The Samsung Galaxy Fold 4: A Device of Beauty and Durability
As I stand before you today, I am excited to share with you my experience with the Samsung Galaxy Fold 4, a device that has been at the center of much attention in recent times. As some of you may know, I recently made the switch from the Samsung Galaxy Fold 3 to the Fold 4 as my primary device, and I'm here to give you an inside look into my journey with this magnificent device.
The Fold 4, as its name suggests, is a foldable device that has been designed to provide users with a unique and innovative way of interacting with their mobile phone. And, I must say, it does not disappoint. The device boasts IPX8 water resistance, which is great news for those who are prone to accidental splashes or drops. But what really caught my attention was the build, design, and durability of this device.
The Fold 4's design is indeed familiar, with a look and feel that is reminiscent of its predecessor, the Fold 3. However, there are some subtle changes that set it apart from its sibling. For instance, the device is slightly lighter, shorter, and thinner than the Fold 3, making it more comfortable to hold and use. Additionally, the Fold 4 comes in two new colors: Beige and Graygreen, which add a touch of elegance to an already stunning design. And, if you're thinking of getting this device from Samsung, be sure to check out their exclusive Burgundy version, which comes with up to $200 of credit using my affiliate link.
One of the key changes in the design of the Fold 4 is the glossy frame, which replaces the more matte finish that we saw on the Fold 3. Personally, I must admit that I prefer a matte finish, but I understand the appeal of the glossy look. In fact, I was so taken by the aesthetics of the Fold 4 that I decided to use it as my primary device. However, this preference also means that I had to be more careful when using the device, especially when dealing with slippery surfaces.
So, how does the Fold 4 handle everyday tasks? As you may know, I've been experiencing some water shortages and hosepipe bans in recent times, which made me think twice about whether or not to use my phone's SIM card. But, after much deliberation, I decided to stick with my primary device, despite the risks involved.
One of the questions that I got a lot of feedback on was whether or not I would be keeping my SIM card in the Fold 4. Well, let me tell you, it's been an interesting journey so far. When I first switched to the Fold 4, I thought that it would be easy to keep my SIM card inside the device. However, as we all know, things don't always go according to plan.
I recall one particular incident when I was in a restaurant and I decided to put my SIM card into the Fold 4. The device was thicker than usual due to its foldable design, which made it prone to slipping out of my pocket. And, as fate would have it, the device slipped out of my lap and fell onto the floor. Luckily, it landed on a carpet, but I was left wondering if this was going to be an issue.
The next day, I repeated the same mistake when I put my SIM card into the Fold 4. This time, however, the device slipped out of my pocket and fell onto hard tile. It was then that I realized just how fragile this device is, especially when it comes to water and moisture. So, while I'm still sticking with my primary device, I've learned to be more careful and mindful of its limitations.
In conclusion, the Samsung Galaxy Fold 4 is a device that has exceeded my expectations in many ways. Its build, design, and durability are truly impressive, making it an ideal choice for those who want a premium mobile experience. However, as with any device, there are also some risks involved, particularly when it comes to water and moisture. But, if you're willing to take on the challenges, the rewards will be well worth it.
So, that's my experience with the Samsung Galaxy Fold 4 so far. I hope this article has given you a better understanding of what to expect from this device. If you have any questions or comments, please don't hesitate to reach out. And, if you're thinking of getting this device for yourself, be sure to check out O2 Switch Up, who are offering exclusive deals and promotions on their website.
