When the Samsung Galaxy Z Flip 7 arrives, likely this July, it could be a pretty decent upgrade over the Z Flip 5 I own. Itll reportedly have a slightly bigger battery than the Flip 6, which had a slightly bigger one than the Flip 5, plus a much bigger outer screen.Unfortunately, I cant wait a few more months. After a year and a half with a Flip, Ive reached my breaking point.To be clear, my phone never cracked. My folding Flip never even sprouted a green line of doom along its crease. The factory screen protector did begin to peel, but $30 and a trip to uBreakiFix made that problem go away. No, the end came for my Flip when it stopped lasting the day and started waking me up at night. The battery is constantly dying faster than it should, and ever since the last big software update, the sleep and do-not-disturb modes no longer block notification sounds. I cant figure out either one, and the Flips unique benefits no longer feel good enough for me to deal with them anymore. On battery: Ive seen this phone reach the 80 percent mark by 9 in the morning, and threaten to die by 9PM. I practically dont even use the phone when Im at work, and yet now I feel like it always needs to be plugged in. My Z Flip 5, folded, next to the normal-sized Galaxy S25. I always knew Id be making sacrifices to get a phone that folds into a pocket square. The Flip 5s twin batteries have a total rated capacity of 13.92 watt-hours, less than even the smallest Galaxy S23 phone (14.68Wh) that shipped that same year. But using it wasnt always this bad.At first, my Flip always made it to my bedside charger each night. Later, I could easily get it there by simply using it a little less in the day, turning off AR in Pokmon Go, or turning on battery saver mode in the evenings. But after a year, even deleting Pokmon Go entirely wasnt enough. When I flew to CES this January, I realized I couldnt afford to carry this phone at a tradeshow. I had to move all my accounts to a borrowed phone just to do my job. I cant swear to it, but I certainly feel like I can trace reduced battery life to Samsungs One UI 6.1 software update that arrived last April, and I wouldnt be the only one.Opened, the Z Flip 5 is larger than an normal-sized Galaxy S25, though slightly narrower.It could just be the battery prematurely aging, I suppose, but I did a few cursory checks: Samsungs internal diagnostics say the battery is Good.Ive had phones with weak battery before. There was a time I carried around spare battery packs for my Motorola Droid 2, swapping mid-day, every day, until I moved on. But phones with battery doors made that easy; those batteries were also cheap. And while I could probably manage to permanently replace my Z Flip 5s batteries with a bit of work, Id be risking a fragile phone that feels deficient in other ways, too. Im not talking about the crease, which I got used to quite quickly, or the side-mounted fingerprint sensor that misses for me almost as often as it hits. Nor am I talking about the camera, though yes, you do sacrifice in the camera department with Samsungs folding phones. I knew that out of the gate. Mostly, Im talking about how Samsung really has yet to embrace the potential of the Flip, and how pointless its outside screen can feel after the novelty wears.The cover screens one unequivocal advantage: easy, quality selfies.When people ask me what I actually prefer about the Z Flip, Ive wound up saying its really about how it fits in my pocket, and how awesome it feels to fold. Its a square when closed, so it stays put in my pocket and doesnt jut out.But its not actually a small phone, and its not a particularly good one-handed phone because theres no one-handed way to open it. I mostly stopped trying after the tenth time I fumbled it to the ground.And I do find myself opening it almost every time I use it, because its almost never worth bothering with the Flips cover screen. While its actually larger than the screens on early Android handsets, Samsung simply wont let you use the outer screen like a proper Android phone.The only thing I ever want to do in the MyQ app is press the garage door button but on the cover screen, I have to scroll past ads first.Before you ask: yes, I downloaded Samsungs Good Lock app and used its MultiStar sub-app to painstakingly load each of my most used Android apps onto that screen, one at a time, but its almost always more efficient to simply open up the phone because theyre harder to use and harder to launch. Most apps dont scale properly, and it takes an extra swipe to start them; more than one if I swipe the wrong direction first. With the cover screen, Samsung inexplicably makes you swipe left instead of up for apps, and right instead of down for notifications. Even though the bar at the bottom looks like my app drawer handle, its actually a Samsung Pay shortcut instead, and it still trips me up to this day.For many months, I forced myself to use the cover screen to sign my kids out of school, to pull up my 2FA authenticator codes, to watch for my Uber driver, to remotely open my garage door. But the only thing I can actually do better there is selfies, which let you point the good lens towards yourself while you frame your shot with the cover screen. Even so, I think Ive gotten more use out of this Game Boy Advance party trick than all the cover apps Ive used combined. So, after CES in January, I started hunting for my next. I hoped maybe I could find a small phone again, but no luck. On Reddit, however, I saw a trend: many Galaxy Z Flip owners were discussing whether they should abandon folding phones, now that Samsung was suddenly offering $500 in trade-in credits towards a Galaxy S25 instead. After confirming that the vanilla Galaxy S25 is indeed the smallest high-end Android phone you can buy today, I was intrigued. After hearing good things about the battery life with this years model and its 15.16Wh pack, I decided to jump on the deal.The S25 doesnt feel like a small phone in my pocket, Im afraid. It feels a little boring compared to my Flip, and maybe Ill be complaining about Samsungs latest software update a year from today! But I needed a new phone. So far, the cameras much better, and the battery life seems great. As I write these words, its 5:40PM, and my lightly used phone is at 80 percent. Theres plenty left in the tank.Photography by Sean Hollister / The VergeSee More: