- This is the Galaxy Z Fold 2.

Technically it's the third

because the first was never really released

and so the second fold became the first fold,

which makes this attempt number three

for Samsung's idea of making a phone that unfolds

into a little tablet.

It is 2000 bucks,

which is way too much to pay for

what you get out of this thing.

But having said that, I gotta tell ya,

I feel like the third time's the charm,

because I'm a little bit charmed.

(upbeat music)

There are two ways to talk about the hardware

on the Z Fold 2.

The first is to just talk about all of the things

that Samsung has fixed from the original fold.

And that list is actually quite a lot longer

than I would have guessed.

The main display here is made out of glass now,

the hinge is way better and the cover display

on the outside is actually big enough to use.

They're all huge improvements over the original.

So for example, this hinge now has eight cams

that make it a little bit stiffer.

There's elastic brushes on the inside to keep the dirt out.

Now, when you close it,

there is still a little gap on the inside,

but Samsung has added some little bits

to make that gap feel smaller.

They've moved the magnets around a little bit,

so there's still a satisfying

(flip sound)

when you close it.

The edges overall are just a little bit square,

the bezels on the inside are a little bit smaller.

The whole thing just feels a little bit more professional.

The tolerances are tighter and everything has been refined

to the point where it really feels like a well engineered

product instead of being a little bit loosey goosey,

like the original one.

Those cams hold the screen in place at different angles too,

so you get some extra functionality there.

Now I can't promise that this is gonna be more durable

than your original Galaxy Fold,

but it sure does feel stronger.

And Samsung will provide a onetime screen replacement

for 149 bucks if you happen to break it.

Now, the other way to talk about the hardware

in the Z Fold 2 is to just point out that

it's still a really unfamiliar object

to carry around for most of us.

When it's closed,

it is this super thick and super heavy oblong stick,

remote thing.

I don't care what your pockets look like,

or what pocket you put this in,

you're gonna feel it. it's just a weird big object.

But when it's open,

you get this very good, very big 7.6 inch screen.

And there's a lot to talk about this screen,

but I just want to start with the downsides kind of quickly,

because I don't know,

I think they're just the realities of what a folding glass

screen has to be like in 2020,

because physics instead of being straight up errors

on Samsung's part.

So even though this is Samsung's ultra thin glass here,

instead of plastic,

it is still covered with a plastic screen protector,

and technically I'm told that you can go to Samsung

and have them take this screen protector off,

but honestly having it on here is for the best,

but that does mean that it we'll pick up little dings

if you're nailed hits it

and it does feel like a plastic screen.

Now the screen is also surrounded by a fairly thin

plastic rail that you can't feel on the edges.

There's even two little nubbins here

that keep this greens from clacking together

when he closed it too hard.

Finally, yes,

there is a crease in the middle of the screen

and you can see it and feel it

when you rub your finger over it.

If you're viewing the screen at an angle

and the light hits it just right,

it's visible enough to be a little bit annoying,

but straight on the crease pretty much disappears,

like notches or hole punches do on smartphone screens.

You get used to it

and eventually you almost forget that that crease is there.

Now having said all that,

I don't want you to get the wrong idea.

I think the screen is very, very good.

It's only about 372 pixels per inch or so,

but that's more than enough to make those pixels disappear.

More important to me is this corner right here.

There is no longer a big huge cutout

for a bunch of selfie cameras,

there is just this one little hole punch

for a single selfie camera,

which means you get the full expanse of the screen

to work with and to watch videos on.

But the most important thing that Samsung has done

to this screen is put in a dynamic refresh rate.

It goes all the way down to 11 Hertz and save battery life

or all the way up to a high refresh rate of 120 Hertz.

And what higher refresh rate screens do is they make it feel

more like you're physically moving the pixels

and that's here on the fold too

but the most important part of it is that it significantly

improves a big problem that I had with the first fold

and that's jelly scroll.

Pretty much all smartphone screens have this little

difference in how quickly the pixels update

from one side to the other when you scroll.

But usually you don't notice it because on most smartphones

it happens vertically from the top to the bottom,

but the fold needs to have its little bits to drive

the screen on the side instead of on the bottom,

so you see it more often when you're scrolling.