"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: en(suspenseful music)(dramatic orchestral music)(record needle scratching)- Okay, so there's lots of hosepipe bansand water shortages,so I didn't really wantto do with the Fold 4what I did with the Fold 3,but you get the point.The Fold 4, as the Fold 3,does have IPX8 water resistance,which is great.What's up, guys?Saf here on SuperSaf TV.And as you may rememberfrom my cliche YouTubetitle a couple of weeks ago,I did switch to the Samsung Galaxy Fold 4as my primary device.And in this video,I'm going to be covering my experienceand also answering the question,am I going to be keepingmy SIM card in the Fold 4?This video is sponsored by O2 Switch Up.Stay tuned to find outhow you can change your current phonefor a new one whenever you'd likeas many times as you'd like.So, the first thing I want to talk aboutis the build, design, and durability,because I did actually drop this.Anyway.So, it's very familiarbecause it looks and feelsa lot like the Fold 3.Yes, it's a little bit lighter,a little bit shorter,a little bit thinner,but generally speaking,it is very, very familiar.Now, we do have a couple morecolors compared to last year.So although we have the Phantom Black,there is a new Beige,as well as this Graygreen,which kind of looks blue ina lot of angles to be fair.That's the one I've gone with.I still do like the look of it.There's also a Burgundyversion available exclusivelyfrom samsung.com.And if you are thinking ofgetting this from Samsung,then you can get up to $200 of creditusing my affiliate linkdown in the description.Just thought I'd mentioned that.Right, now, a couple of keychanges we've got in the design.The frame is now glossy comparedto more of the matte finishthat we had on the Fold 3.Now, personally, I do prefermore of a matte finish,and I'll tell you alittle bit more about why.So, I was in a restaurant on the first daywhen I put my SIM card into the Fold 4.The Fold 4 is a thicker devicecompared to normal devices,and it's also heavier.So what happened is itactually slipped outside...and the Fold 3 also slippedout of my lap right now.- A few moments later.- It's okay, it fell on carpet,so it's not so bad.The Fold 4 wasn't as lucky, however,because when thisslipped out of my pocket,it straight went on to hard tile.And I was just like,\"Oh man, it's broken.\"Had a look at it,and you know what?Honestly speaking, it was fine overall.There is a small chip on the frame.Now, if we had a matte framelike we have on the Fold 3,then that chip wouldn'thave been as noticeable,but it's not too noticeable either way.And it's nice to knowthat this did survive quite a hard drop.Right, now, let's talk about the displays.Now, if you rememberfrom my Fold 3 review,one of my biggest complaintswas that the cover screenwas just not wide enough.The Fold 4 does havea wider cover display,although the device isn't wider,and that's because we havesmaller overall bezels.You'll notice that this big chunkon the left-hand side of the Fold 3has been significantlyreduced on the Fold 4.And that gives you roughly aroundjust under threemillimeters of extra width.Practically, what differencedoes that slight width increase give you?Well, it does actually make a difference,especially when typing.Just having those keys a little bit largerdoes make a difference,but it's not significant enough.I would have preferred somethingthat was a little bit wider.Now, sure, a lot of peoplewill probably be using Swipeto Type on the keyboardwhen they're using the cover display,but this is still a bittoo narrow for my liking.So that's the cover screen.Let's now talk about this main,beautiful folding display.So as we have in the Fold 3,we do have consistency.So both displays do have up to 120 hertz.Everything is super smooth,and it's just a really,really nice display.We have smaller bezels.So we've got around threemillimeters more widthcompared to the Fold 3,like we've got on the cover display,and the under-displaycamera is not as visibleas it was on the Fold 3.Now, on the Fold 3, I didfind it quite distracting,but on the Fold 4,I got to say they have donereally well in hiding it.I don't notice it near asmuch as I did on the Fold 3.Now, the quality of ithasn't really changed.We'll talk about that in a little bit.But one of the things Ido want to talk about,which people keep talkingabout in the commentsis the crease.Would I have liked thecrease to be less prominent?Yes.Am I too bothered thatit's not really changed?No.When you're using afoldable device like this,your thumbs are usually on the side,so you're not reallyfeeling that crease as much.And also when you arewatching this head-on,the crease isn't that visible,it's mostly visible from different angles.So, yes, somebody elselooking over your shoulderis going to notice that crease,but you probably won'tnotice it that much.So, it's not that muchof a big