Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 4 review: cutting-edge excellence at eye-watering price

By putting both a powerful smartphone and 7.6in tablet in your pocket, Samsung has created the device of choice for gadget lovers. But the price means it is not ready yet for most consumers.

The hinge holds the display open at any angle, shutting with a satisfying snap. The main display is great for videos, games, reading sites and books, or multitasking with two or more apps open at the same time.

The Fold 4 takes about 80 minutes to fully charge, hitting 50% in 30 minutes using a 25W or greater USB-C power adaptor (£11.90 from Samsung), which is not included.

Several internal components are made from 20% recycled nylon or plastic. Samsung offers trade-in and recycling schemes for old devices. The company publishes annual sustainability reports but not impact assessments for individual products.

Most of the upgrades within Android 12L are behind the scenes to make apps work better when multitasking and switching forms. The new taskbar is great, acting like a dock for quickly getting to your most-used apps and putting them in split-screen mode by dragging and dropping from it.

Using a pair of apps on a screen roughly the size of two phones side by side is remarkably powerful and enables things I would usually reach for a laptop to do, such as budgeting, meal planning and comparison shopping. Most apps are stable and work great in various combinations. Rotating the Fold 4 to landscape gives you dual-pane views in some apps too, including Gmail, so you can see your inbox on the left and a reading pane on the right.

The Fold 4 has five cameras in total: a new triple system on the back, a 10MP selfie camera on the front and an additional 4MP selfie camera hidden under the top right of the internal screen.