What you need to know
- The Galaxy Z Fold 5's camera takes pictures almost instantly without perceivable shutter lag.
- For years, Samsung phones have had a period of lag between the time the shutter button is pressed and when the viewfinder would update.
- Samsung previously improved the speed with the Galaxy S23 Ultra, and this looks to be a further improvement on that phone.
Samsung Galaxy phone owners will know that while Samsung's camera quality and software features have been top-notch for a long time, the camera app wasn't always the speediest app in the world. Taking a picture would regularly result in a slight delay which could cause a blurry image or make it difficult to take pictures back-to-back quickly.
That all looks to be changing with the Galaxy Z Fold 5, a phone that, by all accounts, looked to be pretty boring in the camera department. I've had the phone in my hands for the past few days and, during our review process, noticed that the shutter speed looked to be improved over the Z Fold 4. That's great news to anyone who might be looking to preorder a Z Fold 5 this year.
Sure enough, when I tested them back-to-back in the same environment, the Z Fold 5's shutter speed was a lot faster. Here's a quick video to showcase the effect, which was most often present in dimly lit environments.
As you can see from the video, the Z Fold 4 has a noticeable pause after tapping the shutter button. The viewfinder — the part of the camera app that displays what it's about to take a picture of — completely freezes up for a portion of a second. The result is the inability to take multiple photos in a row, not to mention the general feeling of slowness on an $1,800 phone.
By contrast, the Z Fold 5 takes a photo and keeps the viewfinder updated the entire time, allowing me to quickly tap the shutter button over and over again as many times as I want. We'll keep testing it over the coming weeks to make sure, but early impressions are certainly extremely positive.
Samsung previously improved this speed with the Galaxy S23 Ultra, although that phone still struggled to actually capture clear pictures of moving objects. We'll be putting that to the test during our Z Fold 5 camera review and will report back soon with the results. For now, though, this looks like it's more of a camera improvement over the Z Fold 4 than we initially thought.
The Galaxy Z Fold 5 isn't just slimmed down, it also features important processor improvements that help everything from battery life to camera quality and beyond. Plus, you can get that amazing new S Pen.