deal for me.Now, one of the areas where the creaseis a little bit annoyingis when you're using the S Pen.And I want to talk alittle bit about the S Pen.The Fold 4, like the Fold 3 did,does have support for the S Pen.Now, you do have to get a specific S Penbecause the tip has to be retractable.So you can get the Fold edition,which now comes color-coordinatedwith the different colors of the devices.And you can get the S Pen Pro.Right, now, before I talk about the S Penand be somewhat critical towards it,I want you to keep in mindthat this is a bonus feature.It's not something that you have to get.And it is still really impressivethat Samsung engineers have managedto get digitizers and thingsinto this foldable screenso that we can use an S Pen.Now, having said that, wetalked about the crease.This is not much of a big dealwhen you're using it day to day,but when you're using the S Pen,if you do go across the middle,you will notice it a lot more.Now, if you're using itjust to, like, sign theoccasional document on something,then that's fine.But for me, if you dohave this big canvas,then you might want todoodle or do some artwork,and the crease does kind of dip in.The best way I can describe this isif you are trying to drawon a two-page booklet,and the dip in between that,if you try to draw across that,it's just not going tobe the best experience,and that's similar to whatwe have here on the Fold 4.The other thing to keep in mindis that the S Pen only workson the foldable display.It doesn't work on the cover display.So if you want to make a quick note,just pull it out of your pocketand just scribble something,you're not going to be able to do thatlike you can do on, say, the S22 Ultra.And finally, there is nowhere on the foldto enclose the S Pen.So you're going to haveto have this separate.Now, you can get some casesthat enclose the S Pen,but they make the Fold 4,which is already quite a thick device,even thicker.So for me, realistically speaking,over the past couple of weeks,I've simply not used the S Penbecause it's never with me.Now, my solution to thiswould be make the device slightly wider,have a wider cover screen,and have space for an enclosed S Pen.That would make it so muchmore practical and usablehere on the Fold 4.Once again, I want to emphasize,you don't have to get the S Pen,but if you are thinkingof getting the Fold 4 with the S Pen,then just do keep those points in mind.Right, now, before we continue,a quick thanks to oursponsor for this video,O2 Switch Up.So, doing what I do,I get to switch up mysmartphone pretty oftenand it's great to be able to try out allof the different offerings out there.And you can do the same with O2 Switch Up.O2 has launched Switch Up togive customers the freedomto change their currentphone for a new onewhenever they'd likeas many times as they'd like.Switch Up is available onPlus Plans automatically,free of charge,and can be added to a customplan for just 3.99 a month.And as an O2 Switch Up customer,you can switch to a newphone whenever you'd likeby simply going into an O2 storeand trading in your current device.And with no limits on how long customersneed to have had their current phoneor how long is left ontheir current contract,switching is easier than ever.If you want to find outmore about O2 Switch Upand how you can sign up,check out the link inthe description below.I want to now move on to the cameras.We talked about the four megapixelon the display camera briefly.It's less visible,but the quality is still the same.It's not great.It's four megapixels.It's behind a barrier,so there is processing involvedto give you somewhat of a decent image.But the intention for this is mainlywhen you're doing video calls and things.And for video calls, it's okay.And I am a little bit forgivingabout this four-megapixel camerabecause we do have a decentenough front-facing camerahere on the cover screen.Now, this is a punch outand it's not been improved massively.However, again, I'm a littlebit more forgiving about thisand that's because you canuse the rear-facing camerason the Fold 4 as front-facing camerasand use the cover display as a preview.Now, this means that you'regoing to get better selfiesthan you're going to get on prettymuch most devices out there.It also means that you canget ultra-wide selfies,which you wouldn't beable to do on many others.And let's talk about these cameras.So if you remember from my Fold 3 review,one of the things I mentioned wasthat although the cameras were good,they weren't really upthere in competitionwith some of the other flagships.The good news is that the camerashave been improved quite a bit,and they are the same camerasas we have on the S22 and the S22 Plus,which are excellent flagship cameras.And the photos and videos onthe Fold 4 are really goodand an improvement compared to the Fold 3.Now, in daytime shots,you might not notice a big difference,but