I enjoy seeing the time and battery status, and using it to skip tracks in Spotify. The tiny, pill-shaped display on the phone's exterior is incredibly cool and minimalist, but it's also kind of useless. The itsy-bitsy teenie weenie exterior display It's so early 2000s and I enjoy it almost as much as ending calls by closing the phone shut. One of the things I enjoy most about positioning the Z Flip at different angles is that I can fit the phone around my face when I'm talking on a call instead of having it be flat.
It is a nice way to use the device without holding it.
With Android 10, I can have two apps display in a split screen, which I've done for Zoom meetings (on the top) and email (on the bottom). Why not keep it at the top part of the screen and use the bottom half to make adjustments? But when I go to edit a photo, the picture moves from the top half of the screen to the center. The Gallery app, for instance, puts photos on the top half and navigation controls on the bottom. But only a few apps take advantage of it, and even then it feels limited.
That way when the phone is in Flex Mode it can capture vertical video with the existing two cameras and horizontal video with the third camera.įlex Mode also has a software component where apps adapt to the L-shaped position. Samsung would need to make the third camera identical to the main one, but rotate it 90 degrees (think Motorola One Action). If that turns out to be true, there is an opportunity here to turn the Z Flip into the ultimate phone for capturing video. There are rumors that the Galaxy Z Flip 2 will have a third exterior camera. In the next version of the Z Flip (after the Z Flip 5G, that is), I hope Samsung embraces the video capture aspect more. I honestly didn't expect to use the Z Flip this much as a video camera but in Flex Mode the phone becomes its own tripod, meaning I had more options where I could set it to get the perfect shot than a regular phone. Samsung calls this half-fold position Flex Mode, and it is excellent for filming vertical video too. This made it look like a mini laptop and it meant I could keep a message thread open or mindlessly scroll Instagram or Twitter. Over time, I stopped closing the phone shut as much and instead left it open at a 90-degree angle. I'd be so happy if I could reply to messages from the outside display even just with my voice, If I get another reply, I have to start the process over. The only time this feels tedious is messaging, I have to open the phone to read a text and reply and then I close it. I like having to open the phone in order to use it because I'm more selective about what I'm doing. The Z Flip opens up into a phone as tall as the Galaxy S20 Ultra, albeit a skinner version of that. I never hesitate to take it with me because it's very pocketable (though the mileage inside women's pants pockets may vary). It brings me an endless amount of delight how small the phone is closed.
Just like how I got used to notches on phones, I am now used to the crease. I notice it but forget about it after awhile. To me, the crease is like background music at a restaurant. But this doesn't particularly bug me and because it's a horizontal crease instead of the vertical one on the Galaxy Fold, I actually see it less. The Z Flip's crease cuts across the middle of the screen and if I scroll through apps like Instagram or Twitter, my finger goes over it like a car rolling over a seam in a concrete driveway. One thing I noticed after three months of using it is that I physically feel the crease constantly with my fingers. When I wipe smudges clean with my shirt sleeve, they don't come off as easy as a phone without plastic polymer on it. I watched widescreen films like The Good, The Bad and The Ugly, though, and they fit the display incredibly well.īut once in a while, the plastic polymer coating got in the way of the screen's beauty, especially when there were fingerprints on the screen which the coating seems to attract endlessly. The 21.9:9 aspect ratio is also really wide, so there are black bars on the sides of most videos. When it's clean, the tall narrow screen is amazing and vibrant. The Z Flip's beautiful but cursed display