Samsung’s Galaxy Z Flip is the first foldable with a flexible glass cover
The Galaxy Z Flip. It folds in half! [credit: Samsung ]
Take a Samsung phone, bend it in half, and what do you get? The Galaxy Z Flip! Alongside the Galaxy S20, Samsung is also introducing its second-ever foldable smartphone. Unlike the Galaxy Fold, which was a tiny tablet that folded in half, the Galaxy Z Flip is closer to a normal-size smartphone that folds into a tiny square, making it Samsung's competitor to the Moto Razr.
When open, the Z Flip is about the size of a Galaxy S20+. You get a 6.7-inch, 2636i-1080 OLED panel with a hole-punch camera, the usual Samsung interface, and slightly thicker-than-normal bezels. Close the phone and you'll see a tiny 1.1-inch, 300i-116 display on the front, which is just big enough to display the time, date, battery status, and any incoming notifications.
While the Galaxy Z Flip has plenty in common with the Galaxy Fold, one big improvement is that it's the first foldable smartphone with a glass display cover. That's right, glass that can fold in half. Previous foldable smartphones used a plastic display cover, which introduced all sorts of problems. Plastic is delicate and easily scratched, which limits many of the design possibilities of foldable devices. Designs like the Huawei Mate X, with a wraparound display on the outside, are not going to last long with only plastic for protection. Plastic is also not a great material when it comes to sliding your finger across the display. The Galaxy Fold had a big indent in the middle of the display where it folded in half, creating a valley for your finger to get stuck in. For the new Moto Razr, Motorola warns "bumps and lumps are normal" in the plastic-covered display. Samsung's flexible glass is the first step toward more durable, practical, better-feeling foldable devices. Samsung says the phone can survive 200,000 folds.
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