- The Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 6 is here. I've had some early hands-on time with it. Let's compare it to last year's Z Fold 5 and see what's new and
if you should upgrade. Also stay tuned for a full rundown of all of the new AI features. Now starting off with the Fold
6 is now shorter but wider and it has more squared-off corners. Now this makes it more compact overall. It's thinner and it's also
around 14 grams lighter compared to the Fold 5, bringing its weight to around 239 grams. So if you compare this to say, the Samsung Galaxy S 24 Ultra, which is around 232 grams,
it's only a little bit more. The Fold 6 now has an IP48 water and dust resistant rating. The Fold 5 had an IPX8
water resistant rating, so there was no dust resistance. What does the four in IP48 mean? Well, it covers objects that
are larger than one millimeter. So although it's not going to
be completely dust resistant, it is more dust resistant
compared to the Fold 5. The Fold 5 came in three colors. The Icy Blue, the Phantom
Black, and the Cream. There were two exclusive colors
available from samsung.com, but you might struggle to get those now. The Fold 6 also comes in three colors. There's a Silver Shadow,
a Pink as well as a Navy. There are two exclusive colors
available from samsung.com, Crafted Black and a White. Now if you're interested
in picking one of those up, then you can check out my
exclusive affiliate link down in the description below. For a limited time you
can get double the storage and $100 in Samsung credit. Now the build materials also
have had a slight upgrade. We don't have titanium on the Fold 6, but we do have enhanced Armor Aluminum for the frame and the hinge. So this is around 10% stronger compared to the standard Armor Aluminum that we had in the Fold 5. And although we still have
Gorilla Glass Victus 2 for the front and back, we now do have a new folding thin glass and this has a protective
layer on the display which improves shock absorption. Now my impressions in terms of the size, I mean, I do prefer
the wider aspect ratio. When the display is folded
out, we still have 7.6 inches, but the aspect ratio is more square. It's around 20.9 by 18 compared to the 21.6 by
18 that we had last year. But more importantly, the
cover display is now 6.3 inches and it has a 22.1 by 9 aspect ratio, which is close to the 21 by 9, which you may have seen on
devices like the Xperia. Now, although the one
millimeter wide dimensions might not seem like much because
of that new aspect ratio, the front cover screen
does seem more usable. I mean it's still not as wide and usable as, say, something
like the OnePlus Open or the on Honor Magic V2, but it's definitely a step
in the right direction. In my brief test sync, the cover display did seem
to be a lot more usable compared to what we had on the Fold 5, especially compared to
something like the Fold 3. And we still have 120 hertz
as an adaptive refresh rate, both of the cover and the main display. However, the Fold 6 now
does have brighter displays. We've got up to 2,600
nits peak brightness, compared to the 1,750 nits on the Fold 5. So Samsung haven't gone
for a drastic redesign. They say this is due to consumer feedback, but I am glad that things
are a little bit wider. Now for the cameras, things
do remain relatively the same. So for the front camera
we have a 10 megapixel selfie punch out on the cover screen. And then we have a four
megapixel on the display camera, which still isn't the best in quality. And although this is intended for just quick conference
calls and things like that, I would have liked to
have seen an improvement. And for the rear-facing cameras, we have a 12 megapixel ultra wide camera, a 50 megapixel primary camera and a 10 megapixel telephoto camera, which is going to give
you 3X optical zoom. The ultra-wide camera on
the Fold 6 has been updated and although the hardware
is relatively the same, we do have a new image signal processor with the new chip set. So this should improve images and video on the Fold 6
compared to the Fold 5, however, this isn't going
to be a significant jump. Speaking of the processor, the Fold 6 is powered by the
Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 for Galaxy. The Fold 5 had the Snapdragon 8 Gen 2, so that means the Fold 6 is going to have around 41% faster NPU performance, around 25% faster GPU performance, and around 14% faster CPU performance. It's also got a 1.6 times
larger vapor chamber, which should help with sustained gaming. And the new chip set should
also increase efficiency by around 10%. And that is quite important because we still have the same
battery size on both devices, 4,400 milliamps. Now Samsung say that should
