Samsung’s Galaxy Fold 3 had to face a plethora of tough challenges to function. It’s an actual foldable smartphone with a display that bends straight down the middle, that’s pretty crazy in its own right. But then, there’s the challenge of making a durable hinge and fitting all of the regular smartphone components… somewhere.
Of course, we ran it through our tests to get a clearer picture on how the phone performs with the most popular tasks — web browsing, video watching, and gaming. Let’s take a closer look.
Galaxy Z Fold 3 battery test: web browsing
Galaxy Z Fold 3 battery test: YouTube video
Then, we moved on to an infinite YouTube playlist and let the phone run until it is fully drained. Again, you can see that the Fold 3 wasn’t performing as well as other Samsung heavy-hitters, but the difference here is not so drastic. In fact, one might argue that 7 hours of video playback on the Galaxy Z Fold 3 is more than enough — you can literally burn through your whole work day by binge-watching YouTube videos. Also, don’t do that.
Galaxy Z Fold 3 battery test: gaming
What good is a big, big foldable screen if you can’t use it to score the occasional headshot? Well, you can definitely use the Galaxy Z Fold 3 for gaming, as most games scale appropriately and look big and immersive.
Galaxy Z Fold 3 battery endurance: final thoughts
As you can see from these tests, the Galaxy Z Fold 3 is capable of some impressive screen-on times. It almost looks like it should be able to last two days if you don’t use the phone all that much, doesn’t it?
Unfortunately, it wasn’t so in our experience with the phone. Since Samsung’s software is so feature-rich and there’s always stuff going on in the background, we found that the Z Fold 3 would lose battery in standby at a rate, which didn’t allow us to enjoy that “two-day battery life”. Use it or not — the Z Fold 3 will last you a day, day and a half at the most. But hey, at least it does last, right?
