Update: Our Galaxy Z Flip 5 review is live, so take a look if you want to see how well it performs as well as the key details.
The Samsung Galaxy Z Flip 5 has emerged as one of the stars of Galaxy Unpacked, and some of the most substantial packs of upgrades of the products on show.
You'll recognize a fair amount of the Galaxy Z Flip 5's design elements and feature set, but Samsung's enhanced the outer display, updated the chipset and doubled the default storage capacity. Most of these changes aren't flashy, but they still give the Z Flip 5 a good chance of standing out versus other flip foldables like the Motorola Razr+.
Read on for a full rundown of the official Samsung Galaxy Z Flip 5 specs and features. And take a look at the Galaxy Z Fold 5, Galaxy Tab S9 and Galaxy Watch 6 too if you want to learn more about this Galaxy Unpacked's other announcements.
For more on the Galaxy Z Flip 5, see our Samsung Galaxy Unpacked live blog for all of the big announcements.
Want to see Samsung's latest flip foldable? Here's what you need to know about the Galaxy Z Flip 6, which launched in July 2024.
Samsung Galaxy Z Flip 5: Specs
Samsung Galaxy Z Flip 5: Price and release date
The Galaxy Z Flip 5 first went on sale on August 11th, 2023, costing $999 / £1,049 for the standard 256GB option, or $1,099 / £1,149 for 512GB storage edition.
That price is the same as the Galaxy Z Flip 4's launch price in the U.S. but higher than it was before in the U.K. At least Samsung's giving you double the Z Flip 4's default storage in return. Plus if you're pre-ordering, Samsung will upgrade your storage to the maximum 512GB as a deal-sweetener, as well as offer various amounts of money off in return for a valuable-enough trade-in.
Samsung Galaxy Z Flip 5: Design and displays
On the inside of the Galaxy Z Flip 5, you get a familiar 6.7-inch OLED main display, featuring an adaptive 120Hz refresh rate and an FHD+ resolution. The bigger news however is the revamped outer display that now measures 3.4 inches across (up from a mere 1.9 inches). It's one of the brightest displays we've tested in a foldable phone, reaching a peak brightness output of 1,504 nits.
This larger Flex Window screen not only shows your clock and notifications in higher fidelity, but also enables widgets for various Samsung, Google and third-party apps to be used. You're still going to need to open the phone to do a lot of things, but the widgets allow you to do more than ever without opening the Z Flip 5 up.
Support for third party apps is limited to less than a handful, but we suspect we'll see more over time.
Other than the display portion getting much larger and adopting a sort of folder-shaped profile (to avoid the cameras), the Galaxy Z Flip 5 remains very similar-looking to its predecessor. It's exactly same weight as the Z Flip 4 too, and only differs in terms of dimensions by being very slightly shorter, and having a consistent thickness thanks to a flush-closing hinge.
Speaking of, the hinge that makes the Z Flip actually flip is now thinner and uses a waterdrop design that allows the phone to close up tighter. Samsung promises it's good for 200,000 folds too, which should mean the phone's good for several years of use before the hinge starts to break down.
Beyond the hinge, Samsung's updated the front and back panels to the latest Gorilla Glass Victus 2 toughened glass, and a tougher ultra-thin glass (UTG) layer to the inner display as well. These join the familiar Armor Aluminum frame and IPX8 water resistance. Sadly, there's still no official rating for dust protection for Samsung's new foldables.
Samsung has put some focus on its durability testing in its marketing, including a video showing some of the tests. We don't get a look at the damage these tests ended up causing, but it's interesting to see nonetheless.
The basic color choice for the Galaxy Z Flip 5 is between Mint green, Graphite grey, Cream and Lavender pale purple. From certain retailers, including Samsung itself, there are also Blue, Green, Grey and Yellow options to choose from. There's no sign of the Bespoke Edition just yet though, the customization option available for the Galaxy Z Flip 4 and Galaxy Z Flip 3 that let you pick the color of the phone's frame, upper panel and lower panel separately for a Z Flip like no other (or at least few others).