you can definitely notice a differencein low-light shotsbecause of the new sensor.And also with zoom,before, we had 2X zoom,which really wasn't that useful.We now have 3X zoom,up to 30 times digital zoom.Sure, this is not on thelevel of the S22 Ultra,which has periscope zoom technologyas well as a larger primary sensor,but I no longer feel likeI'm having to compromiseon the cameras to havethis foldable experience.I still have very, verygood flagship cameras,and this is somethingthat I'm very happy with.Right, I want to talk a littlebit about the performanceand the software experience.So, we have the QualcommSnapdragon 8+ Gen 1 chipset.Now, this is the latest and greatest.It's actually more powerfulcompared to the S22 Ultrathat we had earlier this year.And we've also got 12 gigabytes of RAM.In terms of performance,this has been absolutely great.You can very quickly andeasily switch between appsand it's completely seamless.And that's also thanks to this task bar,which I really like,having all those shortcutshere at the bottommeans that you canutilize this large displayand go between apps very quickly.And I've not had anyreal hiccups or anythingwhen it comes toperformance on this device.I'm personally not a gamer.My friend, Thunder E,from Booredatwork is.He's actually done a gamingtest here on the Fold 4.I'll leave that video linkdown in the descriptionif you're interested.Samsung has really tried to optimize appsas much as possibleto utilize this larger display.It's still not quite there.There are still some appswhich don't transfer overfrom the cover displayto the main display,and you'll get a littlemessage that they will restart.Now, things will, ofcourse, improve with timeas more and more apps get optimized.And the apps that areoptimized are really good.Outlook is the app that I use for emails,and one thing that I liked on the Fold 3that we also have here on the Fold 4is just being able to haveall of your emails displayedlike you would do on desktop.I'm somebody who does notlike replying to emailson my smartphone.However, on the Fold 4,you kind of do get a bitof that desktop experience,which is much, much more convenient.And if you are a business userand you're somebody that'sgoing to be using thisfor lots of Word documents andemails and things like that,this is going to give you an experiencethat you're just not going toget on any other smartphone.Now, let's talk about themulti-window experience.I mentioned that this is thebest multi-tasking smartphoneyou can get.I still agree with that,but having used this forthe past couple of weeks,I've really not usedanymore than two windows.So you can easily just drag and drop iconsand set up this three-window experience.You can also have a floating windowon top of all of this if you'd like.And I actually asked thisquestion on Twitter saying,\"What are the practicaluses of something like thisapart from showing off?\"And realistically speaking,I didn't get anybody thatgave me some practical useswhere you could usethree windows like thison this size display.Yes, it's a larger displaythan most of the smartphones,but it's not at the size of a tablet.If I've got Twitter openin this small window,there's not really much I can see on here.So, yes, just because you can do it,I don't really see a reason for doing it.Some people said showing offis actually a practical reason.Fair enough.Now, having said that, onceagain, I want to emphasize,when you do have two windowsopen at the same time,this is still going to be an experiencethat you're not going toget on a regular smartphone.It's just nice to have all of that screenand being able to usethat, say, for example,if I'm browsing the webas well as Twitter at the same timeif I'm watching a video,going on social media,or if I'm looking for some holidaysand using the calculator appto just quickly make some calculations.There's also flex mode,which I didn't really findmyself using too much.The one use for flex mode is for photos.I think this is great just to be ableto place this on a tableand then go in front,get a group photo or something like that.That's really, really good.But when it comes to, I don't know,like, just typing a message out like this,I don't really find myself doing that.Some people kind of want to usethis as a bit of a keyboard,like a mini sort of a laptop.I mean, it's cool,but it's not something that Ifound myself using too much.Now, I guess one practicaluse for flex modeis if you're watching videos,maybe if you're on thetrain or on a plane,and you kind of want to usethis without a kickstand,shall we say,you can have a video playing hands-freeand have that there on yourtray table or whatever.So that is, again, a practical feature.And my point is that lotsof these features are hereand you might not useevery single one of them,but for certain use cases,having a foldable device like thisreally gives you an