Samsung Z Fold3
Price: £1,599 from fave.co/3CTZY40
It may not have been the first but Samsung has managed to position itself as the category-defining brand when it comes to foldables; with its latest Galaxy Z Fold3 likely to serve as the standard that similarly-styled rivals will be measured against.
The Z Fold3 aims to meet expectations on three fronts: as a worthwhile refinement of the phone-to-tablet foldables that the company has produced so far, as a platform on which Samsung can test and implement its latest and greatest technologies, and as a representation of foldable innovation in general; serving as an indicator of how far the technology (and the associated costs) have matured, all in a relatively short time.
DESIGN
There was a brief moment where Samsung’s foldable future nearly didn’t make it out of the gate.
The original Galaxy Fold was a groundbreaking piece of consumer tech, to be sure, but it also suffered from some pretty significant engineering and build quality issues; most of which weren’t much of a surprise to those with an appreciation for just how technically complex creating one of the first consumer-ready foldables must have been. In his review, Android Advisor’s then-Consumer Tech Editor, Henry Burrell described the phone as “an aspirational mess”, which still feels apt, even with the hindsight of the Fold line’s evolution.
Three years on and the anatomy of the original Fold persists in this fourth iteration, but it’s littered with signs of the lessons Samsung has learnt along the way.
You’re still getting a wedge-shaped, book-style, vertically folding form factor, dressed with an external cover display and an expansive internal screen, all housed in what Samsung has branded ‘Armor Aluminium’ (or ‘Aluminum’ to our Stateside readers). Durability is one of this generation’s biggest upgrades, with a blend of polished and brushed aluminium alloy, surrounding the displays and spine of the
