Re: Image Of Samsung Galaxy Z Flip 3
Kirby Apodaca
If you put the Samsung Galaxy Z Flip 3 and Z Flip 4 side by side, you won't notice too many differences. There's a bit of a nip and tuck done to the Flip 4 thanks to a smaller hinge, but otherwise, they look extremely similar. That is, until you take a look at the camera module on the back.
That's because the Samsung Galaxy Z Flip 4 got a notable camera upgrade over the Flip 3, causing the lenses to protrude just a bit to fit the camera sensors underneath. Those lenses are also larger and able to take in more light, and Samsung even improved the front-facing selfie camera quite a bit, citing that it's 65% brighter than the one on the Flip 3.
In this first daytime sample, I used the cover of clouds to see how well each phone captures the dull, flat lighting of a gray day. The Z Flip 4 produced a much naturally sharper image with a lot more detail all around, especially on the pavement and the brick walls, where a lot of natural texture variation exists. But the Flip 3's exposure, in this particular picture, is a lot nicer, as the Flip 4 crushed the blacks in the shadows quite a bit.
Now for some sunlight! I took the Flips with me to one of my favorite local orchards for the first apple picking of the season. What I came away with was not just a big box full of great apples, but a bit of a surprise at just how much better the Flip 4's camera can be at times.
Here, you'll immediately notice the difference in tonal quality in both photos. The Flip 3 looks washed out as it tried to brighten me up to balance out the bright sky behind. Meanwhile, the Flip 4 seems to have had no problem with this challenge, very likely owing to the larger pixel size on its main sensor.
The physically larger sensor also produces a nice bit of natural bokeh on the Flip 4's photo, while the Flip 3's photo looks more like everything is somehow in focus at once. This is just using Auto Mode, mind you, not the phone's portrait mode, which we'll get to next.
Next, I use the portrait mode in an attempt to create the ultra-shallow depth of field that a DSLR camera with a low aperture lens would create. This photo of an apple tree shows that both phones do a surprisingly good job of isolating individual objects to artificially blur out, giving the look of a camera that cost a lot more money than what's in a phone.
Like the previous photo, though, the Flip 4 did a better job of balancing out the tonal differences in the shot. From what I can tell, the lens design helps alleviate glare from the sun better than on the Flip 3.
In this lower-light shot, I took a photo of my son's giant stuffed animal giraffe with no lights on and only one window open. It's not quite nighttime low light, but it is pretty indicative of indoor scenes in homes, and how challenging lighting can be for phones. Cycling between the two, you'll notice a notable improvement in the amount of detail on the giraffe's fur, but the rest of the scene is pretty similar between the two phones.
Next up is actual low light. I took these at 5 a.m. to ensure it was as dark as it'll get outside. I'm combining these two shots into one little section because there's almost no difference between the two generations of phones in photo quality. Both shots are fine-enough looking, and are both well balanced and have great color reproduction.
The Flip 4 sports slightly better detail in each, but you really have to nitpick and zoom in to tell the difference. The real winner here is the capture speed. In both shots, the Flip 4 captured the shot using the automated Night Mode in about half the time it took for the Flip 3 to capture the same scene.
Again, the Flip 4 managed to capture the image in about half the time using the automated night mode and, even with that, grabbed substantially better shadow detail in this low light scene. Quite literally everything in the Flip 4's shot looks better, from the lighting to the detail, the exposure, and even the colors. A clear win.
Neither the Galaxy Z Flip 3 or Flip 4 have a proper telephoto camera and, since both phones only feature a 12MP main camera, neither is capable of particularly good detail when pinching-to-zoom in the camera viewfinder. Still, it's worth taking a look at the differences to see if either phone does a better job than the other.
In this first shot, I zoomed in to 2x to crop the building for a better-framed shot. This is a pretty common tactic that people use just to get a bit closer, and while most of the attributes of these photos look no different between the Flip 3 and Flip 4, you'll notice a very strong moire pattern on the rooftop of the first graffitied building closest to the camera on the Flip 4's photo. The Flip 3 had no such problem, raising questions as to what Samsung might have done differently in the background algorithm to cause this.
On paper, the ultra-wide-angle cameras on the Z Flip 3 and Flip 4 look the same, but it's clear from the results that something is quite different between the two phones. They both sport a 12MP sensor with ƒ/2.2, 123-degree-angle lens, and 1.12μm size pixels.
