Galaxy Z Fold 5 review: Five years in, Samsung is treading water

In 2019, Samsung released the original Galaxy Fold, the first phone with a flexible display (not counting pretenders like the Royole Flexpai). And even though it had more than its fair share of flaws, you could see its potential. Over the next couple of years, Samsung refined its flagship foldable with things like IPX8 water resistance, a more durable design and native stylus support. More recently, however, the pace of innovation has started to slow as more iterative improvements and fewer major upgrades have come to fill out the spec sheet. It's a similar situation on the new Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 5: While many of its upgrades including the brighter main screen are nice to have, they’re also kind of superfluous. Even the one big change for 2023 – Samsung’s new Flex hinge – doesn’t really change the way you use the device; it just makes it a bit thinner. When you consider that the price still sits at $1,800, it feels like Samsung’s Z Fold line – and possibly the category as a whole – is losing momentum.