Samsung Galaxy Z Fold4 long-term review

Camera

The Galaxy Z Fold4 has a main camera similar to that employed by the Galaxy S22 line, although with less sophisticated autofocusing. The ultrawide is pretty old and, weirdly, 13 MP, even though it outputs 12 MP images. While it has support for autofocus in theory, that's nowhere to be found on this phone so if you were thinking of capturing macro shots with it, you're out of luck. In fact, the ultrawide seems very similar (if not identical) to the Fold3's. Thankfully the zoom camera is updated, and it seems to be the one used by the S22 line, with 3-ish x zoom. Another weird bit - this sensor is 10 MP, but outputs 12 MP stills. Samsung really loves 12 MP, apparently.

Anyway, let's see how these perform. The main camera produces good images with plenty of that trademark Samsung 'pop', which most people seem to absolutely love but purists generally hate. There's a lot of it here too, but while it's bordering on too much, we'd say it straddles the line pretty well. Contrast is high as is the norm on Samsungs, shadow and highlight detail is plenty, sharpening exists but isn't overboard. Noise can creep in a lot of times, but it's not off-putting - at least not to our eyes, you can judge for yourself below.

Daytime samples from the main camera

The ultrawide isn't outstanding, but it's still good. Detail levels are great, and color reproduction seems to be in line with the main camera, which isn't something we take for granted unfortunately, even today. Shadows can be a bit dark, even in the best lighting conditions, and the corners get soft, though that's pretty much a given with an ultrawide.

Daytime samples from the ultrawide

The zoomed-in shots are great, with crisp detail and minimal noise. Sharpening is kept on a leash well, and the colors are matched to the main camera again. Dynamic range is excellent, and we couldn't find any egregious signs of upscaling from the sensor's native resolution of 10 MP to 12 MP.

Daytime zoom samples

At night there's an Auto Night Mode that comes in when it feels like it. It doesn't always kick in, however, but when it does it will let you know by popping up a crescent icon in the viewfinder. Tapping this disables it for that shot. When you go into manual Night Mode, you're generally getting an image that's indiscernible from the one that Auto Night Mode made - but not always. Sometimes there are minute differences. We've shot all of the images below with Auto Night Mode on.

The main camera produces very good shots, while not the best we've ever seen. Still, most people wouldn't scoff at these. There's plenty of dynamic range and contrast (that signature Samsung processing), but shadows can sometimes be darker than you'd expect. Colors are vibrant and 'pop' as much as they do during the day, unsurprisingly, while detail levels range from great in well-lit areas to not so much in the shadows, where things get soft and a bit noisy.

Nighttime samples from the main camera

Night Mode improves shadows mainly, and highlights are also preserved a little bit better. The differences with Auto mode are rather small, however, so unless you're going for a specific look we'd recommend sticking with Auto for most shots.

Night Mode samples from the main camera

The ultrawide struggles the most in low light, which is a phrase that we've probably written a million times already. It still applies here, and in Auto mode the images it outputs are pretty noisy and soft, and they have this underexposed look that only a limited number of people might like, and even then perhaps only for a specific type of 'moody' photo.

Nighttime samples from the ultrawide

Night Mode improves things, but not by a huge amount. Still, we'd recommend going with Night Mode by default for ultrawide shots if you can spare the multi-second shot-to-shot times, since the output has better dynamic range, improved shadows, more sharpness, and less noise.

Night Mode samples from the ultrawide

Capturing zoomed-in shots at night is a lottery with regard to whether the dedicated telephoto camera is used, or a crop from the main sensor. In the latter case, results include pretty mushy shadows a lot of times, with plenty of noise. Highlights have this eerie tendency to blow themselves out a lot too. Things are a little bit better when the proper sensor is used, but this doesn't happen too often in Auto mode if there isn't ample lighting around.

Nighttime zoom samples

Again, if you can, use Night Mode. This improves things visibly, but it still can't hold a candle to what the main camera produces at night. And yet, you get some extra shadow detail, and less haloing around light sources. The photos are also more sharp, so the only way we're recommending Auto mode here is if you dislike that.

Night Mode zoom samples

You can capture selfies from the main camera array on this phone, making use of its folding abilities, in which case the quality would be similar to what we described above for those cameras. Additionally, you have two dedicated selfie cameras, one embedded in the inner screen, the other in the outer display.

The latter is still concealed by pixels, and it's technically an "under-display" camera, and it's still bad. For selfies, it goes like this: use the main cameras if possible. If not, go for the one in the outer screen. If for some reason you can't do either of those things, and are ready for a drop in quality, only then employ the inner screen's embedded sensor.

The outer screen's selfie shooter produces pleasant images during the daytime, though a little bit tamer in the 'Samsung look' than the rear modules. It also asks you which skin tone you prefer, we went with Natural, and that might have something to do with this. Portrait Mode is generally pretty good, but random stray hairs will confuse it more often than not - you've been warned.

The inner screen's camera is much lower resolution, and much worse. All images come out a little bit hazy, and at night it's pretty much a disaster. Stick with this one for video calls only, we'd say, but only if you actually want to use the full inner screen for those.

Selfies from the camera embedded in the folding screen

At night the outer display's camera also drops in quality but much less so, and images are still definitely usable if you employ the screen flash function. You get two shooting modes for selfies, one of which is more wide-angle than the other, so you can choose that one for a group selfie as opposed to the closer angle when it's just you. Or not, the options are there, so you can play with them and do things however you want.

Selfies from the cover screen camera

Overall, the Galaxy Z Fold4 has a very competent camera array (with the exception of the inner selfie shooter, but we're not judging it based on that since you have alternatives to shooting with it). That said, these cameras aren't as good as the best of the best nowadays, which is fine if you can find the Fold4 at a discount. When it came out though, camera quality was definitely a thing that you sacrificed, at that initial price point, in the service of the folding.

We're actually not against that tradeoff ourselves, don't get us wrong, we just felt the need to point it out. There are better camera phones out there, and there are probably also better folding camera phones out there (especially if your definition of "there" in this context is "in China"). That said, it's unlikely that the Fold4's snappers will disappoint you in any way, or at least significantly - again, if you can ignore the inner screens' selfie camera, which is thankfully easily done thanks to its redundancy.