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Ever since Unpacked, I’ve been using the Galaxy Z Fold 6 as my daily driver. It’s a great foldable, with some really meaningful changes this year. But it’s still not enough to take me away from the OnePlus Open.
Samsung has slowly made the cover display wider and wider on the Galaxy Z Fold series. However, it is still fairly narrow. That is not the reason why I’m switching back, however. There are two main reasons: battery life and the cameras. With OnePlus’ first foldable, they really hit a home run. Now yes, it’s technically not their first foldable, as this is basically the OPPO Find N3 with a different name and logo, which is OPPO’s third-generation of foldables. And they’ve learned a lot. The Find N2 looked much different than the Find N3, actually. However, Samsung hasn’t really made any drastic changes to the Fold since the Fold 2, when they made the cover display full-screen.
There’s no denying that Samsung has some of the best foldable software out there. Pop-up and multi-window, just to name a few, are great features to have on a foldable like the Galaxy Z Fold 6, not to mention the S Pen support. Though, as someone who has never really used the S Pen, that’s not really a selling point for me.
OnePlus single-handily one-upped Samsung with its foldable software last year with a new feature called Open Canvas. And it’s a feature that I really wish OnePlus would put on its phones, too. The best way to describe it is that you are getting more screen real estate than you actually have as you’re able to push apps off screen, and switch back to them with ease. You can even have a Tweetdeck-like layout but for apps, with three of them side-by-side-by-side. It’s my favorite software feature on any phone these days. Honestly, I can’t wait to see what OnePlus/OPPO will do next.
Samsung’s battery life has become stagnant
The Galaxy Z Fold 6 has the same size battery as the Galaxy Z Fold 3 (which is actually smaller than the Fold 2). That’s pretty unacceptable when the Fold doesn’t really have that large of a battery anyways. It’s a 4,400mAh capacity battery. The OnePlus Open has a 4,805mAh capacity battery, Pixel Fold is 4,821mAh, and you really don’t want us to compare to some of the Chinese competition. Companies like HONOR are starting to use new battery tech, called Silicon Carbon which allows for a much more dense battery in the same space. So the new Magic V3 that was announced in China this month (global launch at IFA) has a 5,150mAh capacity battery. There are also rumors of the next OnePlus Open having a whopping 6,000mAh capacity battery inside. Yet Samsung is sticking to 4,400mAh.
One the one hand, I can kind of understand why Samsung is sticking to this same battery size. The debacle with the Galaxy Note 7 a few years ago has really scarred them over the years, and it’s why I think Samsung hasn’t really upped its charging speeds – still stuck at 25W. However, Samsung used to push the boundaries. They used to be a leader in innovation. Now they are just stagnating, and actually losing their foldable market lead, with newcomers launching foldables, even in the US, like Google and OnePlus, or Motorola on the flip phone side.
I’m not one to say that a company needs to do a complete redesign of its phone every year. That’s dumb and a waste of money. But we do need to see more iteration than we have been, especially in the battery department. Yes, the processor is getting better optimized and more energy efficient over the years, but battery life is largely the same on the Fold 6 as it was on the Fold 3. That’s unacceptable.
Especially when you compare it to the OnePlus Open, which has a larger battery and quite a bit better battery life. Before I get into screen-on-time numbers, it’s important to remember that I don’t use my phone the same way every day. Some days I might spend a lot of time on Twitter, others it might be TikTok or Reddit. But on average, I get about 6 hours of screen-on time with the Galaxy Z Fold 6. That sounds pretty respectable, right? Until you see the OnePlus Open. At 6 hours of screen-on time, it generally still has about 30-40% left, while the Galaxy Z Fold 6 is begging you to turn on battery-saver mode.
Obviously, these numbers are even more variable with foldables since you have two screens, and the larger internal display uses a lot more battery than the outer display. But the bottom line here is that the nearly year-old OnePlus Open is still far better than the Galaxy Z Fold 6 in terms of battery life.
At least the cameras aren’t as old as the battery capacity, right?
Well, they aren’t. But that’s not necessarily a good thing. Samsung upgraded the Fold’s cameras with the Galaxy Z Fold 4 in 2022, and is using those same cameras on the Galaxy Z Fold 6 in 2024. These cameras are somewhat respectable, but when you’re paying $1,899 for a phone, they should be much better.
Here, we’re looking at a 50-megapixel main sensor, a 12-megapixel ultrawide and a 10-megapixel telephoto sensors. They put out okay pictures, but again, for the price, we need better than just “okay.” And honestly, if it weren’t for the OnePlus Open, I’d probably be okay with these cameras. Most foldables do have older camera setups, partly due to space and partly to try and keep costs down. But OnePlus put perhaps the best camera setup (at the time) of any phone and put it into a foldable, which makes it hard to (ironically) settle for the Galaxy Z Fold 6’s cameras.
You see, the Pixel Fold launched with relatively similar cameras to the Pixel 7a, which was kind of crazy, considering the price difference. HONOR’s Magic V2 had pretty sub-par cameras, especially when compared to the Magic 6 Pro. Then came OnePlus and OPPO with the Open/Find N3 with an incredible camera setup (that also made its way to the OnePlus 12 earlier this year). This includes a 48-megapixel primary camera, a 48-megapixel ultrawide, and a 64-megapixel telephoto sensor. These have provided some truly incredible photos and video on this phone over the past 9-10 months that I’ve had it. And it’s hard to give that up for the Galaxy Z Fold 6. Additionally, OnePlus (like the iPhone) lets you shoot at 35mm, which is a really great focal length providing incredible bokeh effects, naturally without using AI.
In fact, the OnePlus Open handled all of the hands-on pictures and videos I shot ahead of Unpacked earlier this month. And I had no complaints, other than how hot the phone got. Keep in mind, it was nearly 100 degrees in New York City that day, plus using the camera for about an hour or so. Which really takes its toll on the thermals.
Nearly a year later, and the OnePlus Open is still the king of foldables
Now, before you start saying I’m a fanboy or whatever, I haven’t really been a big OnePlus user for the past few years. I’ve actually been using an iPhone as my daily driver, and using a Pixel as my secondary phone (unless I was in the middle of reviewing something). The OnePlus Open is the first OnePlus phone I’ve used well beyond the review period, since the OnePlus One. It’s just that good. And it’s hard to go back to a phone without a folding screen, once you’ve used one for a long period of time.
So far, no other company has been able to touch the OnePlus Open in terms of battery life, camera quality, and the build. But we do have some new contenders. The aforementioned HONOR Magic V3 is one of them. The HONOR Magic V3 has a larger display, and battery, while being even thinner at just 9.3mm folded or 4.4mm unfolded and weighing just 226 grams. That’s less than the Galaxy S24 Ultra. Its cameras are also set to be some of the best on a foldable, which we’ll find out more in a month or so when we get our review unit.
Then there’s the Xiaomi Mix Fold 4, which also has a larger display and is also thinner and lighter than the OnePlus Open. Weighing in at 226 grams, and measuring 9.5mm when folded, or 4.6mm unfolded. So there’s competition on the horizon, but we’ll see if it can dethrone the OnePlus Open soon.