Motorola ThinkPhone vs. Samsung Galaxy Z Flip 4: Full Comparison with Features, Specs, and Benefits

Motorola ThinkPhone vs. Samsung Galaxy Z Flip 4, which of the latest flagship Android phones is worth your time? If you’ve been waiting for something truly extraordinary to come along before upgrading your old phone, now might be a perfect time. With such creative use of cutting-edge technology on both fronts, these phones offer something for everyone, but how do they compare?

Today, we’ll be taking a look at the Lenovo ThinkPhone by Motorola and the Galaxy Z Flip 4 by Samsung. Both of these smartphones feature the newest offerings from the Android platform, but they also differ in their primary use cases, as the ThinkPhone is aimed at business users, while the Galaxy Z Flip 4 is aimed at general consumers and mobile tech enthusiasts. 

We’ll look at both smartphones head-to-head to help show you their similarities and differences and ultimately decide which one is better for you!

Motorola ThinkPhone vs. Samsung Galaxy Z Flip 4: Side-By-Side Comparison

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• Storage capacity 128GB or 256GB
• The main screen is 6.7" Dynamic AMOLED, the cover screen is 1.9" Super AMOLED
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• Fast charging 3,700mAh battery

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03/28/2023 07:37 pm GMT

Motorola ThinkPhone vs. Samsung Galaxy Z Flip 4: What’s the Difference?

Display Comparison

The Galaxy Z Flip 4 and the ThinkPhone both feature excellent displays. The Galaxy Z Flip 4 features a large 6.7” AMOLED display with a native 1080p resolution, while the ThinkPhone features a 6.6” pOLED display with a native 1080p resolution. 

Both smartphones support HDR10+ content, are capable of delivering 1,000 nits of brightness, and provide a smooth and fast visual experience thanks to a high refresh rate of 120 Hz in the Galaxy Z Flip 4 and 144 Hz in the ThinkPhone. Streaming content looks great on both phones as they both come with Widevine L1 DRM support, allowing users to stream their favorite content from platforms like Netflix, Disney+, and Amazon Prime Video in the highest possible quality.

The big difference between the two displays comes down to the unique design of the Galaxy Z Flip 4. The latest addition to Samsung’s Galaxy Z Flip series of smartphones features a thinner and lighter hinge that allows the screen to fold, delivering the flip that the name implies. The hinge, however, is still noticeable when the phone is folded closed. One neat feature that you get is when the phone is closed; there is a cover display that offers basic information like time and weather and provides access to the Samsung Wallet app. 

Design and Build

Design-wise, there’s a pretty large difference between the Galaxy Z Flip 4 compared to the Lenovo ThinkPhone. The Lenovo ThinkPhone brings the iconic ThinkPad design aesthetic over to the smartphone, providing a rugged and durable smartphone that is surprisingly thin and lightweight. At a first glance, the ThinkPhone looks like someone took a typical Android smartphone and placed it into a Lenovo-themed case. Unfortunately, the button placement is in all the usual spots, but no expanded memory card reader or headphone jack exists. 

The Galaxy Z Flip takes the flip phone design of yesteryear and brings it to the modern touchscreen age of smartphones. There’s a diverse range of color options offered by Samsung, allowing you a high degree of customization that Motorola does not offer regarding the ThinkPhone. With the Galaxy Z Flip 4 closed into its clamshell design, a large side power button doubles as a fingerprint sensor. The volume controls rest on the clamshell’s side as well. Unfortunately, there is no headphone jack for the Galaxy Z Flip. While the previous generations of the Galaxy Z Flip 4 revolutionized smartphone design, the Flip 4 instead focuses on refining the previous generations into an improved product.

Hardware Features

In addition to their great displays, both the ThinkPhone and Galaxy Z Flip 4 come with impressive hardware. Both phones feature the powerful SnapDragon 8+ Gen 1 mobile processor, one of the best, if not the best, mobile processors available now, featuring 3.0 GHz performance. Working with the SnapDragon processor, both the ThinkPhone and the Galaxy Z Flip 4 feature the new speedy standard of RAM, with 8GB of LPDDR5 memory, respectively.

Coming with the SnapDragon 8+ Gen 1 processor, both phones feature the Qualcomm Adreno 730 GPU. While neither of these phones is geared toward gaming, they can handle mobile games and look great. The bright displays and a capable mobile GPU provide a relatively smooth mobile gaming experience, especially thanks to the ThinkPhone and Galaxy Z Flip 4’s high refresh rates of 144 and 120, respectively. 

Camera-wise, the ThinkPhone features two forward-facing cameras with a 50MP sensor and one rear-facing camera with a 32MP sensor. The camera features the standard Motorola camera settings and a PRO mode which allows you to shoot RAW photography with the ThinkPhone. Additionally, the phone has a pretty impressive video performance, with the ability to record 8K video at 30 fps. 

Taking a look at the Galaxy Z Flip 4, there’s a 12MP front-facing camera and a 12MP rear-facing camera. Picture image quality looks great, and video looks good, but we prefer the image quality that still photography had on the Galaxy Z Flip 4 over the video quality. Recorded video on the Galaxy Z Flip 4 struggled with color accuracy and a noticeable decrease in image quality. 

Storage and Memory

Both the ThinkPhone and Galaxy Z Flip 4 come with 8GB of speedy LPDDR5 memory. While it’s not the highest offering memory-wise in the smartphone market, we find it to be an acceptable amount of memory for the majority of people. The big difference between these phones comes concerning storage capacities. 

