Samsung Galaxy Z Flip3 long-term review

Performance, smoothness

In early 2022, you'd expect a top-of-the-line device to feature Qualcomm's Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 SoC, and the Flip3 doesn't. In its defense, though, it was launched before that chipset was even available, so it's got the next best thing from Qualcomm's stable: the 888, 2021's top dog. On paper, this seems like a problem if you're the spec-hunting type, but in real life, day-to-day use, it's literally no issue at all.

You won't see any difference between the 888 and the 8 Gen 1 for anything you do, with the possible exception of heavy mobile gaming. Though, with its weird aspect ratio and bad battery life (see the next section for more details), we're having issues believing anyone would actually buy the Flip3 for gaming. This device is definitely intended for a different market, one that values unique looks and an overall fashion-forward appearance above all else.

Obviously, the Flip3 delivers on that front, but it also delivers when it comes to performance. Sure, benchmark results will say otherwise, but that's why they're called synthetic benchmarks. We've spent many weeks with the Flip3 for this review, using it as our one and only smartphone, and we were never left wanting when it came to performance. Not once. This handset is as fast as any other high-end model; it never disappoints (note, however, that we're not heavy gamers, so we can't really speak as to how it would work in that scenario, unlikely as it may be).

Chip makers have gotten us used to new top of the line releases every year, which bring performance improvements on paper, but ever since the Snapdragon 865/865+/870, we're having difficulty actually identifying those gains in real life use cases. Basically, for what you're going to do on this phone 99% of the time, the Snapdragon 888 is indistinguishable from an 8 Gen 1 or an 870, for that matter. So don't worry, performance is very adequately covered.

Smoothness has been an issue with Samsung high-end devices traditionally, as they've never quite matched some of their competitors in this inherently subjective assessment, and the Flip3 is no different. But it's getting really, really close. From all the phones we've reviewed long-term, we'd definitely call this the smoothest Samsung yet, even outdoing the Galaxy S21 Ultra. And yet there are still competing devices from Chinese brands that deliver ever so slightly more smoothness. However, if you don't have any of those to compare to directly, you are unlikely to be disappointed by what the Flip3 provides.

Battery life

If there's one area where the Flip3 has been a constant, consistent disappointment throughout our usе for this review, it's battery life. And really, that's no surprise at all. Just look at the spec sheet: a 3,300 mAh battery powering a device with a top-of-the-line chipset and a 6.7-inch screen? That's just not going to cut it.

And indeed, it doesn't. This phone has provided us with the worst battery life we've ever seen on any device we've reviewed long-term. It's just atrocious. If you are anything but the lightest of phone users, buying a Flip3 will mean you'll need to think about charging it all the time.

The Flip3 has never made it to the end of a day when we used it as we normally do for long-term reviews, with around 12-16 hours off the charger, of which the majority is spent on Wi-Fi, about an hour or two on mobile data, around 30 minutes to an hour of GPS navigation via Waze or Google Maps, location and Bluetooth always on, about an hour or two of listening to music or podcasts via Bluetooth, and about an hour or two of phone calls, again mostly via Bluetooth.

On the busiest of days, with loads of mobile data and GPS usage, we've even topped it up twice during the day just to get some peace of mind that it wouldn't power off when we needed it the most. On our lightest use days, of which we've had a few, the Flip3 barely made it to our bedtime on one charge, with incredibly low screen on times, as the screenshots you see below can attest.

Battery life on days we used the phone the least

The fact that charging takes an hour and a half from empty to full is also unacceptable at this price point, when other companies are churning out mid-rangers costing half the price, which take 20 minutes to charge much larger batteries. Oh, and those mid-rangers also feature the fast charging brick in the box, a "wasteful" approach in Samsung's view, which chose to save the environment by making some extra cash off of charger sales. Because that obviously makes sense, our sarcasm-filled selves feel the need to note.

Seriously, there's no overstating this point: battery life on the Flip3 sucks, charging times suck too, and the fact that you have wireless charging as an option is nice to see but expected at this price point, and it doesn't really help alleviate the aforementioned issues in any way. Not to mention that at 10W, that will take hours to fully replenish the battery when it's dead.

