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

It’s easy to see the appeal of foldable phones. It’s a big screen device that’s small enough to fit in your pocket. Its shortcomings are also easy to see. As much as Samsung tries to hide it with trade-in campaigns, there’s no denying that the Galaxy Z Fold 4’s $1,800 price tag is too steep for the vast majority of people. It doesn’t take much searching to find the story of the formula screen.

But until you’ve had a device like the Fold 4 for a while, it’s hard to understand the value a flip phone brings. I’ve owned a Fold model since the 2020 Fold 2 (and had a Fold 3 for a year before upgrading to the Fold 4, and even with the financially irresponsible trade-in offer, Thanks to Samsung’s aggressive trade-in), it still took me three months to use the Fold4 to really appreciate all it can do.

In fact, the Fold 4 is the most versatile gadget you can buy. It’s not the best at every task, but it morphs between form factors better than any other. It really is one gadget that rules them all.

The first use case for Fold 4 is the most obvious one. This is a serious high-end smartphone. Make calls, send messages, take pictures, run apps, play games, connect to high-speed cellular networks, basically anything you do with your phone, the Fold 4 does.

The Fold 4 catches up with other high-end smartphones in terms of performance and features (without giving up conveniences like wireless charging, for example). It is very capable in itself. Perhaps the biggest drawback to using the Fold 4 as a phone is its narrow front screen, which takes a little getting used to when typing with your thumb. It’s also about twice as thick as a standard cell phone, but that thickness allows for the versatility of his Fold 4.

The Fold 4 is a great, if not great, phone, but the point here is that the Fold 4’s story is just beginning to unfold.

From here, the Fold 4 begins to separate itself from the rest of the smartphone field. When opened, you can work on a nearly square tablet screen with a diagonal of nearly 8 inches. Compared to Samsung’s other larger smartphone, the 6.8-inch S22 Ultra, the Fold 4’s internal screen covers an area of ​​28.42 square inches compared to the Ultra’s 17.98 square inches.

It’s hard to quantify how much space you’ll actually get, but it’s a large enough canvas to make a variety of tasks easier and more comfortable than a standard Slab smartphone. Compared to cramped split screens, the Fold 4 lets you view two apps side-by-side at the same time, so you don’t have to constantly switch apps to multitask. Watch long-form video content comfortably on YouTube or your streaming service of choice with the help of best-in-class speakers.

Using Google Maps on this big screen is a completely different experience than the tunnel vision you get on a standard smartphone display. Having a large area for your thumb to move around makes typing long emails more comfortable.

The Fold 4 is wider than other smartphones, making reading long articles and working with large PDFs much easier. The same is true when reading e-books. For me, my foldable phone has completely replaced my Kindle. The Fold 4 is a unique portable, always-on reader.

Basically, anything you want to do with your iPad mini, you can do with the Fold 4. An added benefit is that you can fold it in half and tuck it in your pocket when you’re done.

Thanks to its large internal display and support for Samsung’s S Pen stylus, the Fold 4 is a great device for taking handwritten notes, and it syncs to the cloud to make it searchable. or doodle to create artwork that you can easily send anywhere. Having a digital note-taking system in your pocket is very convenient.

There’s certainly room for improvement here: storing the S Pen in the Fold 4 requires a bulky and awkward case, and the pen doesn’t work at all on the outer display. So the Fold 4 is a great device for taking notes and drawing.

Perhaps the most amazing thing about the Fold 4 is that it can replace your computer in many tasks. It doesn’t mean doing these things on the Fold’s screen. In other words, connect the Fold to your desktop monitor, pair your wireless keyboard to it, and Use it like a real PC(You can also use Dex wirelessly with some supported Samsung displays, but you’ll need to plug it in for power and minimal latency for extended use.)

Samsung had a Dex feature that enabled this on their phones for years, but now it’s gotten to a point where it’s much easier to use. You’ll have access to a very good web browser that can run multiple apps, control window size and placement, and handle many tabs with ease. And because the Fold 4 is connected to your phone, you can use its built-in internet connection instead of relying on Wi-Fi or other available networks.

Google’s efforts to improve tablet support on Android make Dex much better than before. (Fold 4 launched with Android 12L, but then received an update to Android 13.) Many apps now support larger layouts, and more add support for keyboard shortcuts and more. Increasingly. Dex itself also provides a list of keyboard shortcuts for app control and window management. There are still some improvements to be made, but Slack’s interface on the big screen leaves a lot to be desired. There are fewer and fewer areas where Dex doesn’t work as expected and doesn’t get the job done.

Samsung’s internet browser is particularly good. It’s fast, supports extensions, loads desktop versions of apps, and lets you manage tabs in multiple ways. You can use it to create, edit, and publish articles in your CMS (yes, I wrote this entire article in his CMS) and browse sites like Twitter and Feedly.

You can pair a wireless mouse to the Fold 4 to control the cursor, but it’s easier to use the Fold’s internal display as a trackpad, with multi-finger gestures for navigating open apps and windows. increase. There is also a configurable gesture for 3-finger tap to go back or 4-finger to pull up the app launcher.

Unlike Apple’s and iPad’s Stage Manager adventures, Samsung isn’t trying to reinvent the wheel when it comes to windowed app environments. Apps and windows can be arranged and stacked however you like, resized as you like, and you can even use keyboard shortcuts to snap windows to the left or right.

Dex running on Fold 4 is no replacement for a gaming PC. Also, I would be reluctant to use it for heavy tasks such as photo and video editing. If you really push your system with lots of running apps and tabs, you’ll definitely find yourself hitting performance limits and reloading browser tabs more often than a full desktop OS would.

It also requires accessories like an external display, keyboard, and possibly a USB-C hub, so it’s not as convenient as a laptop you can open to work with. But for web browsing, communication, and other “basic” PC tasks, it can do wonders when set up properly. The best comparison is with ChromeOS. Dex may use a dedicated app or two, but most of his time will be spent in the browser with his web-based activities.

When you’re done, simply unplug your phone, fold it closed, tuck it in your pocket, and walk away.

These various features aren’t particularly new to the Fold 4. Samsung has now spent his fourth generation designing this foldable phone, and even the first generation is technically capable of many of the same tasks.

But the Fold 4 does all this better than its predecessor, thanks to Samsung’s years of repeated experience with all of this. It’s about taking a viable but under-executed idea to market and iterating relentlessly until all the rough edges are removed and you’re left with a truly great experience.

However, Samsung still has work to do, like finding ways to make prices more affordable and addressing reliability and durability issues. (I reserve the right to withdraw my praise for the Fold 4 if my inner screen cracks randomly in the future.) There isn’t much competition for such a device, especially in the US, but other foldables Cell phones are almost non-existent. The ones that hit the global market recently have sleeker, thinner designs than Samsung could learn from.

The first Fold felt like a proof-of-concept, but four generations later, the Fold 4 offers a much better experience than you can get on a standard smartphone. No, but it excels at them all and to have all these options in a device that fits in your pocket is an understatement. likely, and perhaps one day we’ll all carry such a versatile device in our pockets. But if you want that future now, the Fold 4 is best.