I recently upgraded my phone to the Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 6, and I have some feelings about its design, the design and promise of foldables in general, and some of its quirks and eccentricities.

Upgrade Logic

I upgraded to the Z Fold 6 from the Galaxy S21 Ultra, and I considered a few different phones in making that choice.

• I like the fun and size of the Z Flip 6, and it’s not as expensive as the Fold, but I didn’t like that it had only 8 GB of RAM.
• Around the same time as I upgraded, the Pixel 9 series was announced. I was interested in a smaller phone, so the Pixel 9 Pro did pique my interest, especially because it had 16 GB of RAM. However, I was also interested in the folding screen form factor, and apparently it’s not shipping for a while.
• I was also interested in the Moto Razr+ - 12 gb of RAM in a flip-style fold. However, Google Fi didn’t have any incentives for it.
• I did have to take a hard look at the Pixel 9 Pro Fold (what a name) - it also has 16 GB of RAM and a slightly larger screen than the Z Fold 6, but also was not shipping at any obvious date. It was also quite a bit more expensive than the Z Fold 6, even after incentives from Google Fi (which is kind of outrageous, on Google’s part, if you think about it…)

Ultimately, what it came down to was the size of the screen. I have small hands, and I missed having something that I could easily operate with one hand. Before the S21 Ultra, I was using a Pixel 4, which had terrible battery life but was lovely to hold and operate in one hand. After having had the S21 Ultra for a while, I was interested in having a smaller phone, and the Z Fold 6 had a notably small front screen. Some reviewers had found it cramped or too narrow, but I… kind of like it that way? I’ve set up everything to maximize vertical space, which helps to defray the smallness of it. It’s definitely noticeable, coming from the S21 Ultra, but I find the difference to be pleasant.

Some other small considerations were:

• Generally Snapdragon processors handily beat Google’s Tensor processors in benchmarks
• The Fold 6 is rated against dust ingress, while the Pixel 9 Pro Fold is not
• The corner of the Pixel fold looks weird, to me

The last thing to mention on this front is that, in the name of small phones, I am quite excited that the Pixel 9 Pro and Pro XL have basically identical specs, but the 9 Pro is just smaller. That has always been a bit of a quandary for my own preferences, and I hope that this becomes the norm into the future.

The Day to Day

Apps

I find that I use the folding screen about 30-40% of the time, and the outer screen about 60-70%. I find that this is about right, and the ratio of foldable use may yet grow as I build the habit to use the inside screen.

In particular, I find myself using it as an alternative to landscape mode for YouTube - even if using the inside screen is about the same size as the landscape width of the outer screen, it feels bigger because you can see extra interface below it. You can also enjoy the work that I can tell YouTube has put into the foldable experience - for example, when a popular comment references a time code (and sometimes even when it doesn’t but Google’s machine learning models can tell), the comment pops up as the video is in proximity of that time code. It’s a small thing, but it’s a nice touch.

Another app I find to be much more enjoyable using the inner screen is TikTok - for better or worse, I find myself watching a lot of Subway Surfers-esque videos next to clips from TV shows or movies on TikTok, and this format properly fills the screen. It’s much more immersive, and it makes me wonder, are enough people watching TikTok in landscape mode that it’s worth optimizing for that aspect ratio? It’s surely not because foldables are common enough to justify it alone.

I also find the inner screen to be a great format for reading. I had originally assumed that the best way to organize eBooks for a folding screen would be as two columns, but I find that I actually prefer to read them as a very large single page, almost like you’re holding a magnifying glass to the page. I think, about 60% of a page is the right size for the inner screen format. When it comes to reading, Precis is great, too - Tailwind’s typography/prose extension does a great job of making text look a reasonable size on the inner screen.

The final good thing to say about apps is that GBoard is really good for wider screens. The split design makes a ton of sense and still feels good. I wish that Microsoft could do something similar with its on-screen keyboards in Windows. Some of this, I think, is due to Windows tablets not having haptic feedback, but also I feel like my typing accuracy is way better with GBoard in split mode, even on my Android tablet.

I haven’t had a ton of bad experiences with apps on the inner screen. Messages adopts a somewhat weird two-column layout, and I can tell that most apps don’t do anything special for the wider screen, which can sometimes lead to poor usage of space. However, I do think that the right way to think about this is as holding a magnifying glass to the page, and the apps that I use that do lean into an info-dense UI work well with the larger screen.