At the time of writing, Motorola only offers the Lenovo ThinkPhone with a maximum capacity of 256GB. The Galaxy Z Flip 4, on the other hand, comes with three options for storage, either 128GB, 256GB, or 512GB. Unfortunately, neither phone offers a microSD card slot. However, we found this to be a bigger issue with the ThinkPhone than we did with the Galaxy Z Flip 4, largely due to Motorola’s push as the ThinkPhone being a premium “business phone.” 

Battery and Charging

Samsung has designed the Galaxy Z Flip 4 with a 3,595 mAh battery. This is a slight upgrade from the previous Galaxy Z Flip 3’s 3,300 mAh battery. Still, thanks to the improved efficiency of the SnapDragon 8+ Gen 1 processor and new power-saving features, Samsung claims that the Galaxy Z Flip 4 has the same to slightly better battery life than the Flip 3. Overall, Galaxy Z Flip 4 users should expect the phone to come with a 24-hour battery life, needing a recharge at the end of every day to play it safe into the next day. 

Motorola has designed the Lenovo ThinkPhone with a larger battery that is rated for 5,000 mAh. This provides ThinkPhone users with around 36 hours of battery life, and the fast charging on the ThinkPhone is exceptional. Thirty minutes of charging will get you to 85%, and the phone can be fully charged in under an hour. Samsung’s Galaxy Z Flip 4 also comes with fast charging, but it lags behind in both categories, taking 30 minutes to charge 50%. 

ThinkPhone Software Features

Motorola has done a great job at creating software features that make the ThinkPhone a solid business phone with great security offerings and a built-in remote management platform that makes it easy for your company’s IT team to remotely install and administer updates to software and create data access restrictions. 

In addition to shipping with the newest Android 13 operating system, the ThinkPhone comes with ThinkShield, a total security package that gives a boost to the Android security features of the phone, and Moto KeySafe, which isolates PIN numbers, passwords, encryption keys, and other sensitive information and stores it in it’s own safe, making it even harder for your data to end up in the wrong hands.

The software features of the ThinkPhone really go to show that the emphasis on the ThinkPhone is for business professionals. This is a phone that Motorola has designed and expects to be used with IT professionals, at least remotely. Additionally, remotely installing and upgrading software on a fleet of phones is standard practice at many IT departments, and the ThinkPhone makes that experience even more seamless. There’s even integration support between the ThinkPhone and the ThinkPad series of Lenovo laptops, streamlining your work.

Samsung Software Features

The Galaxy Z Flip, on the other hand, runs on the same latest version of Android and additionally comes with Samsung’s One UI interface. Samsung’s One UI streamlines the Galaxy Z Flip 4 and provides some pretty useful enhancements, such as an updated calendar that can register dates and times in messages and create events, much like iOS does. One UI can also be used to create color palettes for your interface, giving Samsung-based Android users more customization to their smartphones. 

In addition to One UI, the Galaxy Z Flip 4 ships with unique features that are specific to the phone. A Flex Mode allows you to take full advantage of your folding displays, automatically rotating the screen when you fold the Flip 4. The button screen in Flex Mode can be used as a trackpad, which we interesting–although it doesn’t necessarily make navigation easier. Flex Mode, now in the Galaxy Z Flip 4, offers useful controls for video apps like TikTok and Instagram Reels, showing Samsung’s dedication to the creative user crowd. 

Motorola ThinkPhone vs. Samsung Galaxy Z Flip 4:  Must-Know Facts

• The ThinkPhone is aimed at business users, while the Galaxy Z Flip 4 is aimed at general consumers and mobile tech enthusiasts.
• Both phones feature impressive displays, with the ThinkPhone having a slightly smaller screen size and a higher refresh rate.
• The Galaxy Z Flip 4 has a unique flip phone design with a thinner and lighter hinge that allows the screen to fold, while the ThinkPhone has a rugged and durable design.
• Both phones come with the powerful SnapDragon 8+ Gen 1 mobile processor and 8GB of LPDDR5 memory.
• The ThinkPhone has a better camera setup, while the Galaxy Z Flip 4 has more storage options.
• The ThinkPhone has a larger battery and faster charging than the Galaxy Z Flip 4.
• The Samsung Galaxy Z Flip 4 is a foldable smartphone with a clamshell design and a flexible AMOLED display.
• The Lenovo ThinkPhone by Motorola comes with the ThinkPad design aesthetics.
• The Samsung Galaxy Z Flip 4 features a dual-camera back with  12MP cameras and a 10MP front-facing camera.
• The Lenovo ThinkPhone’s front-facing camera has a 32MP sensor, while the rear camera features a 50MP sensor.
• Both the Lenovo ThinkPhone and Galaxy Z Flip 4 can shoot RAW photography.

Motorola ThinkPhone vs. Samsung Galaxy Z Flip 4: Which One Is Better? Which One Should You Use?

The primary differences between the Motorola ThinkPhone and the Galaxy Z Flip 4 come down to their unique features and preferred use cases. Where the ThinkPhone really shines is its potential as a business phone that an IT team can remotely manage. Additionally, the ThinkPhone is great for any professionals who already exist within the ThinkPad ecosystem, as the phone’s ability to act as KVM for the ThinkPad laptops greatly boosts daily productivity. For general users, we find it difficult to recommend the ThinkPhone due to its business-focused features and steep price point. 

On the other hand, where the Samsung Galaxy Z Flip 4 shines is its potential applications as a content creator’s smartphone. The unique design is also a large selling point with the Galaxy Z Flip 4, and we’re happy to admit we don’t think the hinge is just a gimmick. The specialized features, such as using the bottom screen as a trackpad or giving additional production tools to apps like YouTube, TikTok, and Instagram, add an enjoyable boost to these apps and a refreshing way to design content.