Samsung Galaxy S23 Ultra vs. Galaxy Z Fold 4: Two powerhouses with very different purposes
The Galaxy S23 Ultra is the powerhouse you’ve come to expect from Samsung. With a new 200MP primary camera, the most recent chipset, and the S-Pen inclusion, it is the best high-end smartphone for many people.
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While it offers a less traditional phone experience, the Galaxy Z Fold 4 is the best foldable on the market. It’s powerful, and thanks to its ability to fold out into a tablet, it offers an unparalleled productivity experience. This phone won’t let you down if you can swallow the incredibly high price.
Premium Samsung phones are always fun to use, and theGalaxy S23 UltraandZ Fold 4are the best of what the company currently has to offer. Both phones have powerful processors, good cameras, the best displays in their market segment, and fantastic software. The S23 Ultra is a business-as-usual smartphone, while the Z Fold 4 gives us a look to the future with its folding display that becomes a pocketable tablet. If you demand the latest and greatest, both these phones mark some of thebest Samsung phonesyou can buy now, but which one is right for you?
Price, availability, and specs
The Galaxy S23 Ultra and the Galaxy Z Fold 4 are widely available on all the major carriers in the US, Europe, and more. The Galaxy S23 starts at $1,200 for the model with 8GB of RAM at 256GB of storage and becomes even more expensive if you bump it up to 12GB of RAM with either 512GB or 1TB of storage. The Z Fold 4 is a whopping $1,800 for the lowest configuration, which comes with 12GB of RAM at 256 GB of storage. As for the rest of the specs, you can see them detailed below:
Hardware and design
In many ways, the biggest difference between the Galaxy S23 Ultra and Z Fold 4 is the design since both phones have entirely different form factors.
The S23 Ultra is a standard smartphone. It’s a huge smartphone, but a normal phone nonetheless. The QHD+ 6.8-inch AMOLED display is gorgeous, and the 1-120Hz adaptive refresh rate makes it efficient, too. As impressive as the display is, it can’t compare to what the Z Fold 4 has to offer.
The Fold 4 has two screens, and they’re both excellent. Both of them are 120Hz, with the cover screen using a tall and narrow 6.2-inch AMOLED panel and the inner screen using a 7.6-inch foldable display. Both are also sharp and bright and suited to different tasks. The outer display is bad for media consumption but perfect for one-handed tasks like quickly replying to someone. Open the phone up, and you have a small tablet suited for both work and play.
Being a foldable screen, it’s not made of that same Gorilla Glass Victus+ you find on the outer display or the slightly newer Gorilla Glass Victus 2 on the Galaxy S23 Ultra, so you may’t expect it to hold up against nearly as much punishment. The inner display is prone to scratches and scuffs due to the softer material, and anyone choosing to buy one will want to be very mindful of that fact.
The Z Fold 4 is also a little less dust-resistant as it only has an IPX8 rating, while the S23 Ultra carries an IP68, which is not surprising given the giant hinge in the middle of the phone. However, Samsung has come a long way since its first folding phone, making this the best hinge design the company has put on the Z Fold.
Both phones support the S-Pen, Samsung’s signature stylus that you can use to make notes, navigate around your favorite apps, draw, or complete plenty of other tasks. The Galaxy S23 Ultra comes with an S-Pen that can neatly tuck into the phone, making sure you always have it with you, while the Z Fold 4 requires you to buy it separately. You’ll also need areally good case for the Galaxy Z Fold 4with an S-Pen holder.
Software and performance
The Galaxy Z Fold 4 uses a Qualcomm Snapdragon 8+ Gen 1, while the S22 Ultra uses the new Snapdragon 8 Gen 2. On paper, the Gen 2 powering the S23 Ultra seems like the clear winner. However, the chipsets are both so powerful that for the day-to-day task, you’re unlikely going to notice much of a difference between the two. In other words, both of these phones are beasts that can handle anything you throw at it. Last year, the S22 Ultra did tend to run quite a bit hotter than the Z Fold 4 when performing intensive tasks. Thankfully, that isn’t the case this time. The 8 Gen 2 in the S23 Ultra doesn’t put a foot wrong, always running fast and cool.
