Galaxy Z Flip4 vs. Find N2 Flip: Our long-term Flip review

Biometrics

The Flip4's side-mounted fingerprint sensor is excellent. Our unlock rate on the first try was around 98-99%, which is really all one can ask for - no sensor is perfect. It's very fast as well, and faster still once you disable "Show unlock transition effect" in Biometrics settings. It's also reliably accurate, so using it has been a breeze. Do note that when enrolling fingers you need to pay attention to cover an area as big as possible of those that might ever be touching the sensor when you want to unlock, but that's a general recommendation for all of these side-mounted scanners due to how slim they are.

You can enable swiping down on the fingerprint sensor to bring down the notifications, and this significantly cuts finger gymnastics - and you can also then, when you're done, swipe up on the sensor to move the notifications away. A very simple feature that is nevertheless one of our most used daily, and we're sad that the N2 Flip doesn't have a counterpart. The "Fingerprint always on" settings means you only have to touch, not press, the sensor in order to unlock.

There's also face unlock of course, but with a fingerprint sensor this fast we're wondering why you'd decide to use it. Anyway, if you want it, it's there, there's a setting to require your eyes to be open for it to work (and thankfully it's on by default), but it's ever so slightly slower than the fingerprint sensor while also being way less secure - keep that in mind.

Flip4: Biometrics settings

The N2 Flip's fingerprint scanner is good too, just not as good as the Flip4's. Unlock success rate on the first try with this one has been closer to 95% for us, and that's still good, but not as good. We expected a bit more, to be honest, given the price point - we've used half-price phones in the past with side-mounted scanners this accurate. It also seems a tad slower than its competitor's. By milliseconds, of course, but still. The "Light touch" setting means you only need to touch the sensor to unlock, while if you go with "Firm touch" you'll have to press the button.

N2 Flip: Biometrics settings

The N2 Flip has face unlocking too, which could be an interesting option for you if you don't like hitting the power button to wake the phone up - since if you go that route, the fact that the fingerprint sensor is embedded into said button makes using face unlock very redundant - not to mention it's also not as secure, not by a long shot. This one too has a setting to require your eyes to be open for unlocking, and it's also on by default, which is good to see. The N2 Flip's face unlocking is much faster than the Samsung's, so it wins that, but the Flip4 wins the fingerprint sensor game.

Interestingly, the N2 Flip requires the phone to be unlocked to perform some actions on the outer screen, like checking out notifications, whereas the Flip4 does not. You can of course use the fingerprint sensor to unlock the phone even when it's closed, but we found this surprisingly iffy in day to day use, so if you also have face unlock turned on, this is one area where it truly shines, especially since when the device is closed it's using the main camera.

Face unlocking is pretty much instant in this instance, and it may be worth setting it up only for this specific purpose - to save yourself the frustration of trying to unlock the phone while closed with your finger. Speaking of things you can do while it's closed, the N2 Flip also has two NFC antennas, so you can pay with it (provided you get it unlocked) even in its closed state, by pointing its lower back at the NFC reader. That's very nifty for travel systems which use NFC, we can attest.

Biometric unlocking winner: Tie.

Current version, updates, bugs

We'll just say it from the get-go: the Flip4 wins this one, very clearly. Both phones are running Android 13, but the N2 Flip is on the April 2023 security patch level, while the Flip4 has the current (as of writing) May 2023 patches included. It also gets more updates than the N2 Flip, and on a more regular basis - monthly, without fail, and around the same time of the month too.

Flip4: Current software

With the N2 Flip the situation's been more erratic, we never quite know when to expect a new update. There have been a few, which is good, but the security patches aren't up to date and some bugs we've had from the point when this phone launched internationally are still there even today - we're thinking of you, blue light filter randomly turning yourself off. Not to mention some weird design choices have been left untouched, even though they're doing things differently from every other Android phone out there.

N2 Flip: Current software

This is especially true for the way the Do Not Disturb mode has been designed. Basically, you can't have it so that all calls ring, and at the same time you get no notifications whatsoever. This is possible on every other Android device we've ever reviewed long-term, but not here, and since it's our preferred way of setting DND, we thought it could be yours too, and this is something to be aware of.

N2 Flip: Not very sane DND settings

To get around this problem we had to resort to setting notification volume to zero every day when going to bed and then pump it up again after waking up. That's a good solution which works because the phone allows you to set different volumes for the ringtone and notification tone, which is not always a given, but we shouldn't have to resort to this workaround - DND would've been 'set it and forget it', whereas this needs setting and resetting twice every day.