Samsung Galaxy Z Flip 5: Cameras
The Galaxy Z Flip 5's photography kit is the same as we saw on the Galaxy Z Flip 4: a 12MP main camera and a 12MP ultrawide camera on the back, with a 10MP selfie camera on the inside.
That said, technically all the cameras are selfie cameras since it's now even easier to take selfies with the main or ultrawide sensors thanks to the enlarged cover display's preview window, as well as switch between default and warm color tones, and favorite or delete shots as you take them.
Also, Samsung promises you'll experience less lens flare when shooting with the cameras on the Z Flip 5 too, and has tweaked the FlexCam controls for when you're taking images with the phone in its partially-open state to give you more options up-front.
We were really impressed by its performance in our review, beating out its predecessor and the Motorola Razr+. It also offers a lot of tools and various modes that content creators crave.
Samsung Galaxy Z Flip 5: Performance
Running things inside the Galaxy Z Flip 5 is the Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 for Galaxy. This is the chip that the Galaxy S23 series offered earlier in the year and that the Galaxy Z Fold 5 and Galaxy Tab S9 series also offer. In our testing, we did see improvements in all benchmark tests.
Joining the Snapdragon silicon is 8GB of LPDDR5X RAM and either 256GB or 512GB storage. There's no 1TB option like the Galaxy Z Fold 5 offers, but fortunately you're unlikely to need that much space locally to save all your stuff. At the very least, it's a nice gesture on Samsung's part to double the base storage capacity.
Samsung Galaxy Z Flip 5: Battery and charging
Samsung's used a 3,700 mAh battery again in the Galaxy Z Flip 5, and with the same 25W wired charging and support for wireless and reverse wireless charging. In Tom's Guide's battery benchmark test, the Flip 5 delivered a mark of 9 hours and 53 minutes, which is an hour improvement over the Z Flip 4.
Samsung Galaxy Z Flip 5: Software and special features
The Galaxy Z Flip 5's OS is Android 13 with OneUI 5.1, meaning you get all the same basic features as other recent Galaxy phones. But as this is a foldable, you get a little more to play with.
The biggest new addition is cover screen widgets. This gives you a cut-down yet still practical version of many Samsung and Google default apps, plus YouTube, Spotify, Netflix, WhatsApp and perhaps most handily your Samsung Pay wallet for NFC transactions and such. And like before, you still can access your notifications, an always-on display clock and Android Quick Settings like Wi-Fi and brightness.
You can swipe left and right between the widgets to navigate to the one you want to look at. But there's also a multi-widget view that lets you see previews of them all at once, similar to opening Android's recent apps view. It looks like a much more convenient way to navigate than just moving through them linearly.
Samsung Galaxy Z Flip 5: Outlook
The Galaxy Z Flip 5 has the biggest changes to the Z Flip line since Samsung launched the first one. As rival phones circle to try and take a slice of the foldables market, the Galaxy Z Flip 5 has done just enough to keep a high position on our best foldable phones page.
After checking it out more in our review, we love the new cover screen's abilities, as well as if the added boost brought on by the new chipset and updates to the cameras and software make a difference. We'll be using it frequently through the course of the year, so it'll be interesting to how the new hinge design holds up over time.
The biggest competitor for the Galaxy Z Flip 5 is the Motorola Razr+, since it's most similar product to the Z Flip. We've seen already in our review how the Z Flip 5 offers the superior cameras, but the Motorola Razr+'s outer screen offers more functionality, along with a slightly longer battery life.
More from Tom's Guide
- Read more about what's appeared at Galaxy Unpacked today
- Samsung Galaxy Z Flip 5 vs Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 5: which foldable could be better?
- Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 5 vs OnePlus Open: Which foldable could win?
