**A Six-Month Review of the Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 2**

I've had the opportunity to spend six months with the Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 2, and I must say that it's been an incredible experience. One of the first things that struck me about this phone was its unique design. The way it folds in half is not only aesthetically pleasing but also functional. When closed, the phone takes up a relatively small space, making it easy to carry around. However, when opened, the large 7.6-inch screen reveals itself, offering an immersive viewing experience that's perfect for watching videos, browsing web pages, or working on documents.

One of the standout features of the Z Fold 2 is its camera system. While I was initially concerned about how it would perform in social media apps like Instagram and Snapchat, I'm happy to report that it exceeded my expectations. The camera takes excellent photos, both in normal and low-light conditions, and the portrait mode feature is particularly impressive. However, there's one thing that's still a bit of an issue - the aspect ratio of the screen. When you open the phone, the camera app often takes up the entire lower portion of the screen, making it difficult to frame shots or edit photos without having a black bar at the bottom.

Another feature that I've grown accustomed to is the way the phone handles multitasking. With three screens available (two when folded and one when unfolded), you can have multiple apps open at the same time, which has been incredibly useful for work and other tasks. The performance of the phone has also impressed me - it's handled everything from 4K video editing to gaming with ease, without any noticeable lag or slowdown.

One thing that did surprise me was how well the battery life held up during my six-month review period. I regularly get at least a day and a half out of this phone on normal usage, which is impressive considering all the power-hungry features it has. Of course, this may vary depending on your individual usage patterns, but overall, I'm happy with the battery life.

Unfortunately, there's one area where the Z Fold 2 falls short: its "Z Premiere" service. This was touted as a concierge service that would offer perks like free meals and exclusive membership to certain organizations. However, my experience with it has been underwhelming. When I tried to redeem my free meal, I was surprised to find out that it cost me $200, which is just not worth it. Similarly, the at-home fitness service I signed up for ended up charging me well before the free trial period ended.

Despite these minor issues, I've found myself returning to this phone again and again, even when other phones are available for review. There's something about the Z Fold 2 that keeps drawing me back in - perhaps it's the unique design, or the exceptional camera performance. Whatever it is, I'm excited to see what the future holds for foldable phones like the Galaxy Z Fold 3.

**The Verdict**

Overall, my six-month review of the Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 2 has been overwhelmingly positive. While there are some minor issues that need to be addressed, such as the camera app's aspect ratio and the "Z Premiere" service's pricing, these haven't detracted from my overall enjoyment of the phone. If you're in the market for a foldable phone, I would definitely recommend considering the Z Fold 2 - it's an experience unlike any other smartphone on the market.

**Tips and Tricks**

If you're also using the Z Fold 2 or another foldable phone, I'd love to hear about your experiences. Do you have tips for optimizing social media app performance? Should you peel off the screen protector on the inside of the phone? Let me know in the comments below!