The AI applications built into the Fold 6 have near-zero utility for me, I never think about them. Of course, overall I’d rather they have spent the time and money on AI on different or better hardware, or not at all, I think.

Cases and Accessories

The case situation with the Fold 6 is weird. The general decision model of cases is as follows:

1. Hinge Protection or not?
2. Magsafe or not?
3. S Pen holder or not?
4. Kickstand or not?
5. Adhesive or not?

It’s pretty different from the experience with candybar phones, where you can kind of pick any case and it’ll be fine. Howver, for foldables there’s a diversity of choices to be made. Here’s how I approached the case situation:

1. No hinge protection - I’m generally quite good with my phones. I don’t recall dropping my S21 Ultra more than one or twice, and usually it was a short distance onto a wood floor. The dust ingress rating also makes me feel better about this decision. I may try out a case with hinge protection if I get curious, but I think for foldables you have to put a premium on the thin-ness of the case because the added heigh dimension of the case is applied twice because of the folding! For example, if the case is 5mm thick it actually adds 10mm to the folded height.
2. I’ve found Magsafe to be an indisputable case requirement. There’s many interesting accessories that you can use, and the technology has come quite a far way. I remember being an early adopter for the Scosche Magic Mount magnetic car mount system, and it was a little squirrely - if you drove over a rough road it might pop out. But, the additional contact width of the Magsafe interface does a good job of keeping everything in place, I think. The one caveat with Magsafe, however, is that it interferes with the S Pen technology. The sensitivity of the screen itself is fine for normal use, but given the way that that the Pen communicates with the screen, there is a circular dead zone for the pen, which leads me to…
3. I didn’t buy the S Pen, and I don’t generally use a stylus for my tablets, so forgoing the S Pen holder was an easy decision. It does bear mentioning though, because while the S24 Ultra has built-in storage for the S Pen, the Z Fold 6 does not (and in fact requires a special “Fold Edition” pen to avoid damaging the screen)
4. Many cases that have hinge protection incorporate a kickstand into the hinge protection. I don’t personally find this very useful because most magsafe accessories also have a kickstand mode, so I didn’t prioritize this in my decision making process
5. There’s two properties of foldables that necessitate the conversation about using some kind of adhesive to install your case. The first is that they have to fold flat onto themselves, so you can’t have a lip around the inner screen because that would interfere with the folding. However, most cases that have a lip use it to hold the phone under tension, so in the absence of the lip you’re essentially friction fitting the case onto the phone, or you have to find some other way to give it a little purchase. Some cases have a dimple that slots into the speaker slot, and others use a small piece of adhesive to keep things in place. The other consideration is that on the front screen, the left side lip is held in place on most cases by the material underneath it that goes down the side of the phone. However, in a foldable, that’s where the hinge is, so especially in cases that don’t have hinge protection you can either use adhesive to keep that in place, or try and design your case such that that piece is kept under tension and is not too wobbly.

Where I’ve personally ended up around cases is this:

1. I tried the the TORRAS case without hinge protection and without S Pen holder and found that the left side of the front screen lip was too wobbly, and as result tended to collect dust under the lip. The rest of the case was absolutely beautiful, though. I ended up returning this one.
2. I’m currently using the JUESHITUO Carbon Fiber Magsafe Case - it uses two small pieces of adhesive to keep the front protector in place, which has been working well for the last week. They also include two extras in case you have to change them out. The other nice thing about this case is that it’s very thin, and this makes the lip on the front size of the screen much less noticeable. The S21 Ultra (indeed, many phones of the era) had curved front screens into which the lip would recede a bit, but the new cohort of phones have flat screens which make the lip more prominent.

When it comes to Magsafe accessories:

1. I tried a silicone loop holder by TORRAS that seems to have unlisted and found that the stickiness of the silicone was unpleasant and distraction
2. For the past few days I’ve been using the Tango Ultra Thin Pop Grip and I’m quite happy. It’s pleasantly thin but still comfortable to use (I was worried that the metal spring grip might be hard to hold). Overall, the thickness is about the same as the lip that the Carbon Fiber case puts around the camera bump, so this actually allows the phone to lay more-or-less flat, a happy little accident.