I have been whining for years that modern smartphones had gotten big, ungainly, un-pocketable and just inconvenient. For perspective, my favorite dumb phone was a StarTac, and my favorite in the early text-and-picture world was the LG Env2. I liked my DroidMini all right, and I'll never enter the AppleVerse voluntarily, so there really hasn't been a phone for me in at least 5 years. That just changed.\n\nThis is the first truly pocketable smartphone I've seen. I routinely carry it in a front pocket of both jeans and slacks with no discomfort. And because the phone is folded shut, there's no risk that other pocket contents will scratch the main screen. In fairness it can get a bit dusty -- pocket lint and the like -- but a quick swipe across the sleeve when I open it is fine.\n\nThe display is brilliant, bright, and beautiful. I never have trouble reading it. The external display is very handy, and includes convenient widgets such as notifications, a clock, and controls for a media player, the (included when I bought 'em) Galaxy Buds, the timer. It also has a innovative selfie mode where you can use the phone's external camera for selfies without opening the clamshell, and the external screen provides the viewfinder.\n\nOn to the camera. It takes great photos in bright light, and decent photos in low light. I wouldn't call the camera world-class, but that's probably because my main camera is a semi-professional DSLR. I doubt any phone camera on the planet would earn "excellent" marks from me ... I certainly haven't seen one yet. But this is a decent, though not industry-leading, camera for a phone. I really would have preferred Samsung include a telephoto rather than the wide angle, as I think I'd use it more, especially since the wide angle camera has pretty significant barrel distortion at the edges. Colors are saturated, automatic face recognition is excellent, and the Pro mode even takes raw digital negative (DNG) files which can be run through post-processing to capture more detail in light and shadow. As I said though, low-light photos tend to be a bit grainy and much harder to get sharp focus.\n\nOne of the places the folding screen really shines is with the camera. When the camera is partially folded (say at 90 degrees), the viewscreen divides to have the image preview on half of the screen, and camera controls on the other half. This is, for example, really handy if you want to take a photo close to the ground ... by inverting the display, the camera can be looking across the ground and you can see the image on the lower part that's looking up at you, meaning you don't have to contort yourself to take a picture.\n\nPeople complain about battery life, which is certainly the ZFlip3's greatest weakness. For my usage pattern, it doesn't matter -- with 4-5 hours of screen time a day, some photography, some navigation, some surfing, texting etc., I find the phone is down to 30-40% by day's end; only once have I seen it drop to 20 and that was a heavy (for me) usage day. In a truly normal day I find it rarely gets down to 60% though, so for me it's fine. I've achieved this partly by setting the screen brightness fairly low (but still very easy to read/see), and limiting what apps are allowed to access background data. However, if you're the kind of person who does a lot of gaming or video watching, you'll probably find this phone's battery is unacceptable. I'm not that person.\n\nI would be remiss if I didn’t mention the Z Flip3’s fingerprint reader, which is hands-down the best I have ever used. It’s integrated with the power button on the side of the phone, and its use is as close to transparent as any security device I’ve encountered. It wasn’t always thus for Samsung … my venerable Galaxy Tab S has a reader that requires me to slide my thumb across the home button, and if it succeeds 50% of the time I consider it a good day. The little reader next to the camera in my previous Galaxy S8 phone was better, but this one is so snappy, so responsive, it amazes me. The power button is perfectly positioned for the phone in my hand, such that my thumb naturally hits the reader for a seamless experience.\n\nThe huge question -- and nobody can know this early -- is how durable the ZFlip3 will prove to be. Time will tell, but initial experience is pretty positive. The impressive hinge mechanism appears engineered to keep the phone's innards dry and protect the folding screen, and it feels really solid. The folding screen is purportedly rated for 200k folding cycles; we'll see if actual experience bears that out. I am a bit disappointed in the little plastic film Samsung preinstalls on the folding screen; though it's obvious the screen needs one, I've found that mine scratched on the first day. The scratch is only visible when the screen is off, and it doesn't seem to be getting worse, but it's still disappointing. I'm a little unclear on how Samsung will be about replacing that fil