The Galaxy Z Fold 4 launched with Android 12L but has since been updated to Samsung’s One UI 5.1, the company’s skin on Android 13. The S23 Ultra launched with One Ui 5.1/ Android 13, so both phones have feature parity apart from the extras given to foldables. Both phones have been promised to receive four major OS updates and five years of security updates, so they will be supported for the next several years. Of course, the Galaxy S23 Ultra will get one more OS update than the Z Fold 4 since it just came out in 2023.
Cameras: Which is better?
The Galaxy Z Fold 4 marks the first time the Samsung foldable has had a very good set of cameras, sporting a triple camera system on the back of the device. The 50MP primary camera on the back is the same as last year’sGalaxy S22+. It will take great quality photos for you in most lighting conditions, and thanks to being able to unfold the phone, you can even use the outer display as a selfie viewfinder, a neat but useful trick. The other cameras on the back of the Z Fold 4 — 12MP f/2.2 ultra-wide and 10MP f/2.4 telephoto — do their jobs reasonably well, making the entire camera array a nice addition to the impressive hardware.
Of course, the best part of the Fold 4 camera is Flex Mode. The hinge has been designed to hold most angles; you could prop up the phone to use it hands-free, regardless of where you might find yourself. Once you are done, you can easily use hand gestures to take snapshots of yourself, your friends, or your surrounds with ease.
The Galaxy S23 Ultra got a big camera upgrade this year since its main sensor is now 200MP (up to 108MP in last year’s model) which will take some massive photos. The camera on theGalaxy S22 Ultralast year was one of your favorite parts of using the phone, and the S23 Ultra seems to improve on that experience even more.
Having two zoom lenses on the S23 Ultra does make the camera a little better at taking really nice portrait photos when compared to the Z Fold 4. The 3X lens gives your shots nice natural bokeh, but the 10X optical zoom can easily help you take some of the coolest shots you’ve ever taken with a smartphone camera.
All in all, very serious phone photographers will likely gravitate towards the S23 Ultra (rightfully so), but both phones have a pretty great camera system that most people will be happy to have with them.
Battery and charging
On paper, you’d expect the battery life for the S23 Ultra to be the same as the S22 Ultra, given that they both have the same 5,000mAh battery. In truth, the 8 Gen 2 runs much cooler, so you’ll see a small improvement over the North American S22 Ultra. If you’re from other parts of the world that got the Exynos 2200 S22 Ultra, then the improvements this year are night and day due to the worldwide use of the Snapdragon chipset.
Usage dictates what type of battery life you will see, making the Z Fold 4 hard to judge. In our review, we never found the battery to be lacking, even though it has a 4,400mAh battery powering it. However, if you use that giant inner screen a lot throughout the day, it’s possible you may find it’s a bit on the low side. Still, our inclination is that most people will be satisfied with its battery life.
Charging up both devices works differently as the Galaxy S23 Ultra can get up to 45W when wired, whereas the Z Fold 4 can only get to 25W; however, wireless charging remains the same at 15W on both devices.
Which device is right for you?
Usually, it would be easy for us to pick one phone to recommend over the other, but things are somewhat more challenging in this case. The S23 Ultra and Z Fold 4 are different phones made for different people, so you need to figure out which one is best for you.
Owning both, I’ve chosen to keep the S23 Ultra in my pocket. The Z Fold 4 is also a great device that I love using; in fact, I keep it in my other pocket when I want a bigger screen. But that isn’t something the average person can do, so the reasons I’ve stuck primarily to the S23 Ultra are important.
In the five months I’ve owned the S23 Ultra, I have only killed the battery once, and that was a day of using it to pay my way through the London Underground, using Google Maps to navigate around the city, and sharing music to two sets of earbuds at once so my wife and I could share music. The Fold 4 has a good battery for a foldable, but it won’t keep up with this. Add to that the fact the S Pen is included and the amazing camera prowess, and you have a titan of an Android phone.
But if you’re OK with charging your phone in the late evening before bed, three “OK” cameras are enough for you, and you don’t mind carrying your S Pen externally in the case, then the Fold 4 is well worth looking at. It’s a fantastic phone — the best foldable currently available — and it’s a joy to use. This is the phone to buy if you’re constantly swapping between multiple apps, watch a lot of video, and enjoy a large canvas for writing and doodling on.
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