The flip-style foldable from Samsung has undergone significant updates this year, and the difference-maker is a significantly larger cover screen.
That’s helpful because it’s a small category. The selection is considerably more limited if you’re looking at US-based options because your only options are the Motorola Razr Plus or the Flip 5. They have many similarities, including the fact that they both provide a cover screen that is significantly larger and more usable than the one offered by their forerunners. Additionally, they are both $999 in price. However, the flip phone from Samsung is more robust, has more useful cover screen widgets, and has a better camera system all around.
That’s not to say the Flip 5 is the best flip phone or the best phone you can have for a thousand dollars. Although it is tough for a foldable, the huge “X” in its IPX8 classification signifies that there is no guarantee against dust infiltration, and dust in a folding phone spells major danger. The majority of $999 slab-style phones have cameras with superior quality and telephoto lenses, but the Flip 5’s battery life is inadequate for a day of heavy use. Flip phones might not be for you if any of the aforementioned issues are really important to you. However, the Galaxy Z Flip 5 is a great choice if you’re ready to put up with these compromises.
The flip form factor is especially beneficial for someone who wishes to complete more fundamental tasks on their phone without being drawn into aimlessly checking app notifications or mistakenly skimming through news feeds. The Flip 5’s larger, better cover screen makes it feasible to swiftly reply to a text, scan a map for a walk, or check the weather without having to look at every single thing on your phone. The Z Flip 5 is unquestionably the greatest option in its class, making it a potent weapon in the battle for your attention.
The 3.4-inch cover screen, also known as the Flex Window, according to Samsung, is the main draw. It may not seem like much, but that is more than 3.5 times larger than the Z Flip 4’s 1.9-inch screen. It’s comparable to getting out of a Smart Car and into a sedan; fasten your seatbelt since you may now travel. You can reply to texts using a full QWERTY keyboard rather than just checking notifications. In the same screen, you may see both your daily schedule and a monthly calendar.
Samsung offers a variety of useful widgets that you may use, disable, and organize however you like.
The weather widget provides a quick snapshot of the present conditions, and you can scroll down to see the forecast for the following week. They are wonderful and make excellent use of the limited screen space. All the information is displayed when you tap on a calendar event. Everything works exactly as the good lord intended it to and is far more enjoyable than on the Motorola Razr Plus.
Here are some activities I performed throughout the previous week using the cover screen, in no particular order:
- Answer text messages
- Remove my child from daycare.
- I check the bus arrival times at my stop and see that the next bus is definitely going to be missed.
- Read the four notices I received for my threads.
- Throw out almost 2,000 spam calls
Widgets are fantastic, but for me, at least, the flexibility to run specific programs on the cover screen is one of the appeals of a flip phone. Many apps are unquestionably terrible on a little screen, so you’ll need to have a little bit of adventure here. But it turns out that a couple of the apps I use for fast chores work just well on the cover display. For the few daring Flip 5 owners, it’s a headache they probably won’t want to go through, but it’s a significant advantage of owning a flip phone.
The aforementioned factors make it exceedingly challenging for Samsung to allow the use of any app on the cover screen.
For all apps other than messaging apps, Google Maps, and YouTube, you must download Good Lock (and an additional module called MultiStar) from the Galaxy App Store. You can activate a small number of pre-selected apps through the Labs menu. After that, you can include more applications on the cover screen.