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enthe galaxy z fold 2 is a beautiful phone but how does it hold up long-term let's find out i've been using the z-fold 2 from day 1 pretty much as soon as it was released and six months later i have a lot of thoughts about this two thousand dollar foldable phone so in this video i wanna tell you exactly what it's been like using this over a long term period both as my daily driver and as a phone that i've kind of gone back and forth between when i've been doing other phone reviews as well everything from the displays to the battery life the performance and whether or not that z premiere concierge service was actually worth it now when i started using this phone i was being very very careful with it because price in mind i didn't want to break it even though i had some kind of guarantees of a screen replacement for just a small extra cost this is still 2 000 us dollars i'm gonna baby it just a little bit over time over the past six months i've definitely felt like i have been a little more careless with it i should say i've dropped it a few times without a case on it and i've been surprised i had a moment when i did i just fell out of my top pocket and i thought when it hit the ground that was it that was my foldable phone dreams shattered two thousand dollars down the drain fortunately it actually survived as you can see i have this nice big scratch in the front of the screen protector lucky i kept that on now actually i have to say the hinge itself has been more durable and i feels pretty much the same as it did day one out of the box so that flex mode where the phone can stay open in a number of different configurations still works as it did and maybe overall it's loosened up just a tiny bit but it still feels very firm and also very sturdy too but let's talk about that inside screen the screen protector on the inside screen obviously is not designed to be removed by you the buyer you can ask samsung to remove it if you want i've kept it on but i'm always thinking i do want to get it taken off just because i really dislike the feel of that screen protector against my thumbs when i am using the phone it's also a big grease and dust magnet as well when the phone is open now all that being said the 120 hertz on the interior screen is beautiful it is performing just like any other samsung phone with that high refresh rate screen the s21 ultra and the note 20 ultra for example but it is a much more immersive experience as you would expect on the larger screen i think that kind of goes without saying but what i have been really interested in in the past few months especially since having used the s21 ultra with the s pen and knowing it's capable of having the s pen support is really missing that when i switch back to the z folder 2. i just feel like the next generation absolutely has to have s pen support it just makes sense there's just so many opportunities to use it on a larger screen a larger canvas and i really do miss trying to use the s pen on this obviously i haven't because you know two thousand dollar phone but i wish that i could and i really hope that the z-fold three does let you use the s-pen now a lot of people have been talking about the fingerprint reader and kind of not feeling too hot on either its positioning or its performance i have to say i have been surprised about how much i've enjoyed using it and how well it's positioned for my hand of course if you're left-handed it's probably not going to be the thing that you reach for the most for right-handed people like me i feel like it falls perfectly with the size of my hand and the positioning of the button on the side now i think if i had larger hands i might not like it so much but for once i feel like having slightly smaller hands is an advantage i'm actually using the outside screen a lot more than i thought i would even though i do miss 120 hertz because it's not on the front screen i have to say that i can just do pretty much everything that i need to from this outside screen and when i open it up it's definitely just because i want to be doing something to take advantage of the larger screen whether that's watching a film even though i've kind of got to play around with kind of the aspect ratio on how things display or making a video call when i'm taking a quick photo i'm checking things like instagram twitter or email taking a text message and of course making a phone call i'm using the phone with the screen folded like this and most of the time i would say probably 80 of the time this is the configuration in which i use the phone something that i quickly switched out that i don't normally do on other samsung phones it was the default keyboard because it just i could not use it to save my life i was making so many errors this swipe was just all over the place it was a big gap in the middle anyway ergonomics aside i prefer the g board keyboard for this particular phone and it just works really nicely compared to the stock samsung keyboard i really think that that's something that needs a little bit more tweaking for foldable phones going forward now let's talk about one ui the 3.1 update that is just hit the z-fold 2 has added a couple of different things that are useful in a couple of things that i i know i'm definitely never going to use the thing that i actually prefer the most out of the update is the fact that you can use the multi-active window and have up to three apps you can exit out of that and then immediately go back into the app switcher and you'll see those three apps right there rather than all the apps individually listed and you have to reload them into your multi-app view i like that it's just seamless and a no-brainer and i'm really glad that that's there there's also a feature that lets you put your hand or your palm over the front of the screen and turn the screen off i mean my hands kind of not quite big enough to fully register it and it kind of works maybe half of the time it's not something that i use often i just hit the power button on the side to turn