Camera

Battery life is definitely the worst thing about the Flip3 as we've already mentioned. The camera system is probably the second worst then. There's still some distance between these two, because the cameras on offer here aren't bad per se, they're just not in any way comparable to the ones featured on any other phone at the same price. But that's the price you pay for the folding, isn't it?

First off, there's no telephoto zoom lens on the Flip3, and that's hard to overlook in this day and age. Second, the two cameras that are there - a wide and an ultrawide - are okay, without wowing us in any shot we've taken on them.

The main snapper produces pleasant images during daytime, with that signature Samsung look with vivid colors and high contrast. Dynamic range is good but could be better, and detail levels are about what you can expect from a 12 MP sensor. Some textures look overprocessed though, and there is some noise creeping in if you pixel peep, especially in the sky. Overall, these are good images, but almost every other similarly priced device out there will beat them. Still, for most people only snapping things in order to share them on social media, this could be good enough.

Daytime samples from the main camera

The ultrawide shots during daytime follow a similar story: good, but not as good as they would be if this were any other phone costing about the same amount. The edges are softer than we'd like, although the center remains sharp. The colors are, for lack of a better word, Samsung-like - meaning pleasing to the eye even if not entirely accurate to the scene. The color science is also pretty well matched to what the main camera produces, which is always good to see (because it's still so rare in the Android world). Dynamic range once again isn't as great as on any of the top camera phones of the moment, unfortunately.

Daytime samples from the ultrawide

At night, the main camera does an auto-Night Mode dance if you leave Scene optimizer on (as it is by default and as we left it). This results in pretty quick shots, which have excellent color reproduction (if on the punchy end of the spectrum, of course), great dynamic range, and good amounts of detail - but we've definitely seen better. Noise will be visible too if you look for it, and pretty easily at that.

Nighttime samples from the main camera

If you choose to employ the manual Night Mode, captures get ever so slightly longer, and the results may be worth it most times, as shadows are lifted and more details show up than in the Auto mode images. In fact, there isn't really a downside to using Night Mode at night aside from the shot-to-shot time, so we'd recommend this as the default when the lights go down.

Night Mode samples from the main camera

The ultrawide struggles in the dark as we would've expected it to, but still manages to produce shots with decent dynamic range and pleasing, saturated colors. But there's a lot of noise, and this is very obvious.

Nighttime samples from the ultrawide

There's no auto-Night mode for the ultrawide, but you can use the manual one. If you do so, then you'll get improved results, once again with lifted shadows and generally more brightness, but without extreme overexposure of highlights. If you look for it, you'll see some pretty heavy-duty sharpening across the board, but even so, these shots are much better than the ones captured with Auto mode. So like for the main camera, if you have the time to let it do its thing (and stable hands), then we'd recommend using Night Mode by default on the ultrawide as well.

Night Mode samples from the ultrawide

Selfies taken by the inner camera always come out sharp during daytime, with good amounts of detail, but the colors are weirdly muted compared to what the other cameras produce, and shockingly so when you consider this is a Samsung, and "muted colors" isn't on the list of things associated with its cameras generally. Anyway, there's also a bit of noise in the selfies, and sometimes the camera struggles with exposure in bright lighting conditions, while dynamic range isn't great either, resulting in dark faces in backlit scenes.

Selfie samples, day and night, Portrait mode off/on

Portrait Mode shots come out good, with adequate subject separation. At night, things understandably go downhill, and we recommend only shooting when there's still some level of ambient lighting around you, or using the screen flash function - or ideally, both. You can of course also capture selfies with the main camera array, using the outer display as your viewfinder, in which case you'll get much better shots as you might expect. The quality would be, unsurprisingly, on par with all the other shots that the main camera and the ultrawide produce.

We went into the camera experience expecting this to be one of the areas where the Flip3 wouldn't shine, and that's exactly what ended up happening. The cameras on offer here are fine, but hopefully, you aren't planning on getting this phone for the cameras.