Best foldable phones 2024: Flexible phones to flip out about

The Samsung Galaxy Z Flip 5 is a pocket-friendly flip phone that folds down to about the size of a Post-it note. Upgraded for 2023 with a new gapless design and a larger outer screen, it’s the best folding phone you can buy right now.

The clamshell design opens vertically at any angle, which allows for some fun camera tricks. When shooting a picture or video with the phone unfolded, your subject can see themselves on the cover screen’s viewfinder. Prop the phone open on a table for a group selfie and you can use the cover screen to more easily get everyone into frame. Software tricks such as raising your hand to trigger the shot round off a very polished camera experience.

The enlarged outer display makes the Galaxy Z Flip 5 a whole lot more useful when closed, with more information available at a glance, and the redesigned hinge gives the phone a neater, more finished appearance for 2023.

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Google’s first ever foldable exceeded all expectations, delivering an intuitive, wider-format design that gives the Galaxy Z Fold some serious competition. The Pixel Fold is a well-constructed piece of tech: a miniature tablet that folds down into a traditionally sized phone that’s just as useable when folded as it is unfolded.

As with all folding phones, there are the usual caveats. Google’s own apps are designed to work well with the larger screen, letting you drag and drop documents and pictures between multitasked windows, for example, but most third-party apps designed for regular phone screens don’t make use of the extra screen real-estate.

But if you’re willing to pay a premium for a luxury smartphone, the Pixel Fold is the best book-style foldable you’ll find, featuring great cameras, bright screens, Google Assistant smarts and an unbeatable software experience.

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Samsung pioneered the first mainstream folding phone, with the original Samsung Galaxy Z Fold, in 2019. The first-generation iteration was predictably flawed, prone to damage and notorious for collecting debris between the flexible glass and the phone’s display. Four years and four phones later, Samsung has hit a comfortable stride with a foldable we can recommend to anyone interested in the form factor.

The 2023 model is the slimmest, lightest, brightest and fastest in the series, naturally enough. The Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 5 is a powerful smartphone with a giant, impressive, unfolding screen. The opening and closing action feels sturdy, the camera is decent, the display looks amazing and is well-protected against dirt and damage.

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When Motorola resurrected the Razr brand back in 2019, the all-screen flip phone was considered something of a kitsch retro novelty. Since then, the Razr phone has evolved and improved to become the main competitor to the Samsung Galaxy Z Flip series of clamshell-style folding phones.

The Razr 40 Ultra boasts a much bigger cover display than Samsung’s latest offering, with holepunch cutouts for the camera array allowing for an outer case that’s almost all screen. The processor is last-gen technology, but still fast enough that most users won’t spot the difference in speed. Battery life is excellent, build quality is sturdy, and the cameras perform well in a range of lighting conditions.

Unlike the Samsung Galaxy Z Flip 5, the Motorola Razr 40 Ultra isn’t rated as being able to survive a drop into water, but it is rated as dust-resistant – a more serious concern for folding phones, with all of their delicate moving parts.

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