Category
🤖
TechnologieTranscription
00:00Hey what's up, MKBHD here. And this is it. This is the sequel to the phone that shook up the folding phone world last year. It was headline worthy.
00:15This is the Galaxy Z Fold 2 5G. It's the Fold 2. And I'm shooting this in a bit of an unusual location as you can probably already see.
00:27I'm in a trailer in the middle of the desert in Arizona because I'm out here essentially hosting David Blaine's Ascension project where he's going to float up into the sky while holding onto balloons.
00:39It's kind of insane and it's a pleasure to be here. But I figured while I'm here I will have Samsung ship the phone out here.
00:48And then I also had Andrew at the studio ship Komodo out here. So we're going to do a little first impressions and hands-on of this phone before tomorrow, there's the launch.
00:58So watch that. I'll link it below if you haven't gotten to it yet. But this is the phone.
01:02Now a lot happened last year with the Galaxy Fold, right? But the benefit of being Samsung and just experimenting out in the open like that is you can make mistakes and learn a lot from them.
01:12You learn a lot more from mistakes usually than success. And so one thing I've noticed about the Galaxy Fold 2, Z Fold 2, is a lot of these changes are learned directly from the Fold 1.
01:24So the box of course here is a little bit cooler if I do say so myself. But as you get into it you'll notice it doesn't come with quite the same array of accessories.
01:32Like the top thing here is paperwork and that's kind of it. So you get the phone of course. And then there's just a fast charger included.
01:40Which of course you would expect for the $2,000 that this phone will cost again this year. But this time there's no case, there is no headphones, and there's nothing else that really feels special about the stuff that comes with it.
01:53Which to me honestly is a little bit of a bummer. Like I thought there was no question this phone would come with all that extra stuff.
02:03And then a note about the screen protectors. So we took the plastic off at the beginning and that was all great but the Fold 2 comes with a plastic screen protector on the front display and on the inside on the main display.
02:16So I asked Samsung very specifically about this. The screen protector on the front display is cool to remove yourself and they said that was fine. I did that, easy, just like any other screen protector.
02:28But they recommend someone officially from Samsung removes this pre-installed main screen screen protector. And I don't know how I feel about that. It doesn't look that great. It does have like a little bit of a haze.
02:43I feel like I'm going to want to remove it pretty soon. I'm probably going to remove it but I'll let you guys know on Twitter when I do attempt that.
02:51But my impression here of the phone overall really is there are three main areas where there are major improvements. And that would be the screens, the hinge, and the cameras.
03:02And there's other stuff. There's a little design tweaks and there's improved specs and all that but all of the rest is really minor or it revolves around those main three things.
03:10I'll leave a YouTube chapter timestamps below if you want to skip to your favorite part.
03:15So of course, like I said, the specs are updated too but we've seen those already. Snapdragon 865+, 12GB of RAM, 4500mAh dual battery.
03:23And the design I think feels more refined. You can see it's boxier. It's a little weightier and I'm such a big fan of the satin finish. It's not even funny.
03:34It's still mystic bronze. You can also get mystic black. But it's really in the big areas where you see not just hardware improvement but real potentially big usability improvement too.
03:45So let's start with the screens. This one's pretty simple. Both the cover screen and the main screen got big upgrades.
03:52The cover screen is now full size so it goes from that little 4.6 inch display with huge bezels that was I think easily the worst looking part of the first fold to a genuine corner to corner full size 6.2 inch display.
04:06It's still really narrow but I feel like this alone is going to change the way I use the fold.
04:11The tiny cover screen before was actually pretty limiting and I didn't want to use the phone closed as much but now that changes a bit.
04:18I feel like the full size smartphone type of size on the outside will change the behavior before you even open the thing.
04:24But then on the inside once you do open it up there is your second big screen change.
04:29The bezels inside are a little thinner. It's now a 7.6 inch square display versus 7.3.
04:35But I think more importantly the huge corner cut out from last year is gone for just a single 10 megapixel hole punch selfie camera.
04:43And I'll talk more about why that makes a lot more sense in the camera section.
04:47But the bottom line is that ends up giving you a noticeably more impressive huge canvas of a screen.
04:52Like this is what I was hoping for when I was dreaming of improvements for folding phones. It's impressive.
04:58And this main screen is also now bumped up to, yes, high refresh rate, 120Hz.
05:03It's actually adaptive refresh rate so it can modulate anywhere from 11 to 120Hz depending on what's happening on the screen.
05:09But yeah, this is one of those things again that I mentioned even last year with the Fold 1 of improvements I'd like them to make.
05:16And we have it here now.
05:17Now one of the things I was wondering about is the crease since it's now using the same ultra thin glass on the Z Flip.
