When the Samsung Galaxy Z Flip 7 arrives, likely this July, it could be a pretty decent upgrade over the Z Flip 5 I own. It\u2019ll reportedly have a slightly bigger battery<\/a> than the Flip 6, which had a slightly bigger one than the Flip 5, plus a much bigger outer screen<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Unfortunately, I<\/em> can\u2019t wait a few more months. After a year and a half with a Flip, I\u2019ve reached my breaking point.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n To be clear, my phone never cracked. My folding Flip never even sprouted a green line of doom<\/a> along its crease. The factory screen protector did begin to peel, but $30 and a trip to uBreakiFix made that problem go away. <\/p>\n<\/div>\n No, the end came for my Flip when it stopped lasting the day and started waking me up at night. The battery is constantly dying faster than it should, and ever since the last big software update, the sleep and do-not-disturb modes no longer block notification sounds. I can\u2019t figure out either one, and the Flip\u2019s unique benefits no longer feel good enough for me to deal with them anymore. <\/p>\n<\/div>\n On battery: I\u2019ve seen this phone reach the 80 percent mark by 9 in the morning<\/em>, and threaten to die by 9PM. I practically don\u2019t even use the phone when I\u2019m at work, and yet now I feel like it always needs to be plugged in. <\/p>\n<\/div>\n I always knew I\u2019d be making sacrifices to get a phone that folds into a pocket square. The Flip 5\u2019s twin batteries have a total rated capacity of 13.92 watt-hours, less than even the smallest Galaxy S23 phone (14.68Wh) that shipped that same year. But using it wasn\u2019t always this bad.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n At first, my Flip always made it to my bedside charger each night. Later, I could easily get it there by simply using it a little less in the day, turning off AR in Pok\u00e9mon Go<\/em>, or turning on battery saver mode in the evenings. <\/p>\n<\/div>\n But after a year, even deleting Pok\u00e9mon Go<\/em> entirely wasn\u2019t enough. When I flew to CES this January, I realized I couldn\u2019t afford to carry this phone at a tradeshow. I had to move all my accounts to a borrowed phone just to do my job. I can\u2019t swear to it, but I certainly feel like I can trace reduced battery life to Samsung\u2019s One UI 6.1 software update that arrived last April, and I wouldn\u2019t be the only one<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n It could just be the battery prematurely aging, I suppose, but I did a few cursory checks: Samsung\u2019s internal diagnostics say the battery is \u201cGood.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n I\u2019ve had phones with weak battery before. There was a time I carried around spare battery packs for my Motorola Droid 2, swapping mid-day, every day, until I moved on. But phones with battery doors made that easy<\/a>; those batteries were also cheap. And while I could probably manage to permanently replace my Z Flip 5\u2019s batteries with a bit of work<\/a>, I\u2019d be risking a fragile phone that feels deficient in other ways, too. <\/p>\n<\/div>\n I\u2019m not talking about the crease, which I got used to quite quickly, or the side-mounted fingerprint sensor that misses for me almost as often as it hits. Nor am I talking about the camera, though yes, you do sacrifice in the camera department with Samsung\u2019s folding phones. I knew that out of the gate. <\/p>\n<\/div>\n Mostly, I\u2019m talking about how Samsung really has yet to embrace the potential of the Flip, and how pointless its outside screen can feel after the novelty wears.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n When people ask me what I actually prefer about the Z Flip, I\u2019ve wound up saying it\u2019s really about how it fits in my pocket, and how awesome it feels to fold. It\u2019s a square when closed, so it stays put in my pocket and doesn\u2019t jut out.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n But it\u2019s not actually a small phone<\/a>, and it\u2019s not a particularly good one-handed phone because there\u2019s no one-handed way to open it. I mostly stopped trying after the tenth time I fumbled it to the ground.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n And I do find myself opening it almost every time I use it, because it\u2019s almost never worth bothering with the Flip\u2019s cover screen. While it\u2019s actually larger than the screens on early Android handsets, Samsung simply won\u2019t let you<\/a> use the outer screen like a proper Android phone.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Before you ask: yes, I downloaded Samsung\u2019s Good Lock app and used its MultiStar sub-app to painstakingly load each of my most used Android apps onto that screen, one at a time, but it\u2019s almost always more efficient to simply open up the phone because they\u2019re harder to use and harder to launch. Most apps don\u2019t scale properly, and it takes an extra swipe to start them; more than one if I swipe the wrong direction first. <\/p>\n<\/div>\n With the cover screen, Samsung inexplicably makes you swipe left instead of up for apps, and right instead of down for notifications. Even though the bar at the bottom looks like my app drawer handle, it\u2019s actually a Samsung Pay shortcut instead, and it still trips me up to this day.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n For many months, I forced myself to use the cover screen to sign my kids out of school, to pull up my 2FA authenticator codes, to watch for my Uber driver, to remotely open my garage door. But the only thing I can actually do better there is selfies, which let you point the good lens towards yourself while you frame your shot with the cover screen. Even so, I think I\u2019ve gotten more use out of this Game Boy Advance party trick<\/a> than all the cover apps I\u2019ve used combined. <\/p>\n<\/div>\n So, after CES in January, I started hunting for my next. I hoped maybe I could find a small phone again, but no luck<\/a>. On Reddit, however, I saw a trend: many Galaxy Z Flip owners were discussing whether they should abandon folding phones, now that Samsung was suddenly offering $500 in trade-in credits towards a Galaxy S25 instead. <\/p>\n<\/div>\n After confirming that the vanilla Galaxy S25<\/a> is indeed the smallest high-end Android phone you can buy today, I was intrigued. After hearing good things about the battery life with this year\u2019s model and its 15.16Wh pack, I decided to jump on the deal.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n The S25 doesn\u2019t feel like a small phone in my pocket, I\u2019m afraid. It feels a little boring compared to my Flip, and maybe I\u2019ll be complaining about Samsung\u2019s latest software update a year from today! But I needed a new phone. <\/p>\n<\/div>\n So far, the camera\u2019s much better, and the battery life seems great. As I write these words, it\u2019s 5:40PM, and my lightly used phone is at 80 percent. There\u2019s plenty left in the tank.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Photography by Sean Hollister \/ The Verge<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n![\"My](\"https:\/\/platform.theverge.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2025\/03\/samsung-z-flip-5-sean-hollister-verge-331A1108.jpg?quality=90&strip=all&crop=0%2C0%2C100%2C100&w=2400\"\/)
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