 Ever since Samsung has announced this phone that I'm reviewing, the Galaxy Z Fold 3, I've seen two basic kinds of reactions. Well, three if you count the fact that everybody still thinks $1,800 is a lot of money. The first reaction is, wow, I really do want the biggest screen possible in my pocket, and if Samsung can make this thing right, I am in. The second reaction is, stop trying to make folding phones happen, Samsung. They're not gonna happen. And even though those two reactions seem completely contradictory, I don't think I can prove either one wrong. So let's talk about this phone, or tablet, Fold. Even though this is the Z Fold 3, it's the fourth version of the Galaxy Fold that I have reviewed. That's because during my very first review of the very first Galaxy Fold, it broke on its own without me doing anything to it. So Samsung delayed the launch, and it made a bunch of changes to that very first Fold before officially releasing it. And ever since then, the story for the Z Fold has been Samsung making a bunch of changes to make this phone more durable, and also to address some of the really obvious complaints with the previous generation. It's just been a relentless iteration on the same basic idea and form factor. It's one that Samsung really seems to believe in. All of which brings us to this, the Z Fold 3, which I think is about as good as the core idea can get. It's actually faster and easier to talk about the features this Fold is missing than it is to talk about the things that it has. In fact, I can just do that right now. It's missing a top-tier camera system and dust resistance. Otherwise, Samsung has checked so many boxes here. It has added S Pen support. It's given the outer screen a high refresh rate. It's put a Snapdragon 888 high-end processor in it. It's improved the software for multitasking to the point where I actually like it. But more importantly, Samsung is still iterating on durability. So it made this thing IPX8 waterproof. Like, I did not think that this was gonna be the year where I could do this. And... with a folding phone. Now it's just in a vase. Samsung also used a custom aluminum alloy to reduce the weight and make it stronger. It rearranged all the layers on the folding screen and made the top layer a PET screen protector that actually feels normal and does a better job of resisting indentations. The earlier Galaxy Fold screens were honestly kinda gummy. I really don't have any complaints about the 7.6 inch inner tablet screen here. The new screen protector really does change the feel of it and yes, it still does have a crease, but I really only notice it when I'm holding the thing at off angles. Most of the time it goes away from me. But I do have one major complaint and it's the one place where I think Samsung overextended itself with this phone. The inside selfie camera. It is an under screen selfie camera and it's only four megapixels, but I don't really care about that junky quality. I'm just using it for video calls. If I wanna take a good selfie, I'll take a selfie with a good outside cameras, either on the back or the one that's here on the front. Now, the thing that annoys me about that under screen selfie camera is that when the screen has something bright on it, like a white background, it is super distracting. It has this low res screen door look and if you move your head or the tablet even just a little bit, it has this noir effect that draws your eye to it, it just pulls it up there. There is no setting to just bring back the whole punch back and so it's just there. I really think that it's too experimental of a feature for Samsung to have put on an $1,800 flagship device. That's my biggest hardware complaint and I don't really have a lot of others. I mean, you know, I wish it was thinner when it was closed and there was no gap here, but I wish for a lot of other things that aren't physically possible and the phones that I've seen that have gotten rid of the gap have been weird. Anyway, speaking of physics, let's talk about the cameras because I don't know, light physics, whatever. They're okay. The three in the back are all 12 megapixels and really the only new thing compared to the last fold is the 2X telephoto has optical image stabilization. The pictures it takes are a step below Samsung's Galaxy S21 phones. Samsung's processing is still too bright and too vivid and sometimes over sharpens, but the night mode is decent and the main selfie camera on the front screen, which is 12 megapixels, is good enough. I mean, I could go on, but really the bottom line in the cameras is they're good enough and they're just not the point on this phone so Samsung didn't put a lot into them. They're not what you're paying the $1,800 for. Instead, Samsung put effort into S Pen compatibility. This S Pen is sold separately and no, you can't use the old S Pens. This new one is 50 bucks or 80 when it's bundled with a case that can hold it right here behind the hinge, but you know, Samsung has sales all the time so you'll probably end up paying less for this thing. Now this S Pen is custom to the Z Fold 3 because the tip retracts if you press hard and