the screen off and for some reason i don't know what took samsung so long to get this right but with the one ui 3.1 update i've noticed that the weather app on the front and the inside screens now syncs i don't have to click the refresh icon on both of them and i i don't know why that wasn't a thing but it is and i'm glad if nothing else was fixed i would have been happy with just that now the cameras themselves are really good and i was almost prepared to make a compromise with the price of this phone just because of how many other things it offers namely its foldable form factor but fortunately i didn't have to really make sacrifices when it comes to the image processing and the video quality compared to other samsung flagship phones yes you don't get the crazy zoom levels of the note 20 ultra or the s21 ultra but most of the time i don't really need those and i've been really impressed with the photos that i've taken from this phone the one thing that i think is just a little bit difficult for me to adjust to is using it in flex mode and trying to use this kind of as a camera tripod for example putting it down to use the rear cameras i have to rest the phone on whatever surface it is on the front screen and yes i know i still have that screen protector on but i'm just still nervous that something's going to happen i'm going to accidentally create a big scratch or something across the front of it so i don't really know how that can be resolved without you know physically holding the phone or leaving it in i guess a vertical configuration like this and then just having to rotate or play with the aspect ratios after the fact the one big downside about the camera for me has really been social media apps and how they've been optimized for the phone and i guess that's not really a fault of the camera itself it's kind of a combination of form factor and developers not making their apps really compatible with the broad range of devices now this is not exclusive to the z-fold too many other apps have just not been optimized very well on android compared to how they are on iphone but in particular if i'm doing something like an instagram story and i'm opening up the camera just notice there's just this big black bar at the bottom and it just it's very difficult to make content in the way that it is on another phone where these apps are more optimized for the screen real estate so don't worry i have not forgotten that the primary use case of the phone for many people is to actually make calls and this is probably one of the best features of the z-fold 2 for me is the configuration of the phone when it's in the closed position for making calls it just feels really good on the ear it's comfortable to use it is elongated it feels like whenever i'm talking i don't need to worry about where the microphone is positioned or where the earpiece is positioned it just falls into place and it just sounds really good callers have also remarked that my calls sound really nice on this phone when it comes to battery i actually think that this phone is doing an exceptional job of battery management considering all that's going on behind the scenes i regularly get at least a day and a half out of this phone with normal usage and that is really really promising for me because i think that the future of foldable phones it doesn't mean you have to sacrifice battery life or necessarily performance because this phone pretty much anything that i've given it to do which is either say shooting or editing a 4k video playing games or having many many apps open at the same time it's been totally fine and the performance has not left me wanting in any way shape or form the one thing though that has left me wanting for a 2 000 phone it comes with what's called the z premiere service this is essentially like kind of a concierge service and samsung did make kind of a big deal about this when it did launch with the phone there were going to be offers of things like free meals there were going to be things like you could have membership to certain organizations free fitness classes a whole range of activities as well as the ability to replace the screen if you needed to for a smaller or lower fee than it would if it was something that you were just repairing on your own now fortunately i didn't need to get a screen replacement but i did try and redeem that michelin star meal and it turns out it was actually going to cost me 200 uh yeah no thanks and that at-home fitness service i tried ended up charging me way before the free trial was supposed to end now due to covet i wasn't really able to take advantage of anything else so all in all i was a bit disappointed in the z premiere service so that's been my six months with the galaxy z fold 2. overall there's something about this phone that just keeps me coming back to it even when i have other phones in for review i finish using them i put them away and i just keep coming back to this particular device yes it has its quirks and it has those things that make me think you know i really didn't need to spend two thousand dollars on this phone but overall it's that x factor that i can't quite explain that keeps me coming back to this now obviously there are lots of rumors about the z fold three and what we might see when that comes out so i'm excited about that but really the generational gap between the fold and the z-fold 2 was so big and by that i mean so many things improved and the whole foldable space i think really evolved quickly in that one year period between generation one and generation two so i'm just genuinely excited about what to see on the third generation of foldable phones if you have a z-fold two or another foldable phone i'd love to hear your impressions about it maybe you will absolutely love the social media app integration maybe you have some extra tips and tricks that i can try especially in regards to you know what to do about those screen protectors on the inside should i peel it off i don't know i'm scared but let me know in the comments below thanks so much for watching