Samsung Galaxy Z Flip3 long-term review

Conclusion

To sum up our time with the Galaxy Flip3, we'd say it's a great and novel phone with atrocious battery life and a camera system that, while decent, simply can't compete with the best of the best in any way. And then there's the foldable elephant in the room. Sure, folding your phone still feels new and cool, but the fact that the Flip3 folds presents less of an advantage than in the case of the Fold3, where quite a few disadvantages are neatly being offset.

Hear us out: the Fold3 gives you an inner screen that's almost small tablet-like, but you get no such thing on the Flip3. In fact, the only upside is that, when folded, it's smaller on two axes. Not all three, though, which of course means it gets significantly thicker (a fact not aided by the hinge which isn't gapless). So if you're considering this device, the main question for you is: is this shrinking in two of three dimensions when folded actually worth everything you're paying for it?

We don't just mean 'paying' in terms of money, but also all the other things that had to be 'adapted' to the form factor, like the very small battery capacity, the small (and thus not great) camera sensors, the lack of a telephoto camera altogether... We can't answer this question for you but, based on the Flip3's record breaking sales (for a foldable), we assume a lot of people are actually willing to live with these downsides. Whether that's because they think folding phones are cool, or because the Flip3 has somehow become a fashion statement, we don't know, but the numbers don't lie.

On the other hand, for anyone who considers themselves a power user of any sort, this would definitely not be the phone we'd recommend. Battery life used to be a huge issue in the mobile world many years ago, and in recent times has ceased to be that. Well, with the Flip3 you can relive those days when you were always anxious about longevity, and always had chargers everywhere. That's not a world we'd happily go back to, and the slow charging doesn't help things either.

But, for the mere coolness factor alone, the Flip3 is definitely intriguing. It was more of a conversation starter during our time with it than any other phone we've reviewed long-term, so if you want to stand out from the crowd, it's a surefire way to do that. You just need to be fully aware of what the tradeoffs are, and we've tried to lay those out for you in great detail in this long-term review.

We don't want to end on a note that feels like we're bashing the Flip3 - indeed, we quite liked our time with it. It does have a great screen which is legible even in bright sunlight (although the top plastic layer feels like a really cheap screen protector); the build quality is excellent, although the hinge could definitely use some work for future iterations; the speakers are incredible given the size of the device (but speakerphone calls were bad for the people we were talking to), the vibration motor is excellent, the fingerprint sensor is the best side-mounted one we've ever used, performance was always excellent, and smoothness was the best we've encountered on a Samsung (while still trailing some competitors, but only just).

There's definitely much more good than bad here, but the unfortunate reality is that the bad parts might just outshine those good ones, even if they're severely outnumbered. And yet, if you can live with all of the not-so-perfect bits, the Flip3 definitely provides a unique user experience in a smartphone world that has become increasingly boring in recent times.