The Galaxy Z Fold 4 is the most versatile gadget you can buy - The Verge

It’s casual to spot the entreaty of folding phones — they are large surface devices that get smaller to acceptable successful your pocket. It’s besides casual to spot the drawbacks; arsenic overmuch arsenic Samsung tries to fell it with trade-in promotions, there’s nary denying the Galaxy Z Fold 4’s $1,800 terms tag is excessively steep for the immense bulk of people. The question of durability is besides hard to disregard — it doesn’t instrumentality overmuch searching to find tales of randomly cracked Fold screens.

But until you perpetrate and commencement utilizing a instrumentality similar the Fold 4 for immoderate time, it’s hard to spot the worth that a folding telephone tin bring. I’ve owned a Fold exemplary since 2020’s Fold 2 (and owned the Fold 3 for a twelvemonth earlier upgrading to the Fold 4 acknowledgment to Samsung’s aggressive, if fiscally irresponsible trade-in offers) and it inactive took 3 months of clip with the Fold 4 to truly admit each it could do.

The information is, the Fold 4 is the astir versatile gadget you tin buy. It whitethorn not beryllium the champion astatine each task, but it tin morph betwixt signifier factors amended than thing other retired there. It’s genuinely the 1 gadget to regularisation them all.

It’s a phone

The archetypal usage lawsuit for a Fold 4 is the astir evident 1 — it is simply a full-fledged high-end smartphone. It makes calls, it sends messages, it takes pictures, it runs apps, it plays games, it connects to high-speed cellular networks — basically, thing you usage a smartphone for, the Fold 4 does it.

The Fold 4 keeps up with different high-end smartphones successful presumption of show and features (you don’t person to springiness up conveniences similar wireless charging, for example), and portion you tin bargain phones with amended cameras, the Fold 4’s camera strategy is precise susceptible connected its own. Perhaps the biggest drawback to utilizing the Fold 4 arsenic a telephone is its narrower beforehand screen, which takes a spot of getting utilized to erstwhile thumb typing. It’s besides astir doubly arsenic heavy arsenic a modular phone, though that thickness enables the Fold 4’s versatility.

The Fold 4 is simply a bully phone, if not an astonishing one, but the constituent present is the Fold 4 communicative is conscionable opening to unfold.

It’s a tablet

Here’s wherever the Fold 4 starts to locomotion distant from the remainder of the smartphone field: you tin unfastened it up and you person a astir eight-inch diagonal, astir quadrate tablet surface to enactment with. Compared to Samsung’s different large phone, the 6.8-inch S22 Ultra, the Fold 4’s interior surface covers 28.42 quadrate inches of area, versus the Ultra’s 17.98 quadrate inches.

It’s hard to quantify however overmuch much country that gives you successful applicable terms, but it’s a large capable canvas to marque a wide assortment of tasks easier and much comfy than connected a modular slab smartphone. Compared to the cramped split-screen you get connected a slab phone, 2 apps tin beryllium displayed side-by-side astatine the aforesaid clip connected the Fold 4 without having to perpetually power betwixt them for multitasking. Instead of limiting yourself to abbreviated video clips connected TikTok, you tin comfortably ticker long-form video contented either connected YouTube oregon the streaming work of your choice, aided by the Fold 4’s best-in-smartphone-class speakers.

Using Google Maps connected a surface this ample is simply a wholly antithetic acquisition than the passageway imaginativeness you get connected a modular smartphone’s display. Typing retired agelong emails is much comfy erstwhile you person specified a ample country for your thumbs to roam.

Reading long-form articles oregon navigating ample PDFs is overmuch easier connected the Fold 4 than different smartphones due to the fact that of however overmuch wider it is. Ditto for speechmaking e-books — a folding telephone has wholly replaced a Kindle for me. As a portable, always-connected speechmaking machine, the Fold 4 is unparalleled.

Basically, thing you mightiness privation to usage an iPad mini for tin beryllium accomplished connected the Fold 4, with the added payment of it tin past beryllium folded successful fractional and shoved successful your pouch erstwhile you’re done.

It’s a notepad

Thanks to that ample interior show and enactment for Samsung’s S Pen stylus, the Fold 4 is an fantabulous instrumentality for taking hand-written notes, which are past synced to the unreality and searchable. You tin besides people up surface shots oregon conscionable doodle and marque artwork than you tin past easy nonstop anywhere. It’s incredibly convenient to person a integer note-taking strategy successful your pocket.

There’s surely country for betterment present — there’s presently nary mode to store the S Pen connected the Fold 4 without a bulky and annoying case, and the pen doesn’t enactment connected the extracurricular show astatine all. But compared to immoderate different smartphone, the Fold 4 is simply a amended instrumentality for notes and drawings.

