung says that Google worked closely to build certain software tricks that take advantage of the foldable display.

When the Galaxy Z Flip is partially folded and you open some applications, they run in what's called' Flex mode' which splits them up for the two display halves. The camera and YouTube app are the only ones that made use of this in this action The upper half of the camera app becomes the viewfinder while the lower half offers you all the controls on shooting. As we tried that it seemed to fit well. Also, if you move in this partially folded state from the camera app into the gallery, you can use the bottom half of the screen as a touchpad to flip through your images, which appear in the upper half.

Another feature we've seen is called Multi-Active Window, which allows you to open any two compatible apps from Samsung's Edge Screen carousel, which will immediately clip to the two halves of the screen itself. The smartphone can then be used in a fully open or partially closed mode.

The Galaxy Z Flip does not have a water resistance IP rating but with future models, we think this could improve. Once you think about it, phone makers had to use rubber flaps on sockets and ports once to make the phones waterproof.

There's some real innovation here and phones such as the Galaxy Z Flip could be just as practical as today's phones.

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