Opinion
Samsung’s secret weapon makes it the most productive phone ever
Samsung’s Galaxy Z Fold5 is hands down the most useful, productive phone we’ve ever seen, but only when you spend an extra $127 on an accessory.
John DavidsonColumnistThis may sound strange to anyone but a seasoned Fold user, but the best new feature in Samsung’s new Galaxy Z Fold5 is actually an accessory.
And it’s an accessory that’s not even included in the $2599 (or more) Samsung is asking for its flagship folding phone: a $127 phone case that holds a miniature, digital pen that lets you write on the Fold’s enormous, 7.6-inch internal screen.
A new, smaller pen much more akin to a traditional Galaxy Note pen now fits easily into the Galaxy Z Fold5’s case. But neither the pen nor case are included in the price.
Without it, the Galaxy Z Fold5 is an excellent choice for productivity-oriented phone users, but a choice that could come into question if and when Google’s competing phone, the Pixel Fold, ever goes on sale here in Australia.
We’ve not had the chance to review the Pixel Fold, so we can’t say for sure how it will compare to the Galaxy Z Fold5, but it’s clear that Google’s decision to make its Fold shorter and wider than Samsung’s Fold5 will appeal to many buyers. It does address my single gripe with the shape of the Fold5: the front screen is still a bit too long and narrow.
But spend the extra $127 on that case, and start to use the Fold5 as a little notebook as I have been these past four days, or to mark up or quickly sign documents, or to sketch out ideas, and it’s hard to imagine even Google’s Pixel Fold competing when it comes to productivity.
With its new pen case, the Fold5 is hands down the most useful, productive phone we’ve ever had here in the Digital Life Labs.
Now, in fairness to Samsung, the much-improved accessory isn’t a mere afterthought. It’s very closely related to the other improvements the company has made to the phone itself – so closely related, in fact, it’s a wonder it wasn’t included with the phone.
Unlike Google’s Pixel Fold, the Galaxy Z Fold5 has a screen you can draw and write on with a special digital pen.
You see, the biggest improvement in the Fold5 is to its size.
Size matters
As it did with the fun-oriented Flip5, Samsung has changed the hinge on the Fold5, so at long last it closes shut, like a book. (Previous models of the Fold all closed shut like a ring binder, and had a gap at the hinge.)
Apart from the aesthetic appeal of a folding phone that shuts properly, the biggest impact of this improvement is to the thickness of the phone.
The Fold5 is now 13.6 mm thick at the hinge, when closed, compared to 16.0 mm for the Fold4, according to our calipers. It’s a modest yet noticeable improvement to the single biggest problem with the Fold family of phones: they’re enormous in your pocket.
Interestingly, our calipers show the Fold5 to be 13.2 mm thick at the non-hinge side, which means the phone still has a very slight ring-binder shape to it when closed, though it’s slight enough to be imperceptible to the eye.
Meanwhile, the Fold4 was 13.8 mm thick on the non-hinge side, when closed, meaning almost all the improvements Samsung made to the size of the Fold5 were to the hinge.
The new phone is also around 10 grams lighter than the model it replaces: 256 grams compared to 266 grams, meaning it’s still quite heavy for a phone.
(By way of comparison, Apple’s heaviest phone, the iPhone 14 Pro Max, weighs in at 242 grams on our scales. Given how much more the Fold5 is capable of, the big iPhone is not as much lighter as one might expect.)
But it’s when you add the new pen case to the Fold5 that you really appreciate the difference between the new and the old model.
Because Samsung has dramatically shrunk the size of the Fold5’s pen (it’s now more like the pen that slips into the Galaxy S23 Ultra, rather than the full-sized pen you could get for the Fold4), the new pen case is barely thicker than a regular, non-pen case.
Where last year’s model was a huge-screen powerhouse that was too cumbersome to carry around with its pen – I ended up taking off the pen, and ultimately losing it – this year’s model is a huge-screened powerhouse that fits well enough into your pocket, even with its pen.
You may need to be an avid Galaxy Z Fold user to appreciate that difference, but it’s huge. It’s the difference between having to remember to bring the pen when you think you might need it, and often not having it as a result; and always having the pen at hand.
It’s the difference between wondering whether you might be better off with a Galaxy S23 Ultra, which has a pen slot built in; and having no doubt you have the best productivity-oriented phone on the market.
There are some other productivity related changes to the Fold5, too.
The new chipset in the Fold5, known as the Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 for Galaxy, is 34 per cent faster than its predecessor for multi-core applications, 17 per cent faster for single-core applications, and 88 per cent faster for graphics, according to our Geekbench 6 benchmark tests.
It’s still a good deal slower than an iPhone (15 per cent, 21 per cent and 137 per cent, respectively, using the same benchmark tests) but there were no times in the last four days using the Fold5 when it felt anything but speedy.
There’s also a slight improvement to the excellent, PC-like taskbar on the Fold5, making it easier to find recently used apps and add them to a split-screen layout.
But they’re minor tweaks compared to the size-with-pen improvement. If you’ve spent $2599 on the Fold5, the extra $127 for the pen case will be the best money you ever spent.
Likes: Pen is now always with the phone. Or can be, if you get the accessory.
Dislikes: Front screen is still too long and skinny. Expensive, especially when you add the pen case.
Price: $2599 for 256 GB storage, $2799 for 512 GB, $3149 for 1 TB. Slim S Pen Case is $126.75
John Davidson began reviewing the Fold5 while in Korea as a guest of Samsung.
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