It’s a desktop computer

Perhaps the astir astonishing happening astir the Fold 4 is that it tin regenerate a machine for a batch of tasks. And I don’t mean you conscionable bash those things connected the Fold’s screen, I mean you plug it into a desktop show and brace a wireless keyboard to it and use it similar an existent PC. (You tin besides usage Dex wirelessly with immoderate supported Samsung displays, but if you’re going to beryllium utilizing it for immoderate extended play of time, you’ll privation it plugged successful for powerfulness and the lowest latency.)

Samsung’s had the Dex diagnostic that enables this on its phones for years, but it’s present gotten to the constituent wherever it’s acold much usable. You tin tally aggregate apps, person power implicit model sizes and placements, and entree an highly susceptible web browser that tin grip galore tabs with ease. And since the Fold 4 is simply a cellular-connected phone, you tin usage its built-in net transportation without having to trust connected Wi-Fi oregon different disposable networks.

Google’s enactment to amended tablet enactment successful Android has made Dex overmuch amended than it utilized to be. (The Fold 4 launched with Android 12L, but has since received an update to Android 13.) Many apps present enactment larger layouts and much and much are adding things similar keyboard shortcut support. Dex itself besides offers a increasing database of keyboard shortcuts for app power and model management. While determination are inactive a fewer holdouts that tin beryllium improved — Slack’s interface connected a ample surface leaves a batch to beryllium desired — determination are less and less areas wherever Dex doesn’t conscionable bash what you expect it to and fto you get enactment done.

Samsung’s Internet browser is peculiarly bully — it’s fast, it supports extensions, loads desktop versions of apps, and offers aggregate ways to negociate tabs. I tin usage it to write, edit, and people articles successful our CMS (yup, I produced this full nonfiction successful it), oregon browse sites similar Twitter and Feedly, which don’t person large Android app experiences connected ample screens.

You tin brace a wireless rodent to the Fold 4 for cursor control, but it’s easier to conscionable usage the Fold’s interior show arsenic a trackpad, implicit with multifinger gestures for navigating unfastened apps and windows. There are adjacent configurable gestures to spell backmost with a three-finger pat oregon usage 4 fingers to propulsion up the app launcher.

Unlike Apple and its adventures with Stage Manager connected the iPad, Samsung isn’t trying to reinvent the instrumentality erstwhile it comes to a windowed app environment. Apps and windows tin beryllium placed and layered nevertheless you privation them, you tin resize them nevertheless you’d like, and you tin adjacent usage keyboard shortcuts to drawback windows to the near oregon close side.

Dex moving connected the Fold 4 isn’t going to regenerate a gaming PC and I’d beryllium loathe to usage it for heavier tasks similar photograph and video editing. If you truly propulsion the strategy with tons of moving apps and tabs you volition deed its show limits and you’ll surely spot browser tabs reloading much often than connected a afloat desktop OS.

Nor is it arsenic convenient arsenic a laptop that you tin conscionable unfastened up and get moving on, since it requires accessories similar an outer display, keyboard, and apt a USB-C hub. But for web browsing, communications, and different “basic” PC tasks with the close acceptable up, it’s amazingly capable. The champion examination is to ChromeOS — you mightiness usage a dedicated app oregon 2 portion successful Dex, but you’ll walk astir of your clip successful the browser doing web-based activities.

And past erstwhile I’m done I tin simply unplug my phone, fold it closed, shove it successful my pocket, and locomotion away.

None of these assorted capabilities are peculiarly caller to the Fold 4 — Samsung is present 4 generations into this folding telephone plan and adjacent the precise archetypal 1 could technically execute galore of the aforesaid tasks.

But the Fold 4 is capable to bash each of this amended than its predecessors due to the fact that Samsung has iterated connected each of these experiences implicit the years. Samsung’s emblematic bid of operations is to bring an thought to marketplace that’s bully successful concept, but lacking successful execution, and past relentlessly iterate connected it until each the unsmooth edges are sanded distant and what’s near is simply a genuinely bully experience.

Samsung inactive has enactment to do, though, including uncovering ways to marque the terms much accessible and addressing the concerns of reliability and durability. (I reserve the close to recant immoderate praise for the Fold 4 if the interior surface connected excavation randomly cracks successful the future.) There’s not a batch of contention retired determination for devices similar this, particularly successful the US, but the fewer different folding phones that person hit the planetary marketplace recently person sleeker and thinner designs that Samsung could larn from.

The archetypal Fold felt precise overmuch similar a impervious of concept, but 4 generations in, the Fold 4 present provides a precise bully acquisition that you conscionable can’t get from a modular smartphone. It’s not that the Fold 4 is the champion astatine immoderate peculiar task, but it is bully astatine each of them and having each of those options successful a instrumentality that fits successful your pouch can’t beryllium understated. Future iterations (and hopefully some competition from other telephone makers) volition apt amended it further and possibly 1 time we’ll each beryllium carrying specified versatile devices successful our pockets. But if you privation that aboriginal today, the Fold 4 is the mode to get it.