and i'll see you next timethe galaxy z fold 2 is a beautiful phone but how does it hold up long-term let's find out i've been using the z-fold 2 from day 1 pretty much as soon as it was released and six months later i have a lot of thoughts about this two thousand dollar foldable phone so in this video i wanna tell you exactly what it's been like using this over a long term period both as my daily driver and as a phone that i've kind of gone back and forth between when i've been doing other phone reviews as well everything from the displays to the battery life the performance and whether or not that z premiere concierge service was actually worth it now when i started using this phone i was being very very careful with it because price in mind i didn't want to break it even though i had some kind of guarantees of a screen replacement for just a small extra cost this is still 2 000 us dollars i'm gonna baby it just a little bit over time over the past six months i've definitely felt like i have been a little more careless with it i should say i've dropped it a few times without a case on it and i've been surprised i had a moment when i did i just fell out of my top pocket and i thought when it hit the ground that was it that was my foldable phone dreams shattered two thousand dollars down the drain fortunately it actually survived as you can see i have this nice big scratch in the front of the screen protector lucky i kept that on now actually i have to say the hinge itself has been more durable and i feels pretty much the same as it did day one out of the box so that flex mode where the phone can stay open in a number of different configurations still works as it did and maybe overall it's loosened up just a tiny bit but it still feels very firm and also very sturdy too but let's talk about that inside screen the screen protector on the inside screen obviously is not designed to be removed by you the buyer you can ask samsung to remove it if you want i've kept it on but i'm always thinking i do want to get it taken off just because i really dislike the feel of that screen protector against my thumbs when i am using the phone it's also a big grease and dust magnet as well when the phone is open now all that being said the 120 hertz on the interior screen is beautiful it is performing just like any other samsung phone with that high refresh rate screen the s21 ultra and the note 20 ultra for example but it is a much more immersive experience as you would expect on the larger screen i think that kind of goes without saying but what i have been really interested in in the past few months especially since having used the s21 ultra with the s pen and knowing it's capable of having the s pen support is really missing that when i switch back to the z folder 2. i just feel like the next generation absolutely has to have s pen support it just makes sense there's just so many opportunities to use it on a larger screen a larger canvas and i really do miss trying to use the s pen on this obviously i haven't because you know two thousand dollar phone but i wish that i could and i really hope that the z-fold three does let you use the s-pen now a lot of people have been talking about the fingerprint reader and kind of not feeling too hot on either its positioning or its performance i have to say i have been surprised about how much i've enjoyed using it and how well it's positioned for my hand of course if you're left-handed it's probably not going to be the thing that you reach for the most for right-handed people like me i feel like it falls perfectly with the size of my hand and the positioning of the button on the side now i think if i had larger hands i might not like it so much but for once i feel like having slightly smaller hands is an advantage i'm actually using the outside screen a lot more than i thought i would even though i do miss 120 hertz because it's not on the front screen i have to say that i can just do pretty much everything that i need to from this outside screen and when i open it up it's definitely just because i want to be doing something to take advantage of the larger screen whether that's watching a film even though i've kind of got to play around with kind of the aspect ratio on how things display or making a video call when i'm taking a quick photo i'm checking things like instagram twitter or email taking a text message and of course making a phone call i'm using the phone with the screen folded like this and most of the time i would say probably 80 of the time this is the configuration in which i use the phone something that i quickly switched out that i don't normally do on other samsung phones it was the default keyboard because it just i could not use it to save my life i was making so many errors this swipe was just all over the place it was a big gap in the middle anyway ergonomics aside i prefer the g board keyboard for this particular phone and it just works really nicely compared to the stock samsung keyboard i really think that that's something that needs a little bit more tweaking for foldable phones going forward now let's talk about one ui the 3.1 update that is just hit the z-fold 2 has added a couple of different things that are useful in a couple of things that i i know i'm definitely never going to use the thing that i actually prefer the most out of the update is the fact that you can use the multi-active window and have up to three apps you can exit out of that and then immediately go back into the app switcher and you'll see those three apps right there rather than all the apps individually listed and you have to reload them into your multi-app view i like that it's just seamless and a no-brainer and i'm really glad that that's there there's also a feature that lets you put your hand or your palm over the front of the screen and turn the screen off i mean my hands kind of not quite big enough to fully register it and it kind of works maybe half of the time it's not something that i use often i just hit the power button on the side to turn the screen off and for some