05:24And I'm seeing the crease still. It's not like it's going to disappear after one generation.
05:28You run your finger over it a little bit and you can still feel it like the Z Flip.
05:32But again, just like those other phones, it's not quite as big of a problem if you're just looking at the content and not looking for the crease.
05:38So the screen is pretty sweet. Thumbs up from me.
05:41What a difference that cover screen makes, right?
05:44But that brings us to the second big piece which is the hinge.
05:49And I'm just going to keep saying it. The hinge, to me, feels like the most important part of a folding device.
05:55I just got done in my last video raving about how the Surface Duo's hinge is one of the most impressive things in any piece of tech in a long time.
06:03And now, this hinge, I was kind of trashing it before with the first Fold but now this hinge does a lot of the same stuff.
06:09So this is now the second version of their Zero Gap Hinge.
06:12It looks pretty similar to the first one. Conceptually, it's still the same with their hinge and the back plate.
06:17But this year, Samsung will actually let you customize the back plate color between a couple, I think it's four different colors.
06:24Which is super cool if you're willing to wait a couple extra weeks for the customization to come through.
06:29But now, this new hinge will allow for freestand anywhere from 75 to 115 degrees.
06:35Meaning it can basically stay put in almost any reasonable angle you want.
06:39And then there's a bunch of software features built around this new hinge that I'm going to be testing for the full review.
06:44It's still called Flex Mode and there's a slowly growing list of apps that will recognize when the hinge is folded halfway.
06:50And then it'll treat the app like a mini laptop, basically.
06:53If you're watching a YouTube video, for example, and half-close it, it'll put the video in the upper half.
06:58Or if you're in Calendar or Gallery, they also have special layouts in Flex Mode.
07:03And even the camera has a special mode for when it's half-folded.
07:07So clearly they see people using it half-folded a lot more because of the hinge's ability to do it.
07:12Makes sense.
07:13And speaking of cameras, that's the last big piece here for the Fold 2.
07:17Now the first Fold already had pretty good cameras.
07:20It was flagship quality at the time.
07:22And you again get flagship quality cameras here.
07:24Triple 12 megapixel system on the back, regular 3x telephoto and ultra-wide.
07:29But that's not the big improvement here.
07:31The update is the layout of the cameras, which was kind of clunky if you remember that big, ugly cutout in the first Galaxy Fold.
07:40So if you're ever to make an argument about if this is the right way to do a folding form factor,
07:46I think the camera layout, being much smarter here, is a good argument for it.
07:50So it's the triple cameras on the back like I mentioned in that Mesa, that squared-off camera bump like the Note main camera, telephoto and ultra-wide.
07:58Then on the inside, like I said earlier, just a single 10 megapixel selfie camera.
08:02And on the front cover display, again, a 10 megapixel selfie hole-punch camera.
08:08So you can take photos and videos like normal with that huge viewfinder.
08:11That part's still great.
08:12But now, instead of having that huge cutout for better selfie cameras,
08:16if you really want to take a good selfie, you can just do rear camera selfies,
08:21and it'll turn on that bigger cover display and let you use it as a viewfinder.
08:25That's really smart.
08:27I believe this will also be coming to the first Galaxy Fold,
08:30but now that's just so much better of a way to take selfies with a high-quality camera.
08:34There's also now dual preview mode, which turns on the back camera so you can show the subject of the photo and the framing.
08:39There's just a bunch of other software stuff being built into One UI that will also come to the old Fold,
08:45but it works that much better because of the bigger cover display and the improved hardware here.
08:50But overall, my impressions are pretty positive for Fold 2.
08:54And a lot of the things they've done, even the smaller things, feel much more considered for a daily driver.
09:00Now, it's still a folding phone. It's still second-gen.
09:02It's still not IP certified, no dust resistance.
09:05There's still durability questions with this hinge and the inside screen,
09:09but a lot of the stuff they've changed,
09:11the fingerprint reader being on the power button now,
09:14the better cameras, the new software modes,
09:17the hinge that just feels a lot more sturdy and a lot more fluid.
09:23I like it.
09:24So I'm going to pop my SIM card in it, and I'm going to start using it as my daily driver multitasking beast,
09:29and I'm going to review it.
09:30So let me know in the comments section what you guys want to know,
09:33whether it's the cameras or durability.
09:35Battery is another one.
09:37It is a 4500 mAh battery, which is not small,
09:41but it's also a 7.6-inch Quad HD 120 Hz display,
09:45so that's not small either.
09:47So there's a lot of stuff to test, and I'll check out your comments for that,
09:50but that's been my first impression of the Escobar Galaxy Z Fold 2.
09:56Stay tuned for the full review.
09:58Thanks for watching.
09:59Catch you guys in the next one.
10:01Peace.