Samsung Galaxy Z Flip 5: What to know about the new foldable smartphone

Samsung (005930.KS) releases its new foldable smartphone, the Galaxy Z Flip 5. Yahoo Finance Tech Editor Dan Howley reviews the new device.

Video transcript

- Samsung foldable phones have officially arrived. There's a new Galaxy Z Flip 5 just being released. Yahoo Finance's Dan Howley has been giving it a test. Dan, what do you think? Are you impressed?

DAN HOWLEY: Yeah. So far, I'm impressed. I'm an iPhone owner. You can tell by my Apple Watch. And this actually makes me want to switch. This is the Z Flip 5. You could see that it's folded down right now. It's incredibly slim when you have it in your pocket.

It's a lot smaller than my iPhone, obviously. You can use this front screen here that's nice and big to get things like the weather, your calendar. Different apps you can use include YouTube, Netflix, different chat apps. So you can do all of that from this tiny front screen. You also have the cameras out here, but those are really the back cameras because when you open it up, you have a full-fledged smartphone here. And so there's no real difference between what you would be able to do on this versus, say, your regular-sized iPhone, your regular-sized Samsung phone.

One of the cool things about this and what Samsung does well is making use of the fact that you can fold it down in half. So if I fire up the camera here-- let me just let that go for a second-- on the top is where you're actually seeing the viewfinder. On the bottom, there are separate controls that you can use for the camera itself. You can do that with YouTube as well, where you can have YouTube playing on the top screen and then see the comments and use controls down on the bottom screen. So it's an interesting way to separate the phone in half.

But if you don't want to go through that you don't think it's really that interesting for yourself, you can just use the main screen as your regular phone. One of the cool parts is if you start something on this outer screen, say the weather, for instance, you can pop open the bigger screen, and it'll go to the weather app as well. That goes for things like Netflix and YouTube as well. This is part of Samsung's effort to really make foldable phones the go-to for their line of products, and they really had that on full display when they showed their unpacked event last month. They also have the Galaxy Z Fold 5 that folds like a book.

The one problem with this plan is the pricing. This guy is $999 out of the box. The Z Fold Meanwhile is $1799. So a bit more expensive there. I think for average smartphone shoppers, that might be too much to swallow. But if you are the type of person who does like to go ahead and get the best phone out there and you're looking for something a little different, this little guy really is quite handy. And if you're worried about durability, Samsung says it's waterproof. I actually got to see them testing it in their facilities.

And more recently, someone was running a trial to see how often they could open and close it, and it got past well past 400,000 times of them opening and closing it. Completely unscientific, but still something worth noting without this failing. So it is really, I think, the beginning of the smartphone foldable phase despite the fact that this is Samsung's fifth generation. I think they've really done the work on this to make it a worthwhile effort. And, like I said, I'm an iPhone user, and I'm really thinking about switching now because there's just something satisfying about that snap.

- All right, well, Dan, if they have thinking about switching, then I think it's fair to say that it's a pretty impressive phone because I was a bit skeptical going into this about whether or not a foldable phone was really necessary at this point, given the fact that we've gotten so comfortable with the iPhone. But you've convinced me. I've got to check it out.

DAN HOWLEY: It's pretty cool.

- All right, Dan, thanks.