experiencethat you're not goingto get anywhere else.Right, now, before wemove onto the battery,just touching on a few other points.The speakers on here are great,stereo speakers, top and bottom.So if you are watching videos,they're going to sound really good.We've got Dolby Atmos.And we have the fingerprint scannerin the same place here on the right.It wouldn't really make senseto have a fingerprint scannerin the display on a devicelike this with two screens.Now, to think of it,if it's kind of for your thumb, it's fine,but if you are going tobe kind of reaching overwith your finger,I did initially find thatit wasn't as accurate.My advice for you to get over thatwould be to register the samefingerprint a couple of times,and that just makes itthat much more accurate.Right, now, let's talk aboutcharging and battery life.So, charging is still 25 watts,and you can go from 0 to50% in around 30 minutes.It's not as fast as lotsof the other competition,but still pretty good.And wireless charging speedshave also been improved.So we've got 15 watts versus 10 watts.So it does charge a little bit fasterwhen you are on acompatible wireless charger.But what about battery life?I know this is something that a lot peopleare interested in.Now, battery life, of course, can vary,especially on a device like thisbecause you have two displays, right?So if you're using justthe cover display a lot,maybe 80% of the timeand just using the foldingdisplay around 20% of the time,you're, of course, going tobe getting more battery lifecompared to somebody like mewho does use the largerfolding display a lot more.But what has my batterylife experience been like?Well, the battery size isthe same as the Fold 3,and I was optimistic that thebattery life would be betterthanks to the new chipset,but in my personal experience,the battery life has been quite similar,just maybe slightly bettercompared to the Fold 3.So for me, I'm gettingaround four to five hoursof screen-on time,which in my opinion isgood, but it's not great.It's not on the level ofsomething like the S22 Ultra,which I would be using fora longer period of time.Now, I guess this is understandable.You have a smallerbattery, 4,400 milliamps,compared to something like the S22 Ultra.And also you're going to beusing the much bigger display,which is going to demanda lot more battery life.So in terms of my day to day,generally speaking, it was fine.There was one day where Iwas using it quite heavilyand I did run out of juicearound 8:00 p.m. at night.Again, I want to emphasizethat usage is going tovary from person to person,depending on how you're going to use this.But if you were to ask me,I would say that the Fold 4has good battery life, not great.And that's the same thingthat I said for the Fold 3.Finally, let's conclude the Fold 4.Pricing-wise, it's coming in roughlyabout the same in the UScompared to what the Fold 3 came in at.And in the UK, it's around 50 pounds more,and you can get up to one terabyte.Who is this for?And am I going to bekeeping my SIM card herein the Fold 4?Well, if you are after the best foldablethat you can buy in Western markets,then this is still your only option.There's a lot of competition comingfrom the likes of Xiaomi and others,but those are not readilyavailable in the West,which kind of givesSamsung a bit of a monopolyon foldables.I did hear in Mr. Mobile's videothat around 88% of foldablesare Samsung's out in the market.And it's arguable that Samsunghas become a bit more chilled,and is only giving incremental updates,like we can see here.Having said that,this is still an excellentfoldable smartphone,especially because of theoptimizations and the experience.And if you are in themarket for a foldable,then I think this is goingto be the option for you.And especially becauseof some of the dealsthat you can currently geton the Fold 4 right now,you've got some crazy trade-in deals,as well as some additional accessoriesthat Samsung's throwing in.You can get the 512 gigabyteversion for 256 gigabytes,and you can also get thatadditional $200 creditif you use my affiliate linkdown in the description below.Will I be keeping mySIM card in the Fold 4?I guess I will be keeping itin for a little while longer.I may switch to the Flipjust to review that.However, in the long term,I think I might be goingback to my S22 Ultra.I do miss the additional battery lifeand I do miss having theS Pen readily availableenclosed in the device.That's what I think, anyway.What do you guys think of the Fold 4?Will you be getting one?Do drop me a comment below,let me know your thoughts.I hope you enjoyed thisvideo and found it useful.If you did, then do smashthat Like button for me.And if you haven't alreadyand you want to seemore content like this,then be sure to subscribeand hit that bell iconso you don't miss on future coverage.Thanks for watching.This is Saf on SuperSaf TV.I'll see you next time.\n"