There is a particular tribe of men amongst us who have a hawk eye for noticing the number plates of vehicles that drive past them, and then deciphering the inherent information. From the number they would be able to tell you the state, city and even the area in the city where the vehicle is registered. It is a useless kind of talent, but I find their sense of awareness fascinating. I hardly notice the make of the cars that drive past me, leave alone the number plates.
Similarly, there are some people who can decipher a person's vintage from the first five digits of their mobile. They somehow seem to know which series of numbers was launched in which period by the mobile providers. One of them, who I ran into recently, was able to guess the year that l got my first mobile phone and number with a fair amount of accuracy. It was indeed a long time ago, a Sony phone with a flip top cover that protected its tiny screen, and a long vertical keypad with extra-large digits. It was a time when you paid Rs 16 a minute for a call, and a Rs 10,000 monthly mobile bill was quite common.
Sony was a dominant force in the mobile phone business in the early days but was soon eclipsed by the Finnish pulp maker turned telecom major Nokia with its sleeker designs and better interface. We all became fans in a short period of time. But that love affair didn't last for long. Like many in the journalism business at that time, I also shifted to Blackberry. Its qwerty keyboard was a pleasure to type on, the email facility, and BBM—the original group chat application made it indispensable.
The Blackberry hold was strong enough for me not to be swayed by Steve Jobs’ global marketing campaign announcing the arrival of the iPhone in 2008. The era of the smartphone, the touch-phone, and iOS was here. But I was never one to be excited about embracing new technology in its early days. I didn't view it as anything more than a novelty. Moreover, I had never been a fan of Apple—had never taken to the iMac because I always found Windows to be a better writing tool. The first Apple product I took to was the iPod, maybe because there was no alternative that was as good. The iPhone no doubt was a design masterpiece, but I found the Blackberry still to be more functional and easier to use.
The detritus of the author's phone journey
Google launched its Android OS later in the same year as the iPhone, but the first of the phones that used it would come only a year later. I remember checking out an HTC that was the earliest adopter of this rival to the iOS and being impressed by the ease of use of the interface. Soon touch phones were everywhere. Apple, HTC, Motorola, Ericsson, LG, and Samsung with its Android-based Galaxy series were all trying to outgun each other with new launches every year, even in India. Like everyone else, I knew the future was in touch-phones, but I was still reluctant to give up my Blackberry and its highly haptic, and user-friendly physical keyboard.
My first touch-screen experience though would come soon enough. Apple launched its iPad in early 2010, and it was made available in India a few months later. My wife presented me with one soon after, and I fell in love with it almost immediately. It is the only iOS-based device I developed a passion for. With a 9.7-inch touch screen, I thought of it as being revolutionary in terms of portability. They called it the ‘tablet’. You could surf the net, listen to music on iTunes, watch movies on YouTube, and read books and magazines on apps that were pouring out of the Apple App store. Even books on the iPad Kindle app felt easier to read than on Kindle itself. The only aberration was that writing on it, besides catching up one mails, was cumbersome. But it was a game changer amongst handheld devices as far as I was concerned.
Samsung, then still a small player in the consumer electronic market launched its surprisingly small tablet, 7-inch Samsung Galaxy Tab 2010 later that year at the IFA, the annual international electronic fair in Berlin. But not many people, including me, noticed. We were all subsumed in the global hoopla around the iPad, and Samsung was not a big and respected name in those days. But they were indeed on to something.
This was a time when people were still making a clear distinction between mobile phones, where the average display size was around 3.5 inches, and the so-called tablets. Though you could install apps on the smartphones (including social media ones like Facebook and Instagram) the small size of the screen was not conducive for sustained reading or viewing. The phone was still largely meant for calls and messaging, and the occasional emails. In my case, I had my Blackberry as the phone, and the iPad for reading and surfing.
