Samsung Galaxy Z Flip3: A Hater's Perspective
ShortCircuit
·ShortCircuit
·2022-05-05
·
2,355 words · ~11 min read
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- You've already heard from the lovers, now you're going to hear from a hater.
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I love the Fold3, but the Flip series is one
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that I have never really been able to wrap my brain around. I mean, why go to all the effort
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of engineering a folding screen, just so that you can use a phone
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that fundamentally looks exactly like the one
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that you've been using for the last four years?
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Everything from the thickness to the size of the display,
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I mean, even the IO is, it's just the same.
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Let's take a look at this thing. Starting on this side, we've got our lock button,
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which doubles as a fingerprint sensor, our volume rocker, a noise-canceling microphone over here.
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We've got our SIM tray. Single SIM on this particular model,
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just one SIM card installs in there. Down at the bottom we've got more microphones,
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a speaker, got a USB-C port. Everything about it,
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it's pretty much your old phone, but new.
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Well, with the exception obviously being the folding display,
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and Samsung has come a long way with their foldable screen technology.
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Unlike the first-generation ones, this screen is bright enough
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that I can comfortably use it outdoors. That was one of my big issues with the original Fold.
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The crease is still visible. In fact, I wouldn't really say
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that it's any less visible than it was before, but that part also never bothered me.
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The part of the hinge that did bother me was the fact that it acted as a point of ingress,
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which made it impossible for Samsung to rate these folding devices as water or dust resistant.
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Well, that changes. The Flip3 is actually IPX8 water resistant.
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So they're rating it in two meters of water for up to 30 minutes, if I recall correctly.
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Another key benefit of Samsung's latest generation foldable OLEDs
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is that they can run it up to 120 hertz, which means whether you're just swiping
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through notifications and home screens or whether you're gaming on the go,
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you're gonna get a much, much smoother experience. Now, something I'm actually not sure about.
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I know the first gen one wasn't 120 hertz, but was the Fold 5G 120 hertz?
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I'm trying to remember. - [Jono] We'll find out after. Here's a present from dbrand.
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- Apparently, instead of answering my question,
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I'm being given this present from dbrand. Do I need eye protection?
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- [Jono] No. - Well, you know how those guys are. Ow, ow, ow!
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How many do you have? Ow!
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- [Jono] It's for your birthday! - Oh, look at that. It's a birthday cake.
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I'm sure there's some kind of awful twist.
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- [Jono] Here. I want a piece. - [David] Me too.
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- [Linus] I think there's a phone in there. - [Jono] What are you talking about?
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- [James] Use your hands! - [David] No, I want a piece! Don't use your hands.
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Aw. (laughs) - Sorry, dbrand. You win some, you lose some.
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I'm a pretty sharp character, and I think I can tell when there's a phone in my cake.
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David, does that look like a David size piece? - [David] That's way too big.
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- Really, David? - [David] Yeah, that's way too big. Give me like a third of that. - I don't believe you.
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David, you're not gonna like this.
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He actually wants a Flip3. - [David] Oh no.
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- Did they bake it in? Oh, dbrand, dbrand, dbrand.
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Yeah, here. Sorry, you guys can see this while I unearth it.
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Oh, that's unfortunate.
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- [David] Is this the old one or the new one? - This is the old one. - [David] Is it waterproof?
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- No. - [David] Aw, bummer.
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- Ooh, it's cold. Was this in the fridge? - [Jono] (laughs) Yes.
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- Oh my God, there's cake on the inside of it. "Have a birthday."
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Not a good birthday, just a birthday.
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I did. I did have a birthday, thank you.
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Thank you, dbrand. They've got an aged Linus face picture.
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Oh my God, does it still turn on? - Oh, hey, yeah! (men laughing)
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- This cake... Oh, that's awful.
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- [David] The hinge chocolate, no! - The hinge is all chocolate, boys.
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Why would they do this? Buy stickers from dbrand, I...
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Oh my God. Hold on a second. Is this cake at least good? It smells really good.
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Oh, that is really good. Okay, David, you have to help me.
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You have to help me take this one. No, no, here's yours. - [Jono] Thank you.
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- [David] If you insist. - It's really good. - Very chocolaty. - Mm-hmm.
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With that complete derailment out of the way, dbrand makes high quality skins, cases,
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all kinds of good stuff for your phone, game console,
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pretty much you name it, they've got a skin for it. Check them out.
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I'm sure they are gonna have an awful insulting vanity URL
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down in the video description. Just click through to that and you can get your own devices skinned,
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hopefully with something a little more attractive than this. One other big improvement to the screen
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is operation in kind of semi-folded mode.
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So you can see that if we put them both at the same angle, like let's say you're sitting
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and watching a teeny tiny little movie. Okay, like this.
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The new one, the Flip3, manages to tilt back that far
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without kind of rocking around. But if I were to bump this desk,
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you can actually see that the last gen one is gonna kind of teeter-totter,
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even though they're both at pretty much exactly the same angle here.
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So can you see that, David? So they've just adjusted the weighting a little bit
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to make it so that you can really put the hinge at any angle that you want.
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No movie is better with a teeny tiny screen. I mean, that's one of the reasons
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that I am super into the Fold series,
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but obviously not everyone wants to deal with the fact
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that the Fold is literally double the thickness
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of the Flip series. Like, if what you're after is the biggest possible screen,
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a folding screen has got you covered there with the Fold3.
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And if what you're after is the smallest possible pocketable device,
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well, that's where the Flip3's strength comes in.
