The Galaxy Z Fold 4 is probably the most versatile gadget you should purchase

It’s simple to see the attraction of folding telephones — they’re large display screen units that get smaller to slot in your pocket. It’s additionally simple to see the drawbacks; as a lot as Samsung tries to cover it with trade-in promotions, there’s no denying the Galaxy Z Fold 4’s $1,800 price ticket is just too steep for the overwhelming majority of individuals. The query of sturdiness can be exhausting to disregard — it doesn’t take a lot looking to search out tales of randomly cracked Fold screens.

But till you commit and begin utilizing a tool just like the Fold 4 for a while, it’s exhausting to see the worth {that a} folding cellphone can deliver. I’ve owned a Fold mannequin since 2020’s Fold 2 (and owned the Fold 3 for a 12 months earlier than upgrading to the Fold 4 because of Samsung’s aggressive, if fiscally irresponsible trade-in gives) and it nonetheless took three months of time with the Fold 4 to essentially admire all it might do.

The reality is, the Fold 4 is probably the most versatile gadget you should purchase. It is probably not the most effective at each job, however it may well morph between kind components higher than the rest on the market. It’s really the one gadget to rule all of them.

The first use case for a Fold 4 is the obvious one — it’s a full-fledged high-end smartphone. It makes calls, it sends messages, it takes footage, it runs apps, it performs video games, it connects to high-speed mobile networks — principally, something you employ a smartphone for, the Fold 4 does it.

The Fold 4 retains up with different high-end smartphones by way of efficiency and options (you don’t have to surrender conveniences like wi-fi charging, for instance), and whereas you should purchase telephones with higher cameras, the Fold 4’s digicam system could be very succesful by itself. Perhaps the most important downside to utilizing the Fold 4 as a cellphone is its narrower entrance display screen, which takes a little bit of getting used to when thumb typing. It’s additionally about twice as thick as an ordinary cellphone, although that thickness permits the Fold 4’s versatility.

The Fold 4 is an effective cellphone, if not a tremendous one, however the level right here is the Fold 4 story is simply starting to unfold.

Here’s the place the Fold 4 begins to stroll away from the remainder of the smartphone subject: you possibly can open it up and you’ve got an almost eight-inch diagonal, virtually sq. pill display screen to work with. Compared to Samsung’s different large cellphone, the 6.8-inch S22 Ultra, the Fold 4’s internal display screen covers 28.42 sq. inches of space, versus the Ultra’s 17.98 sq. inches.

It’s exhausting to quantify how way more room that offers you in sensible phrases, nevertheless it’s a sufficiently big canvas to make all kinds of duties simpler and extra comfy than on an ordinary slab smartphone. Compared to the cramped split-screen you get on a slab cellphone, two apps will be displayed side-by-side on the similar time on the Fold 4 with out having to continuously change between them for multitasking. Instead of limiting your self to quick video clips on TikTok, you possibly can comfortably watch long-form video content material both on YouTube or the streaming service of your selection, aided by the Fold 4’s best-in-smartphone-class audio system.

Using Google Maps on a display screen this huge is a totally completely different expertise than the tunnel imaginative and prescient you get on an ordinary smartphone’s show. Typing out lengthy emails is extra comfy when you will have such a big space on your thumbs to roam.

Reading long-form articles or navigating giant PDFs is far simpler on the Fold 4 than different smartphones due to how a lot wider it’s. Ditto for studying e-books — a folding cellphone has utterly changed a Kindle for me. As a conveyable, always-connected studying machine, the Fold 4 is unparalleled.

Basically, something you would possibly wish to use an iPad mini for will be achieved on the Fold 4, with the additional benefit of it may well then be folded in half and shoved in your pocket if you’re carried out.

Thanks to that giant internal show and help for Samsung’s S Pen stylus, the Fold 4 is a wonderful system for taking hand-written notes, that are then synced to the cloud and searchable. You also can mark up display screen photographs or simply doodle and make art work than you possibly can then simply ship wherever. It’s extremely handy to have a digital note-taking system in your pocket.

There’s actually room for enchancment right here — there’s presently no strategy to retailer the S Pen on the Fold 4 and not using a cumbersome and annoying case, and the pen doesn’t work on the surface show in any respect. But in comparison with every other smartphone, the Fold 4 is a greater system for notes and drawings.