you really do have to press pretty hard for it to retract, but even so, I don't have any marks on the screen yet from it. Otherwise, you know, taking notes on this big screen is really nice and fun, it's good to draw on, but it is really wobbly on a table because of this camera bump, even if you have a case on it. And the other thing you should know is the stylus doesn't work on the outer screen so you can't just really quickly jot a note like you can on a proper Galaxy Note. The software on the Galaxy Z Fold 3 is One UI 3 and it still does stupid Samsung things like putting ads in apps like Samsung Pay or Samsung Weather, although apparently they've promised they're gonna stop doing that eventually. It also pushes you into using the Bixby Assistant, which is not very good. Now you can clean a bunch of this up and replace a lot of Samsung apps with the ones that you actually want, but that's a hassle. I think overall Samsung phones just require a little bit too much fiddling with the software settings. One thing I do like is you can set the outer screen and the inner home screen to mirror each other so you don't have to set up two different home screens. But Samsung has done something kind of special with how it handles windowing and multitasking on the Z Fold 3. It's good. You can do two apps side by side split screen or three apps up on the screen, but they're much more flexible now and easier to move around. You can save app combos in the dock and if you really want, you can even just make that dock permanently visible on the big screen on the right hand side. Samsung also has a labs feature that will strong arm Android apps that haven't been updated to support tablets or windowing and force them to work in the system. And even though it is a bit of a hack, it actually works fairly well. Like Instagram actually does what you would want it to do on this screen for once. You can move windows around by grabbing the laws engine, dragging them about, but if you don't wanna learn that system, there's little three dots you can tap on and it'll pop up a button that will show you all the different ways you can rearrange your windows. It's a lot like what's gonna happen soon with iPad on iPadOS 15. I mean, overall, the whole system is fluid and natural and I feel just as weird praising multitasking on a tablet and Android tablet as you do hearing me praise an Android tablet. I know, it's uncomfortable. But at least we can still complain that Android apps haven't been changed to update their design to work on bigger screens. They still just look like big blowed up phone apps. I'm looking at you Twitter and Slack and Strava and just so many others. So I really do like this phone, but if you're not into the phone that opens up into a tablet concept, I might not have convinced you. So let's get back to those two reactions, the this is great reaction and the stop trying to make folding phones happen reaction. I admit then when this phone is closed and you're trying to use it just as a phone, this technically very nice screen is still really narrow and frustrating to type on. And that when it's open in tablet mode, it is definitely a two handed device and it can be awkward to use in situations where you just wanna use your phone with one hand. It's big and it's heavy and it's super expensive and we don't really know if the screen will crack after a year or two of constant use. Plus all that water sealing makes third party repairability a bit of a nightmare. So you're probably gonna wanna pay Samsung for its extended warranty to feel really confident in your purchase. However, you know how there are big phone people and small phone people? Well, look, this is a big screen for big phone people and big screens are great. Watching movies, playing games, reading books, actually reading PDS without having to pan around, it's all very nice. Using multiple windows at once and sometimes just icing on the cake. You know how you're on a phone and then sometimes you're like, well, I guess I need to go to a real computer with a real screen because I can't do what I want on this little thing? With the Fold 3, it takes me way longer to get to that point. What I'm saying is that if you are so into the idea of having a little tablet with you all the time, that you are willing to make the trade off of having a kind of a chunky phone that costs 1800 bucks, I don't think anything better than the Z Fold 3 is gonna come along until there is another technological breakthrough with folding phones. I mean, this thing is dope, but if you're not convinced in that trade off, then you're not convinced. And that's what I mean when I say that both reactions are right. The Z Fold 3 is about as good as it gets for big folding phones. For some people, that means it's time to make the jump. For others, as good as it gets is still not good enough. Hey everybody, thanks so much for watching. Let me know, do you think that folding phones are finally ready? Do you think that waterproofing is enough to make it worth it for you? Talk about that down in the comments and then like and subscribe, please, so I can, I don't know, why am I doing this?