After trying many other types of smartphones and taking a long break from Android, my first Samsung device was the ill-fated Note 7. I was so impressed with that phone that despite the battery issues I preordered a Note 8 and later a Note 10. I have no real complaints for any of them, as each represented an excellent refinement of traditional hardware that offered the best smartphone experience available. That refinement is finally reaching the Z Fold line, with some caveats. Let's not pretend that this is the best smartphone experience available; it's the same energy as the Note, but applied to something entirely different, and that's really the point. Samsung has taken a concept most people would have said was completely impossible as recently as a few years ago and made it not just work, but work rather well, to the point that if you buy this instead of a normal smartphone you can rely on it. That is impressive all on its own, and echoes the push to big screens that Samsung led many years ago which shaped the modern smartphone landscape. So, why buy this phone? Rather unsurprisingly, if you find yourself doing anything that would benefit from more screen real estate but don't find it practical to have a tablet or laptop at hand, this makes a world of difference. This review is typed entirely on the Z Fold 3, much more comfortably than it could have been on my Note 10. Reading is also greatly improved, for both text and comics. It also offers a great deal more space to work with when drawing with an S Pen, and for playing games that benefit from the large square viewing area. It's also actually easier on the pocket than a Note 10 due to the tradeoff of width for thickness, and a little easier to use the left side if front screen one-handed due to its narrow profile. Why might you steer clear of this one? If you need all day batter from your phone with heavy use and no ability to charge, and can get by with the smaller screen (or use a supplementary device like a tablet or laptop) then there's little appeal, especially when you can afford to get a better phone and better tablet separately for lower cost. This is also not a great device for video content given the prevalence of wide-screen ratios, which means you end up with black margins that make the video worse than it would be on an ordinary phone. You also can't use the screen-off memo from the Note series with the front screen, only the inside screen, rendering that feature far less useful. No removable storage is also painful if you like to carry a lot of content on your phone, and the cameras are passable, not top-of-the-line. Bottom line: The Z Fold 3 is not a perfect device. I think more than anything else, I would have liked to have an included stylus and/or great battery life. But the quibbles are minor - the battery life isn't bad, and the stylus support is there albeit without onboard storage. The screen crease is still present, albeit inoffensive and usually unnoticed. And apps are still getting used to the form factor, which leads to some quirks. But that's about all I can say about the downsides - and again, for a fully functional device that can fold in half with the durability to be a daily driver, that is incredible. I highly recommend trying one of these to anyone who stands to benefit from the versatility of the inside screen more than they stand to lose from the compromises mentioned above. The Z Fold 3 easily earns 5 stars not because it is a perfect phone, but because it is a marvelous remaining of what a mobile device can be.