give you around two more hours of video playback on the Fold
6 compared to the Fold 5. But there are other
foldable devices out there that have 5,000 milliamp
hour batteries or more. So personally I would've
liked to have seen a larger battery on the Fold 6. Charging remains the same. We've got 25 watts of wired charging. This is going to give you around
a 50% charge in 30 minutes, the charger is not included. And we have 15 watts of
fast wireless charging with Wireless Powershare at 4.5 watts where you're going to be
able to charge other devices on the back of the Fold 5 and the Fold 6. Once again, there are other
foldable devices out there that do have faster charging,
both wired and wireless. So this is something that I would've liked to have seen an improvement
on with the Fold 6. Now one thing that the Fold
5 and the Fold 6 do have, which other foldables don't,
is support for the S Pen. This is still on the main display only, but we do now have a
slimmer case on the Fold 6 compared to the Fold 5. So although we still don't
have an embedded S Pen, which I personally would've liked, it's nice that we do
have a more compact case. And depending on the deal that you go for, this may come free. Once again, I'm going to
leave my affiliate link with all the offers down
in the description below. One piece of good news is that if you have an S Pen from the Fold 5, it will still work on the Fold 6. But if it is an S Pen and case, then of course that's not
going to fit the Fold 6. Right, now the most interesting bit, and this is where I think
we've got the most upgrades on the Fold 6 compared to the Fold 5, and that is around software. So the Fold 6 does come with
Android 14 out of the box with One UI 6.1.1, and Samsung has promised seven
generations of OS updates and seven years of security updates. The Fold 5 came with
Android 13 out of the box, but it is upgradable now to
Android 14 with One UI 6.1. And Samsung had promised four
generations of OS updates. And I've just had a look
on Samsung's website and it does say that
security update period will be valid until 31st of August, 2028, which means that gives
it around five years. Now one thing to keep in
mind is that the Fold 5 has been out for a year, which means the software update period will also go down by a year. And the Fold 6 is going
to be supported for around three years more than the Fold 5, unless Samsung decides to change anything. But regardless, it's still
going to be more on the Fold 6 compared to the Fold 5. And the Z Fold 6 comes with a whole range of Galaxy AI features. These are second generation AI features. We saw the first generation
introduced on the S 24 series. I'm going to run through as many as I can. The first one is Call Assist. This is real time translation
during voice calls, but now we have new AI noise suppression and it also will work
with third party apps such as WhatsApp. Chat Assist will help rewrite emails and messages by changing the tone. We've got Interpreter, which is the live translation
of spoken conversations, and it's available in both voice and text. Now what's interesting about Interpreter is that now we have a
new conversation mode. So when you do have the
Fold 6 in Flex mode, you can use both the cover
and the inside screen. So on the main screen,
you can also see text of what the person opposite you is saying, and that person will be able
to see on the cover screen what you're saying in their language. We've got Note Assist which
will also format, summarize, spell check, and translate notes. There's Transcript Assist,
which is now also within Notes. This is going to transform
a recording into transcripts and summarize them for you. Browsing Assist summarizes
webpages for you. Photo Assist still has all of the features that we had on the S 24. So you can remove people on objects, you can rotate an image
and fill in the gaps. But we now have some new
features within Photo Assist, which are very cool. So you can firstly transform portraits into different styles. You can see some examples here. It did kind of turn me a
little bit white though. But anyway, still some pretty
cool results that you can get. But I think, for me, the more interesting
feature was Sketch to Image. So what you can do is you
can doodle on top of an image and then it's going to turn that
into a photorealistic result. So in this example you can see that I've drawn a magician's hat on me, and although some of the
generations weren't that great, some actually looked very, very real. And this is something that
I was super impressed with. There's Drawing Assist,
which is quite fun. This can transform
simple drawings into art with lots of different styles. This reminds me a little
