Samsung says the new Galaxy Flip 4 and Galaxy Fold 4 have truly flagship-level cameras. In our first day of testing the new phones, we took both cameras out and compared them with the Galaxy S22+ to see if they measure up to Samsung's more conventional flagship.
It's not that the Galaxy Z Flip 3 and Z Fold 3 cameras were bad; rather, I tagged them as "just okay," saying the Flip 3 had "uninspiring, desaturated colors." Still, it would be great if you couldn't tell the shots taken on Samsung's new $999 and $1,799 folding phones apart from the ones taken with the company's $999 standard flagship.
Before you ask, no, I don't have any iPhone 13 models on hand to compare at the moment. And I haven't had a Flip 3 or Fold 3 for months. But it makes more sense to compare the Flip and Fold with the S22+ since a Samsung buyer is, by and large, a Samsung buyer.
Before we get to the images, here are the comparative camera specs:
Main Cameras: Always Good
Any expensive phone will take good photos with its main camera in good light—that ship sailed at least five years ago. You can have opinions about color choice, especially between brands, but a shot like this one of the New York skyline will always turn out fine, and it does.
Could you have opinions about the subtle color choices that make the Flip's photo look a little more cheerful, while the S22+ is moodier and the Fold is in between? Sure, and I think that's all down to personal taste.
Here's a close-up of some flowers:
Zoom: One Has It, One Doesn't
Optical zoom: You have it or you don't. The Galaxy Z Fold 4, like the Galaxy S22+, has 3x optical zoom, and the Flip doesn't. You can see the difference pretty clearly in this shot at 3x. The Flip is using digital zoom while the Fold and the S22+ are relying on their optics.
Zoom plus low light just highlights the differences between the phones. The Flip has real trouble coping with digital zoom in night mode, while the Fold and the S22+ process their optically zoomed images much better.
Ultrawide: Get Bent
The real test of an ultrawide camera is what's happening at the edge of the frame. Most ultrawides tend to bend objects and get soft at the edges. OnePlus really leans into this, by first offering a mode on the OnePlus 10 Pro that has a de-tilting algorithm applied, and by also having a crazy fish-eye mode that puts you in a bubble world.
In any case, here's the edge performance of an ultrawide street shot taken with the Flip, Fold, and Galaxy S22+. As you can see, the Flip is definitley softer at the edge of the frame. The S22+ is the sharpest, but I think most people won't be able to tell the difference between it and the Fold.
Low-Light: Promising Results
The Fold and Flip have the same multi-frame, multi-second night mode that the Galaxy S22 series does, and it came up with similar results in our early test. This was captured indoors in our video studio, with the curtains closed. Without night mode, it looked like this (ugh):
With night mode on, the Fold, S22+, and Flip were comparable. I did get a bit of variance and maybe more noise in some of my Flip night mode images that I have to check out further, but here's the first sample:
Front-Facing Cameras: So Many Options!
Taking a daylight, portrait-mode selfie with the front-facing cameras on all three phones results in a similar outcome, as you can see:
The Fold actually has two front-facing cameras: the 10MP shooter on the outside of the fold, and the 4MP under-display camera which you should mostly just be using for video calls. They're definitely of different quality, as you can see in the comparison below. The main selfie camera dealt with this extreme HDR situation much better, while the under-display camera struggled with exposure.
On the Flip, Samsung really encourages you to use the primary camera for selfies as well. To do so, you double-tap the power button and can then use the front screen as a viewfinder.
I compared the two cameras with a really bright sky in the background—it's a real test of HDR. As you can see in this comparison, the front-facing camera gave me a flat image both in terms of color and focus, while the primary camera delivers more saturated colors and better depth of field.
We'll have more camera samples and other details in our full Samsung Galaxy Fold 4 and Samsung Galaxy Flip 4 reviews, so be sure check back soon. Until then, you can see what we've tested in terms of signal reception and benchmarks.