reason i don't know what took samsung so long to get this right but with the one ui 3.1 update i've noticed that the weather app on the front and the inside screens now syncs i don't have to click the refresh icon on both of them and i i don't know why that wasn't a thing but it is and i'm glad if nothing else was fixed i would have been happy with just that now the cameras themselves are really good and i was almost prepared to make a compromise with the price of this phone just because of how many other things it offers namely its foldable form factor but fortunately i didn't have to really make sacrifices when it comes to the image processing and the video quality compared to other samsung flagship phones yes you don't get the crazy zoom levels of the note 20 ultra or the s21 ultra but most of the time i don't really need those and i've been really impressed with the photos that i've taken from this phone the one thing that i think is just a little bit difficult for me to adjust to is using it in flex mode and trying to use this kind of as a camera tripod for example putting it down to use the rear cameras i have to rest the phone on whatever surface it is on the front screen and yes i know i still have that screen protector on but i'm just still nervous that something's going to happen i'm going to accidentally create a big scratch or something across the front of it so i don't really know how that can be resolved without you know physically holding the phone or leaving it in i guess a vertical configuration like this and then just having to rotate or play with the aspect ratios after the fact the one big downside about the camera for me has really been social media apps and how they've been optimized for the phone and i guess that's not really a fault of the camera itself it's kind of a combination of form factor and developers not making their apps really compatible with the broad range of devices now this is not exclusive to the z-fold too many other apps have just not been optimized very well on android compared to how they are on iphone but in particular if i'm doing something like an instagram story and i'm opening up the camera just notice there's just this big black bar at the bottom and it just it's very difficult to make content in the way that it is on another phone where these apps are more optimized for the screen real estate so don't worry i have not forgotten that the primary use case of the phone for many people is to actually make calls and this is probably one of the best features of the z-fold 2 for me is the configuration of the phone when it's in the closed position for making calls it just feels really good on the ear it's comfortable to use it is elongated it feels like whenever i'm talking i don't need to worry about where the microphone is positioned or where the earpiece is positioned it just falls into place and it just sounds really good callers have also remarked that my calls sound really nice on this phone when it comes to battery i actually think that this phone is doing an exceptional job of battery management considering all that's going on behind the scenes i regularly get at least a day and a half out of this phone with normal usage and that is really really promising for me because i think that the future of foldable phones it doesn't mean you have to sacrifice battery life or necessarily performance because this phone pretty much anything that i've given it to do which is either say shooting or editing a 4k video playing games or having many many apps open at the same time it's been totally fine and the performance has not left me wanting in any way shape or form the one thing though that has left me wanting for a 2 000 phone it comes with what's called the z premiere service this is essentially like kind of a concierge service and samsung did make kind of a big deal about this when it did launch with the phone there were going to be offers of things like free meals there were going to be things like you could have membership to certain organizations free fitness classes a whole range of activities as well as the ability to replace the screen if you needed to for a smaller or lower fee than it would if it was something that you were just repairing on your own now fortunately i didn't need to get a screen replacement but i did try and redeem that michelin star meal and it turns out it was actually going to cost me 200 uh yeah no thanks and that at-home fitness service i tried ended up charging me way before the free trial was supposed to end now due to covet i wasn't really able to take advantage of anything else so all in all i was a bit disappointed in the z premiere service so that's been my six months with the galaxy z fold 2. overall there's something about this phone that just keeps me coming back to it even when i have other phones in for review i finish using them i put them away and i just keep coming back to this particular device yes it has its quirks and it has those things that make me think you know i really didn't need to spend two thousand dollars on this phone but overall it's that x factor that i can't quite explain that keeps me coming back to this now obviously there are lots of rumors about the z fold three and what we might see when that comes out so i'm excited about that but really the generational gap between the fold and the z-fold 2 was so big and by that i mean so many things improved and the whole foldable space i think really evolved quickly in that one year period between generation one and generation two so i'm just genuinely excited about what to see on the third generation of foldable phones if you have a z-fold two or another foldable phone i'd love to hear your impressions about it maybe you will absolutely love the social media app integration maybe you have some extra tips and tricks that i can try especially in regards to you know what to do about those screen protectors on the inside should i peel it off i don't know i'm scared but let me know in the comments below thanks so much for watching and i'll see you next time\n"