Benchmarks Reveal Dark Secret About the Samsung Galaxy Flip 4
Preliminary benchmarks on the Samsung Galaxy Z Flip 4 and Z Fold 4 reveal two phones with powerful processors and the ability to run games at up to 120 frames per second—but the Z Flip 4 has a key flaw.
In my early tests (and yet to be checked with Samsung), the Galaxy Z Flip 4 throttles down harder than any other phone I've seen when under heavy load.
Both the Samsung Galaxy Z Flip 4 and Z Fold 4 use Qualcomm's Snapdragon 8+ Gen 1 processors in all regions of the world, Samsung says. The Snapdragon 8+ Gen 1 is claimed to be 10% faster than the Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 in the Galaxy S22, and 30% more power efficient. (We'll see about the power efficiency in our battery test.)
According to the utility CPU-Z, the 8+ Gen 1 has four 2GHz cores, three 2.75GHz cores, and one 3.2GHz prime core. The Asus ROG Phone 6 Pro and OnePlus 10T also run the 8+ Gen 1.
On Geekbench, you see the boost, in which the Snapdragon 8+ Gen 1 phones perform better than the Galaxy S22+. On PCMark's application test, the improvement isn't as great, but it's still there. So yes, these phones are fast and powerful.
Our CPU throttling test benchmark shows the Flip 4's Achilles' heel: The phone chokes down performance fast.
The Flip 4 and Fold 4 started with roughly the same performance on the 15-minute test. But after a few minutes, the Flip pulled way back, while the Fold didn't throttle nearly as hard. (It's worth noting the OnePlus 10T in Performance mode throttled less than any Samsung I tested.)
This bore out in a brief gaming session, too. I played five minutes of Alto's Odyssey, a light-duty casual game, followed by five minutes of Genshin Impact, a high-performance game. Genshin Impact was set to medium graphics and 60fps. I used WeTest PerfDog
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