Galaxy Note 3 which was launched in September 2013
This is when Samsung came up with their pioneering ‘phablet’, a phone and tablet combination called the Galaxy Note with a 5.3 screen that was a giant by the standards of the phone sizes of that time. Like the Galaxy Tab in the previous year, it was launched on the sidelines of the IFA in Berlin. This time the world took notice. It seems people were waiting for a device that was large enough to use their apps comfortably, yet of the size that could be used with one hand. A million pieces of the Note were sold in the first two months, and ten million over the next six months. Samsung had arrived on the world stage and the Note was its flagship.
It arrived in India sometime around 2012. Though there were some who thought of the size as too big for a phone, I was hooked the first time I got one in my hand when it arrived in India in 2012. It easily fitted in the front pocket of my pants, and that was all that mattered to me.
It had everything that mattered, a touch screen, fast processing capability through its 1.4 GHz dual-core processor, an eight-megapixel camera that could film in full HD, and most importantly a neatly tucked away stylus called S Pen that could do quite a lot including take-notes, draw and add graphic element on images, etc. There had been devices with styluses earlier, but nothing as compact and functional.
Samsung had already launched Note 2 by the time I bought my first one in 2012. This one had an even bigger 5.5-inch screen, and a better S pen, and new utilities like a split-screen capability. So, it was goodbye to my Blackberry and iPad, both at the same time. Note 2 did everything that these two devices did, and much more. But what I liked best about it was the ergonomics of the new size. You could hold it in your palm and type with one finger. Writing on the phone was never so easy.
Samsung has since launched a new numbered Note every year. Note 10 came in 2019 (they skipped Note 6), after which they jumped to Note 20 in 2020.Of course, I didn't have to buy all of them because a phone usually lasts a minimum of two to three years in my hands. Suffice is to say that a larger part of my daily life has progressively revolved around the various iterations of the Note for 12 years now.
I got increasingly dependent on it with every passing year. Besides the usual photography, video, social media, digital payments, shopping, banking, etc, I use it for stock trading, my meetings on Teams, Zoom, et Al, track insurance policies, recording and transcribing work-related interviews, reading newspapers, surfing the web, and even reading books on the Kindle app. Most important of all, I do all my writing (including this piece) and editing on the phone. I got so good at single index-finger typing that I wrote my two books in the last four years entirely on my phone. Of course, it helped that Google Docs on Android is, in my opinion, the best app for writers, who can handle writing on the phone. Its ease and functionality are unmatched by any other writing app.
Thus, it was with trepidation that I read, soon after I bought the then newly released Note 20 in 2021, that Samsung had decided to discontinue the Note series, and instead focus on its newly launched Fold and Flip phones. According to Samsung President Rho’s statement, “Instead of unveiling a new Galaxy Note this time around, we will further broaden beloved Note features to more Samsung Galaxy devices.”
So, after the battery of my Note 20 started deteriorating a few months ago, my obvious choice would have been to move to the newly released Galaxy Ultra S24, a heavier, larger, and faster phone with a more powerful battery and an S Pen. That is when a review piece of the Galaxy Z Flip 6 was handed to me. It seemed an ideal time to consider shifting away from the Note. I had, after all, used it for more than a decade, so it was time to look at what a new generation of phones had to offer.
I have tracked the various versions of Samsung Folds and Flips since they were first launched in 2019 and 2020 respectively, in the reviews that various writers wrote for this magazine. As a potential user, my big concern about the fold, beyond the problem of the crease marks at the fold that everyone was talking about, was its size—the thickness, and the extra weight on account of it. The first version was nearly double the thickness of my Note 20. They have since then progressively made it thinner, but it still is quite big to carry in one’s pocket. Besides, there was the question over the utility of the unfolded screen beyond reading, watching movies or a presentation. But for writing and messaging, it had to be used in the folded format. So, I didn't think it was a phone for me till they got the folded thickness to under 9 mm.
The Flip on the other handheld much more of a promise for me. Despite its considerable thickness when folded, it was still a very compact device that could be easily accommodated in the pant pocket. But there was the concern about functionality of the clamshell hinge as well as the crease marks at the fold. So, overall I had decided to stay away from both the Z Fold and Flip.
