Samsung's AI-enabled Galaxy Z Fold6 debuts to power through productivity

Samsung has finally unveiled its next-generation book-style foldable smartphone, the Samsung Galaxy Z Fold6. The Koreans packed tons of upgrades to let its users make the most of its unique form factor, enhancing its performance with new components and features.

Lighter, slimmer, yet stronger with more display

Samsung Galaxy Z Fold6 is the company’s slimmest and lightest Galaxy Z Fold ever. It’s now 1.4mm shorter and 14g lighter than its predecessor. But the biggest perk is the reduced thickness: 12.1mm when folded and a mere 5.6mm unfolded.

To upgrade its viewing and handling experience, the Galaxy Z Fold6’s displays are also 1mm wider (folded) and 2.7mm broader (unfolded). This makes the Galaxy Z Fold6’s outer display (6.3-inch) more similar to a standard smartphone, while the foldable main display (7.6-inch) on the inside is even closer to a 1:1 aspect ratio than before.

This means users who wanted Samsung to make a more compact but more immersive book-style foldable had their wish come true via the Galaxy Z Fold6.

To further strengthen the device, Samsung now uses a new dual rail structure with a strengthened folding edge for the hinge to distribute shock from external impact better. The company also said it uses enhanced layers on the main screen to “improve the crease” while maintaining its strength. Topping that off is enhanced Armor Aluminium for its build and Corning Gorilla Glass Victus 2 for the displays.

Galaxy Z Fold6 also uses the Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 for Galaxy chipset, which is Qualcomm’s 2024 premium flagship processor customised to Samsung’s requirements. Samsung also added a vapour chamber that’s 1.6x larger than the one found in its predecessor to offer greater thermal management and extract more consistent processing power.

A truly AI-powered book-style foldable

Samsung also imported its suite of Galaxy AI features from its Galaxy S series to the Galaxy Z Fold6. That includes perks like Note Assist (translation and auto-formatting in notes), which now comes with added transcription, translation, and summarisation of voice recordings.

PDF files also now support translation through a new feature called PDF overlay, which allows text to be read from images and graphs.

Samsung Keyboard with AI-assisted tone is still present, but it now comes with a new Composer feature that generates text based on keywords in your emails and other support social media apps. In both instances, Composer takes after your tone to generate new text, and it does so by checking back on how you wrote previously.

S Pen (an optional stylus purchase for the Galaxy Z Fold6) is also back, but now supports Galaxy AI features. It’s handy with Samsung’s new Sketch to Image generative art creator, which takes your chicken-scratch sketches to create new art pieces that you can save to your Gallery or Notes app.

A surprising addition is Google’s Gemini AI app, also available on Galaxy Z Fold6. This means you can use Google’s new AI assistant across text, image, and files (multimodal), and it can even trawl through your Google apps (Gmail, Docs, Drive, Google Maps, YouTube, and Google Flights and Hotels) to make recommendations based on your personal information.

The Gemini overlay can also be summoned with a corner swipe or “Hey Google” command, and it also works in Galaxy Z Fold6’s multi-window mode, and can even solve math problems in English (with support for complex problems to come later this year).

Some AI functions are better optimised for the foldable form factor, such as Intrepreter’s conversation mode. Instead of having both listeners share the same display, the foldable’s outer display can show translations while the other user faces the inner display. Live Translate also goes beyond Samsung's default call app and is now supported on ‘popular third-party apps’.

Galaxy Z Fold6 has a 10MP selfie camera (on the cover screen), a 4MP under-display camera, and a triple rear camera combo that packs a 50MP main, 12MP ultra-wide, and 10MP telephoto (3x optical zoom). The device is also rated at IP48 for water and dust resistance, has Bluetooth 5.3 connectivity, and has a 4,400mAh battery capacity with support for 25W wired charging and Fast Wireless Charging 2.0. The phone takes up to two nano-SIM cards and multiple eSIMs.

The Samsung Galaxy Z Fold6 pre-orders begin on 10 July 2024, and official retail begins from 24 July 2024 onwards at these official price points:-

• 12GB + 256GB config: S$2,548
• 12GB + 512GB config:​​ S$2,728 
• 12GB + 1TB config: S$3,088

Pre-order the phone here

For more details on its pricing, pre-order specials, and availability, don’t forget to check out our pricing article here.

Announced alongside the Unpacked event today includes the all-new Samsung Galaxy Ring, the Galaxy Watch 7 and Watch Ultra, the Z Flip6, and the new Buds3 series. Check out our coverage of everything launched at the July 2024 Samsung Unpacked Event in Paris.

Our articles may contain affiliate links. If you buy through these links, we may earn a small commission.