However, switching to 120 Hertz refresh rate

cuts that difference way, way down.

So it's really hard to see that jelly scroll

unless you're really looking for it.

Samsung has eliminated the problem

by switching to a higher refresh rate screen.

Now this outer cover display,

it's not as technically impressive,

it doesn't have a high refresh rate,

but that's not really a big deal.

I am wildly happy that Samsung made it the full height

of the fold, which makes the screen actually useful.

It's still really narrow though,

so it's hard to type on but if you just use it for

those quick phone things that you do when you're out

and about and on a waiting in line or something, it's fine,

but for anything else,

I ended up opening it up to get the big screen.

And that's the point, right?

To have this big screen, to do big screen stuff

like gaming or watching movies or reading or multitasking.

So let's just talk about the big screen experience

on the Z Fold 2,

because the way that I would characterize it is mixed.

Alright good stuff for us this time,

Samsung has gotten the message that it's little tablets

should have a tablet layout.

So you can go into the settings

and select that layout for apps,

which means it's slightly fewer apps have

that big blown up phone app look on here,

but really only some of them do it

when you hold it normally vertically like this.

For the rest of them, if you turn it 90 degrees,

you do get that nice tablet layout with multiple panes

or tabs, or two pages in the Kindle app,

or the whole tablet deal.

Plus having a bigger screen for games and video

is very, very good.

If you are not watching it full screen,

I don't know if picture and picture

doesn't cover your other work,

reading PDFs and docs and other things

that are annoying to do on your phone are really nice here.

Plus just a few apps like Microsoft for example,

do support drag and drop between apps and multiple pains,

but you really shouldn't depend on it being there.

Android has always the go.

There's also this feature that Samsung calls flex mode,

see because the hinge is strong enough

to hold itself up at multiple angles,

Samsung has made some software tricks

to take advantage of it.

So for example you can start a video on the outer screen,

flip it up to view it like that,

then you can flip it over to view it

on the top of the middle screen,

and then you can open it all the way up to watch it

on the big screen.

A few other apps do things in flex mode

like Samsung's camera app,

but really not enough apps support it

for it to matter that much.

But do you know how you always hear the Android apps

are bad on tablets? Yeah.

Here's Facebook all stretchy and weird.

And here's Twitter also all stretchy and weird,

and here's Instagram, it doesn't even have a tablet mode.

Neither does Lightroom.

The whole situation is a little bit better

than it used to be with Android apps on tablets,

but that's not saying much.

Now Samsung has an option where you can like

change the stretchiness of phone apps if you want to

but really the fix is to use Samsung's windowing system

to tile apps and split-screen,

or even like a three up layout.

You pull this little dock here out to the side,

it's like a drawer and then you drag out the app icons

to where you want them on the screen.

It works really well.

You can even drag apps out into the middle of the screen

to make them into little popup windows,

that can then reduce down into a bubble.

You can swap apps around and the pains

with these little bars,

you can even save combos of apps

that you use often together so you can just open up

both apps with a single tap.

There's a small problem with the system though,

notice that I said you use Samsung's windowing system,

not Google's.

Android is dumb about multi window systems.

All of this multi-tasking stuff is something

that Samsung had to build itself on top of Android,

and it does work pretty well,

but you can also hell that it's like a layer above

what the system understands.

Plus Samsung system is completely different from

how LG handles multi windows or how Microsoft does it

with the Surface Duo.

But different companies doing multitasking

in different ways, really shouldn't bother you too much.

But what should bother you is that the core stuff

that the operating system should understand

just doesn't work like saving your window state

when you switch between screens,

or putting app pairs that you've got tiled together

into the multitasking screen,

when you switched to multitasking it just goes back

to being a single app because Android doesn't know

that you can have two apps open at the same time.

Now, if you're adept with Android and you understand

all of these different operating system layers,

it's actually not too bad,

but you shouldn't have to be that good in Android

to understand how all this works.

And even in the best cases if you're a nerd like me

and you get all those layers of UI,

you still feel like you're constantly rearranging