The Flip 6 review piece which I have been using for nearly two months though has turned out to be a different story. The crease marks seem to have disappeared. Though some reviewers have talked about it being visible at some angles, I haven't seen any so far. Maybe my eyes are not as discerning as that of hardcore tech reviewer. Similarly, the build quality, as expected from Samsung, looks very good with the Gorilla glass back. They also seem to have taken care of the hinge issues that had dogged the earlier versions. The top half, which is the cover in the folded format, stays firm and stable in any angle making it a pleasure to use with the keyboard when writing for long periods.
Samsung Marketing Director Rebecca Hirst unveiling Samsung's first Galaxy Z Flip in 2020 in San Francisco, California
The 7.6-inch display size makes the phone look even bigger than bigger ally is. While its thickness of just 5.6 mm, makes it very light and comfortable to hold in the palm when writing while unfolded. Though the specs indicate that the display resolution is not as good as the S24, I didn't notice much of a difference because I was upgrading from a Note 20. In fact, as I can see, the refresh rate is much better, and so is the processing power and memory. The Qualcomm Snapdragon 8Gen 3 processor also provides the Flip with the much talked about AI capabilities. Additionally, the 12 GB RAM, and the new generation Android V14 OS gives it a feel that is far superior to the phone I was using till now.
What I was disappointed with though was the battery life. The 4000mAH battery makes it a rather underpowered phone. With all the apps that I was using, it barely lasted 8 to 9 hours on full charge. Though much better than my Note 20, I expected much more. Some reviewers have also talked about the phone’s 50-MP main camera being an under performer as compared to other phones in the same category, but I didn't notice the difference. The details in the pictures and the videos that I shot were far sharper than what I was used to with the Note. Besides, the folding nature of the phone allows many more camera angles possible making it very versatile from an imaging perspective.
Samsung has integrated many AI-based innovations that are nifty and stand out as the main highlights of this phone. There is an image enhancer called Portrait Studio which allows you to play around with portrait pictures by adding graphic elements on them, or even transform them into sketches, cartoons and paintings. With a feature called Sketch to Image you can create professional looking sketches using even badly done sketches as prompts. All that the phone has to recognise is the sketch you are trying to draw.
A text-based AI tool that I found very handy is called the Composer which is part of the keyboard. It suggests words and sentences as responses when replying toe mails or creating social media posts. And finally, the most useful of all the AI tools in this phone is a feature called the Interpreter. It allows for instant face-to-face conversations between two people speaking different languages, through live interpretation. With the phone in half-folded format, whatever is spoken in any language by anyone facing the phone’s cover window with the camera is picked by the microphone and gets translated into text, which is visible in the inside display in the user’s language of choice. Similarly, what the user says gets instantly translated into the other person's language and gets displayed in text on the cover window for him or her to see. The utility of this function is going to be a major USP for this phone, especially amongst international travellers. I see it becoming a game changer.
The3.4-inch cover display of Z6 has come under criticism from some quarters for not providing the kind of user experience as those of rivals offering similar phones like Huawei, Motorola, Honor, Oppo etc. Again, for me it didn't make much of a difference, though one does have to go through a convoluted process using the Samsung Good Lock app to move the apps to the cover. In a recent report Samsung officials have been quoted as saying that they are working towards making the process smoother by providing support for apps like Gmail and Microsoft Outlook to be made available on the cover display, followed by others.
As a first-time user, on the whole, I have found this phone to be an excellent step up over my Note 20. And I am sure with software upgrades the experience will only get better in the future. My only concern is on the durability of the hinge of the flip function, whether it would last the two or three years that I would use a phone like this. And the same goes for the much-feared crease at the fold of the display—whether it will start showing up after some time. Considering the confidence in the future of the Fold and Flip phone amongst Samsung and other phone makers, my fear is probably unfounded. Only time will tell.
