Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 5 review: powerful multitasking, new hinge folds flat, and good support, but still pricey, heavy, and clunky, with unknown durability
save up to $1,000 today Mike Lowe / T3 : Best foldable phones 2023: the top folding phones to buy and why Sumit Adhikari / Android Headlines : Samsung video shows Galaxy Z Fold 5, Flip 5 assembly & lab tests Tushar Mehta / Digital Trends : 12 things you have to do with your Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 5 Samuel Gibbs / The Guardian : Samsung Galaxy Z Flip 5 review: a big screen inside and out Ciara O'Brien / The Irish Times : The best foldable phone you can buy right now Mastodon: Dan Seifert / @dcseifert@mastodon.social : here's @allisonjo1's review of the Galaxy Z Fold 5: https://www.theverge.com/... It's the first Galaxy Fold that I haven't purchased since 2020 — there's just no good reason for me to upgrade my Z Fold 4, even with the high trade in values. …
Context & Ripple Effects
Samsung’s Fold line had already established its core proposition—multitasking and a larger internal display—while the Z Fold 4 review highlighted the same high price, weight, and limited tablet-app support. The Z Fold 5 refines that formula rather than materially changing it.
Samsung’s launch positioned the device around a flatter-folding hinge while retaining the prior display sizes and $1,800 price, and an early hands-on assessment called the upgrades incremental. This review reinforces the gap between improved hardware polish and the remaining usability and durability objections.
First-order effects
- Existing Fold owners have little practical incentive to replace a Z Fold 4: the new hinge and support improve the package, but do not resolve the established cost, bulk, or app-fit trade-offs.
- Samsung can market a flatter, more polished Fold 5, but buyers still bear uncertainty over long-term durability alongside an $1,800 entry price.
Second-order effects
- Incremental hardware changes put more pressure on Samsung to differentiate through software support and compelling large-screen use cases, rather than hinge refinement alone.
- The unchanged premium price and persistent bulk narrow the addressable audience to users who value multitasking enough to accept a specialized form factor.
Third-order effects
- If successive Fold generations continue to improve polish without reducing the core compromises, foldables may remain a premium niche rather than becoming a mainstream smartphone replacement.
- Durability confidence and software designed for expanded screens become the harder competitive barriers: visible hardware refinement alone is unlikely to reset buyer expectations.
The trend: Foldable phones are moving from early hardware novelty toward an adoption test centered on whether software utility and durability can justify persistent premium pricing and physical trade-offs.