bit of Co-Creator, which we've got on Copilot
Plus PC on Windows. And one thing that I didn't actually get a chance to capture is Circle to Sum. So you can just write out some equations and then if you circle them, it's going to work those out for you. Reminds me a little of iPad OS, which we saw announced at WWTC. So lots of AI features, some which I do think are
pretty cool and different. However, the question I'm sure a lot of you guys are going to be asking is, "Are these coming to the Fold 5? Well, currently with the
latest update of the Fold 5, we do have some of the features that were introduced on the S 24. So we've got live translate during calls. There's the Samsung keyboard,
Interpreter, Samsung Notes, Transcript Assist in the voice
recorder, Browsing Assist, and the photo editor that
we saw on the S 24 series where you can take
people out the background and you can generate the gaps
when you rotate an image. So a decent range of AI features that have already come to the Fold 5. What about some of the more
exciting generative image features that we've got on the Fold 6? Will they be coming to the Fold 5? Well, I've not really had a solid answer from Samsung as yet. We're going to have to wait and see. Some of these may be coming to the Fold 5 a little bit later. Now, one thing that I'm sure a lot of you guys will be wondering is how long will these features be free for? Well, I did ask this to
James Kitto, Vice President, Head of UK and Ireland
Mobile Division Samsung on my podcast. And here's what he had to say. During the presentation,
there was a bit of small print saying that they will remain
free until the end of 2025. The question everybody's asking is what is going to happen after that? - So no plans announced at the moment. I think we made that statement
really clearly to say, look, we are giving consumers
access to a Galaxy AI solution that is free and will be
free until the end of 2025. You know, no, as I said,
there are no plans, but of course if there are further plans we'll update in the future. The AI world is changing at pace. The kind of solutions that
are being brought to consumers and your listeners, and
you know, our customers, Powered by AI continues
to really move at a pace. So what we don't want to do is
exclude that, in the future, there might be solutions that
people want to get access to and they may be chargeable, but right now we've made
a very clear statement that it is completely free
to use up until that date. And that doesn't mean we're going to start charging immediately thereafter and more news to follow
in the coming months or next year probably. - So nothing solid as yet. If you want to see that
full podcast episode, then that will be linked down
in the description below. Yes, I do have a podcast channel, which you might not know about. Finally, pricing. Well, the Samsung Galaxy Z
Fold 6 will be starting at a higher price compared to
what the Z Fold 5 started at. So around 50 pounds more in the UK or around $100 more in the US. 1,800 pounds in the UK,
around $1,900 in the US. So quite a high price. We're looking at almost
2,000 pounds or $2,000, and the price is higher
compared to what we have with a lot of the competition. Now granted, the competition doesn't have all of the AI features
that we have on the Fold 6, but still, it's pretty high. Is it worth it? Well, I have said before that some of the competitors
like the OnePlus Open and the Honor Magic V2 do have better hardware in my opinion, compared to the Fold 6. But I think the advantage
that the Fold 6 has is Samsung's experience
with foldable software, which they've been working
with for quite some time. And I'm personally
interested to try this out and compare it to some of the others. If you want to see some of that coverage, then do consider subscribing
and hitting that bell icon. To answer the question, should you upgrade from
the Fold 5 to the Fold 6? Well, not necessarily. The Fold 5 does have
some of these AI features and it's still a solid, solid device. However, Samsung are currently offering up to $1,200 trade-in
credit for the Fold 5, and along with the storage
upgrade and $100 Samsung credit using my affiliate link
down in the description, it might just be worth upgrading. That's what I think anyway.
What do you guys think? Drop me a comment below.
Let me know your thoughts. If you want to see the
new Samsung Galaxy Ring, then I have covered
that in this video here. That full podcast with James
Kitto will be linked here. I hope you enjoyed this
video and found it useful. If you did, then do smash
that like button for me. Thanks for watching. This
is Saf from SuperSaf TV. I'll see you next time.