Other than that, the Flip 4 looks like it's doing bokeh a bit better than the Flip 3. On the Flip 4 shot, the foreground is clearly sharper than the background, while the Flip 3 seems to have everything in focus all at once. The Flip 4's colors are a bit deeper, as well, while the Flip 3 has a slightly washed-out look.
Differences during the daytime might be minimal, but nighttime flips the script significantly. From the get-go, it's obvious just how much better the Flip 4's image is when using night mode. In both shots, the Flip 3 suffers from some serious sensor strain, that shows up in the form of green discoloration all around the edges of the image. The Flip 4's image is also brighter and does a better job of brightening up the shadows, while the Flip 3 has a harder time and tends to crush the blacks.
When Samsung announced the Flip 4, it said the front-facing camera was "65% brighter" than the one on the Flip 3. On paper, there seems to be no actual proof of this, as both seem to use the same 10MP sensor with ƒ/2.4 lens, and 1.22μm size pixels.
Looking at two daytime shots, we can see front-facing camera photos from both phones look essentially identical. There's no big difference in dynamic range or depth of field, but the Flip 4 does a slightly better job with my skin tone than the Flip 3. That was the case on two different days, using both auto mode and portrait mode, which you can see below.
How about lower light? Based on my tests, it doesn't seem like there's very much difference between the Flip 3 and Flip 4, from what I can tell. The first lower light shot was in a dark bedroom where the only light was coming from the overcast sky outside, filtering in through the opened blinds. You can see the faint shadows cast on the wall behind me in both shots.
Neither phone did a particularly amazing job of capturing this lower light moment, even though both triggered the automatic night mode and asked me to hold the phone still for three seconds. The Fold 4 did a slightly better job of pulling in more detail, but I wouldn't call either picture an award winner.
While the Flip 4's image is notably brighter than the Flip 3's, it comes across as washed out rather than naturally brighter. Plus, it doesn't seem like there's been any real improvement in reducing the negative effects of handshake on long-exposure photos.
Next generation, we'd love to see Samsung add a telephoto camera of some kind to the Flip, which would certainly help improve zoom quality quite a bit. As it stands, the Flip 3 or 4 aren't particularly great at zooming in to objects beyond 2-3x. But, if folding your phone in half is the priority and you don't need a camera that's absolutely amazing, the Flip 4 should get the job done.
While we are still weighing the question of which phone offers the better total package, we wanted to do a camera face-off to see which flip-style foldable delivers a superior experience for mobile photographers.
Now as always with camera face-offs, there is a subjective aspect to some of the interpretations of the images, so while I'll give you my opinion on which is coming out ahead in each case, you can peruse the images and determine which you prefer.
However, the details differ with Samsung opting for a 12MP with an f/1.8 aperture and larger 1.8μm pixels for its primary compared to an f/1.5 aperture and smaller 1.4μm pixels on the Razr. It's hard to land on a clear winner there with Samsung's larger sensor balancing out Motorola's superior aperture.
The front-facing camera is the one relatively clear win with Motorola going over the top with a 32MP sensor with an f/2.4 aperture and 0.7μm pixels. Samsung comes up well short in the megapixel race with 10MP but does fight back with a superior f/2.2 aperture and 1.22μm pixels.
From a hardware standpoint, neither of these phones is really managing to stand out as a winner and both fall short of a flagship phone camera experience in 2023, however, that's not to say they can't produce excellent photos.
Note: I'm including samples here from the primary camera at 1x all the way out to the maximum digital zoom for each phone's primary camera: 10x for Galaxy Z Flip 5 and 8x for Motorola Razr Plus 2023. Neither of these phones actually offers a telephoto lens, there are still times where punching in a little bit can be the difference between getting a shot or not so it's good to know what's possible.
Samsung's primary camera on the Galaxy Z Flip 5 impressed me after relatively weak results from the previous versions. The first shot is of a mountain lake off Beartooth Highway and shows off the strong dynamic range of the camera. The lush greenery is accurately displayed and the intense clouds that dominated the sky retain sharp detail. The results at 1x are consistently solid from the primary, delivering bright, sharp, and color-accurate results.
This all holds true at 2x allowing you to bring your subject reasonably close without sacrificing any perceptible visual fidelity. While some of the samples in the 4x to 10x range hold up pretty well to me, the first set of the mountain lake is a demonstration of what can go wrong. Something about those conditions just destroyed the sharpness of the image and give it a blurry and surreal quality. The swans and the floral scene on the other hand remained detailed and color accurate throughout, so if you are capturing something that allows for multiple attempts don't ignore the zoom capabilities of the Flip 5.
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