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Let's go ahead and try it. Will it fit?
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Yes, we could even fit another one.
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Maybe one of these. I mean, these pants have pretty big pockets though, so.
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There you go. How many diagonal inches of screen
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do I have in my pocket at this point now? Your answer...
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- [Men] Whoa. - A lot. But nothing I've said so far
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addresses why I declared myself to be a hater
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when it comes to the Flip series. And that is because of the price.
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Last time around, the flagship Flip device was just shy of 1,500 US dollars.
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That's a lot to pay for, in my opinion, a user experience that is pretty much the same
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as a regular candy bar phone. This time around, the story changes.
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Now they're asking just over $1,000 for the Flip3.
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Now, that's still a lot of money, but when you consider that flagship phones
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from Samsung's competitors like Apple are already at or above the $1,000 price point,
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all of a sudden, well, it starts to make sense.
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Because instead of just being basically the same experience
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as my old phone, but for more, it's basically the same experience as my old phone,
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and now the folding is just extra. So it's still got a Snapdragon 888 processor.
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It's still got 8 gigs of RAM, 128 gigs or 256 gigs of storage,
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just like other flagship phones on the market, but it folds.
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That's not to say it doesn't have any disadvantages. If you were hoping to find a headphone jack,
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you won't find one here. It has a mere 3,300 milliamp power battery,
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which is on the low end for a flagship phone these days.
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And of course, because they're trying to build this thing to be as thin as humanly possible,
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because most of the time when you put it into your pocket or your bag or whatever else,
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you're gonna have it folded, you're giving up some of the,
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well, some of the optical advantages of having a large camera bump,
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like you might have on a typical candy bar phone these days.
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It does have two 12-megapixel rear shooters, as well as a single selfie camera,
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which can be digitally adjusted to accommodate a larger group of friends,
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if say, for example, you have them. I'll just put my ARM around someone imaginary,
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but I'm sure you would have a friend to take a picture with. And switching back to the rear,
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you've got just a regular, sort of regular lens.
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And then you've got an ultra wide that is...
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Wow, that is extremely wide.
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It's basically fisheye. So I've got my finger here, David,
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just holding it by this corner. - What? - And my finger is in the frame right now.
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- [David] Whoa, wow. - Yeah, I mean, if you're into it,
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then I guess that's an advantage. But if you're not gonna use that all the time,
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then I don't personally see that as an advantage. Another big advantage over the last Flip
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is that the exterior display is a lot bigger. So whether it's showing you charging indication
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or the time or notifications,
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it's, in my opinion, a much, much more usable size.
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Though, I have to confess that personally, I find these types of mechanisms kind of gimmicky.
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The reality of it is for me, it's all about time-to-use.
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So if this is in my pocket then it is just as fast for me
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to pull it out and flip it out and just be looking at the main display
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as it is to pull it out, see it... Like, what do I want, a pager?
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Like, what year is it? Pull it out, look at this, then decide to open it up.
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That to me is not very realistic. But if you're the kind of person
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that typically has your phone on the desk next to you,
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I could see it being useful. I just don't see it being that much more useful
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than just having it sitting there like that. One cool feature that Samsung's added this time around,
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although it's more of a software feature, is I think they call it care battery or battery care
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or something along those lines, but you can configure your phone to only charge to 85% maximum.
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It's something that it shouldn't give you a ton of stress if you 100% charge up your battery,
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but every little bit counts and your battery is under its most stress
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when it is completely charged, like that last 20% or so.
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So if it was me personally, I would actually use that feature,
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assuming that it was a convenient one for me to make use of. Now I wanna talk about one of the things that's different
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about this particular folding candy bar experience
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compared to a regular phone, and that is the extremely tall display.
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So it's a 22 by 9 aspect ratio,
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which basically means that cinematic content like this "Shang-Chi" trailer here, pretty freaking awesome.
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Almost anything else though is gonna have really, really large black bars.
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Now, something I wanna try out here is... ♪ Da-da-da-da-da-da-da ♪
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Yes, it does have an amplified earpiece speaker,
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so you can expect a good stereo experience out of it.
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Like, the compromises you're making for the foldability,
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they are there, but they're not nearly as there
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as they were even one generation ago. And the fact that the pricing is now coming down,
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it's like the one multiple device category where prices seem to be coming down rather than up.
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It's starting to get compelling. Something I didn't mention before,
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but that I noticed almost immediately, is that I do find between the taller display
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as well as the fact that the hinge gets in the way, the lock button and fingerprint sensor
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is a little bit out of the way for me to reach. From the bottom, I don't have very big hands,
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that's where my thumb comfortably rests. And it's a solid like centimeter and a half
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below where that lock button is. And I have to kind of, I have to shift.
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I like to have this corner of the phone in my palm and I have to shift it in order to access it.
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Not the end of the world by any stretch of the imagination, but it does mean moving the phone around in your hand more,
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which could increase the likelihood of drops.
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Samsung does seem to have kind of at least thought of this. So they're using Corning Victus glass in the design,
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obviously not on this side, but fortunately the foldable screen
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is another area where Samsung has improved these a ton. There's actually an included screen protector
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that in my opinion feels almost as good as glass.
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Even last generation it was kind of like soft,
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like you could put your fingernail into it and it would have a clear indentation left behind.
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I mean, I'd say it's good enough, in my opinion. - [David] You should try folding it the other way,
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see what happens, - Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah. Bend, redo bendgate here.
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Anyway, thanks for watching. Subscribe to ShortCircuit.