Perhaps probably the most stunning factor concerning the Fold 4 is that it may well change a pc for lots of duties. And I don’t imply you simply do these issues on the Fold’s display screen, I imply you plug it right into a desktop monitor and pair a wi-fi keyboard to it and use it like an precise PC. (You also can use Dex wirelessly with some supported Samsung shows, however in the event you’re going to be utilizing it for any prolonged time period, you’ll need it plugged in for energy and the bottom latency.)

Samsung’s had the Dex characteristic that permits this on its telephones for years, nevertheless it’s now gotten to the purpose the place it’s much more usable. You can run a number of apps, have management over window sizes and placements, and entry a particularly succesful internet browser that may deal with many tabs with ease. And because the Fold 4 is a cellular-connected cellphone, you should utilize its built-in web connection with out having to depend on Wi-Fi or different obtainable networks.

Google’s work to enhance pill help in Android has made Dex significantly better than it was. (The Fold 4 launched with Android 12L, however has since acquired an replace to Android 13.) Many apps now help bigger layouts and increasingly are including issues like keyboard shortcut help. Dex itself additionally gives a rising record of keyboard shortcuts for app management and window administration. While there are nonetheless a number of holdouts that may be improved — Slack’s interface on a big display screen leaves so much to be desired — there are fewer and fewer areas the place Dex doesn’t simply do what you anticipate it to and allow you to get work carried out.

Samsung’s Internet browser is especially good — it’s quick, it helps extensions, masses desktop variations of apps, and gives a number of methods to handle tabs. I can use it to write down, edit, and publish articles in our CMS (yup, I produced this complete article in it), or browse websites like Twitter and Feedly, which don’t have nice Android app experiences on giant screens.

You can pair a wi-fi mouse to the Fold 4 for cursor management, nevertheless it’s simpler to only use the Fold’s internal show as a trackpad, full with multifinger gestures for navigating open apps and home windows. There are even configurable gestures to return with a three-finger faucet or use 4 fingers to tug up the app launcher.

Unlike Apple and its adventures with Stage Manager on the iPad, Samsung isn’t making an attempt to reinvent the wheel relating to a windowed app surroundings. Apps and home windows will be positioned and layered nonetheless you need them, you possibly can resize them nonetheless you’d like, and you may even use keyboard shortcuts to snap home windows to the left or proper facet.

Dex operating on the Fold 4 isn’t going to switch a gaming PC and I’d be detest to make use of it for heavier duties like photograph and video enhancing. If you actually push the system with plenty of operating apps and tabs you’ll hit its efficiency limits and also you’ll actually see browser tabs reloading extra typically than on a full desktop OS.

Nor is it as handy as a laptop computer that you could simply open up and get engaged on, because it requires equipment like an exterior show, keyboard, and certain a USB-C hub. But for internet shopping, communications, and different “basic” PC duties with the appropriate arrange, it’s surprisingly succesful. The finest comparability is to ChromeOS — you would possibly use a devoted app or two whereas in Dex, however you’ll spend most of your time within the browser doing web-based actions.

And then once I’m carried out I can merely unplug my cellphone, fold it closed, shove it in my pocket, and stroll away.

None of those numerous capabilities are notably new to the Fold 4 — Samsung is now 4 generations into this folding cellphone design and even the very first one might technically carry out most of the similar duties.

But the Fold 4 is ready to do all of this higher than its predecessors as a result of Samsung has iterated on all of those experiences through the years. Samsung’s typical order of operations is to deliver an thought to market that’s good in idea, however missing in execution, after which relentlessly iterate on it till all of the tough edges are sanded away and what’s left is a genuinely good expertise.

Samsung nonetheless has work to do, although, together with discovering methods to make the value extra accessible and addressing the considerations of reliability and sturdiness. (I reserve the appropriate to recant any reward for the Fold 4 if the internal display screen on mine randomly cracks sooner or later.) There’s not numerous competitors on the market for units like this, particularly within the US, however the few different folding telephones which have hit the worldwide market lately have sleeker and thinner designs that Samsung might be taught from.

The first Fold felt very very like a proof of idea, however 4 generations in, the Fold 4 now supplies an excellent expertise that you just simply can’t get from an ordinary smartphone. It’s not that the Fold 4 is the most effective at any specific job, however it’s good in any respect of them and having all of these choices in a tool that matches in your pocket can’t be understated. Future iterations (and hopefully some competitors from different cellphone makers) will possible enhance it additional and maybe at some point we’ll all be carrying such versatile units in our pockets. But in order for you that future right now, the Fold 4 is the way in which to get it.