Flip4: Sane DND settings

The Flip4 has its own idiosyncrasies too, don't get us wrong. Adding an app to a home screen requires dragging the icon all the way to the top of the drawer before placing it on the home screen, which is an entirely pointless extra step that's only explained by your ability to place icons wherever you want them to be in the app drawer. We still aren't sure who ever asked for this functionality, but you're probably out there, aren't you? Anyway, 'thanks' to that, every single time one needs to add an app's icon to a home screen, there's this extra step.

In the same vein, the app drawer still scrolls horizontally, unlike pretty much every other skin's, and we get that it's consistent with the home screen scrolling, but it's also by default not ordered alphabetically, again, unlike most other skins out there. Thankfully there's an option to take things back to normal, though. If you want to drag an icon to a new location on the same screen, one that's at an edge, a lot of times you'll just be taken to the next screen too quickly. A minor nitpick this, of course, and yet severely annoying when you're arranging dozens of apps on home screens when you first get the phone.

Finally on the One UI front, we had an awkward situation upon setting up the Flip4 for this long-term review. We restored all our 200+ apps, only to find that "all" doesn't actually cover all of them. After the installation was complete, we still had a bunch of missing apps - all of these available in the Play Store, mind you, so there should've been no impediment in getting them. Some examples include Mi Home, Sony Headphones Connect, Sync Pro for Reddit, Google Keep, and Google Wallpapers. We're not generally ones to spout conspiracy talk, but isn't it interesting that, with the exception of Sync Pro for Reddit, Samsung has alternatives to all of these? SmartThings, Galaxy Wearable, Notes, and of course the built-in wallpaper picker.

Now let's go back to ColorOS, since, as we said already, while the Flip4 is no angel, it definitely wins this entire category. That's because there are simply more bugs on the N2 Flip. Such as, for example, the Wi-Fi calling quick tile always taking the first position after every SIM card swap, regardless of how you may have arranged the tiles prior to that. Also, when you set up the phone, the "Add new apps to home screen" setting is on by default, and if you don't turn it off as quickly as possible, and are restoring hundreds of apps as we are, well then you'll end up having hundreds of apps both in the app drawer and over dozens of home screens.

If you do find yourself in this position, you may think that clearing data for the launcher would reset the home screen icons, as we found on the Nothing Phone (1) we've recently reviewed long-term. But that, unfortunately, doesn't work here. The only saving grace is that you can batch select icons on home screens, which makes getting rid of all the unwanted ones faster. That said, you can still end up wasting a lot of time if you have hundreds of apps like we do, and don't want them all on your home screens.

Scrolling in the notifications panel is very weirdly slow, and this is true even if, like us, you set all three animation speed-related settings in Developer settings to ".5x". That speeds them up across the board, but not in the notifications panel for some reason.

Perhaps the biggest problem we've had with ColorOS as seen on the N2 Flip, however, is related to the fact that it loves killing background apps way too much, and way too quickly. Here's a scenario we've had happen a lot: play something on YouTube in the background, then pause it. Five minutes later it's completely gone, there's no trace of the playback icons in Quick Settings, and if you tap the YouTube icon (or go back to it from Recent apps), it will just reload as if that's the first time you've opened the app in ages. The exact same thing also happens with Spotify, and probably other media-playing apps too, but these are the ones we use the most.

For Spotify, the workaround is to go to the Battery section in Settings and explicitly "allow background activity", since, bafflingly, this isn't the default. For an app most people use to play music. But wait, it gets worse - YouTube simply isn't in the list here at all, so we couldn't do anything about its behavior. Perhaps that's because it's a built-in app? We're not sure, but either way, this state of things is wholly unacceptable on a device sold internationally in 2023.

N2 Flip: Optimize battery use settings

This used to be a huge problem in the past on Chinese phones, but we haven't seen anything this bad in years. Of course it's an easy fix with a software update, but will that ever happen? It's tough to tell. If we'd wager a guess as to why this is happening, it would be connected to the N2 Flip's small battery capacity and trying to make the most of that - even though it's bigger than the Flip4's, it's not that big. But sacrificing user experience for a little extra juice? We're not okay with that. Maybe you are, on the other hand, and that's totally fine, we're just laying out the situation for you here so you can make an informed decision.

When it comes to big Android updates, the Flip4 has already received one, to Android 13, and that came last November, around three months after Google's release of the new version. The N2 Flip, on the other hand, launched with Android 13 on board, so we can't say how quickly it will get Android 14. Oppo has committed to 4 years of major updates and 5 years of security updates for the N2 Flip, which is exactly the same as Samsung. On paper, they're tied here then, but judging what we've experienced regarding monthly security updates so far, we'd give Samsung the edge here too.

Software updates and bug-free user experience: Flip4.