New Galaxy Fold and Flip - LOOK!

First off, let's get this out of the way - the new Fold and Flip look almost identical to the ones from last year. So much so that you will not be able to tell them apart easily. That's a good thing if you liked the designs of the Fold5 and Flip5, but if you were looking for something different? Um,..looks wise, you will feel a trifle disappointed. Could Samsung have rolled the design dice on these? We don't know but let's get a little closer to them. Fold first,

The Galaxy Z Fold6 also comes with support for Samsung's famous S Pen stylus - but you will have to purchase it separately. And it gets 12 GB of RAM across all variants, and a Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 for Galaxy chip, which is about as powerful as things get. The battery remains at 4400 mAh and there is not charger in the box, although you can charge the phone at 25W using a wired connection and at 15W wirelessly.

That display in front gets 120 Hz refresh rate, but remains HD rather than full HD, which for us is a bit odd. It also has a slightly "long" feel to it, and does not feel as comfortable as the FHD external displays of the Vivo X Fold 3 Pro and the OnePlus Open.

It also gets a significant camera and battery boost - the main camera has been increased to 50 MP with OIS and is accompanied by a 12 MP ultrawide. The internal camera remains a 10 MP one. Judging by the marketing, Samsung is pushing the Flip6 as a bit of a camera phone, though it is termed 'self expression' in marketingspeak. The 50 MP has a special Flex Cam feature that lets it zoom in and out to keep you in the frame when facing you...handy!

You get Corning Gorilla Glass Ductus 2 on front and back and an Armour Aluminium frame here as well, and yep, the IP48 water resistance means this one can survive a fall in the water, just like that Fold6. Samsung needs to be commended for increasing the battery to 4000 mAh (it was 3700 mAh on the Flip5). But heck, no charger here either, although you get similar 25W wired and 15W wireless charging speeds.

So are you paying all them big bucks for slightly better hardware? Well, not quite. There are a truckload of AI smarts in both foldables - with features that range from PDF summaries to voice translations to portrait editing and much more. One of our favourite features was speaking to someone and their ring able to see the translation in their language on the cover display facing them. Another was the fact that we could simply place a dog in a photograph of a cafe by drawing a rough image of a dog, and letting the AI create a real one based on it. Oh and these also come with the ability to solve math problems, showing you the steps to reach the solution as well in a special Homework Mode!

These being Samsung phones, you also get seven years of Android and security updates. Yes, they remain expensive but while we wish Samsung had taken some design leaps with these, all that hyped up Galaxy AI (much of it made in association with Google) do make the Galaxy Z Fold6 and the Galaxy Z Flip6 very fascinating indeed.