Samsung's Galaxy Z Flip may have an unconventional design compared to other smartphones. However, it outperforms its folding rivals while delivering performance that rivals major flagship devices.

We managed to get our hands on the Galaxy Z Flip, which ships today and is proving to be hard to find. (If you want to buy this $1,380 phone, we can tell you where to get the Galaxy Z Flip.) And while we're going to test everything from its camera to its multitasking capabilities, we also made sure to run some benchmarks on this new Samsung phone.

So far, we've found that the Galaxy Z Flip performs as you would expect from a phone powered by Qualcomm's Snapdragon 855 Plus processor. In other words, it's on par with major Android flagships launched in 2019, plus a slight boost when it comes to graphics.

The Snapdragon 855 Plus in the Galaxy Z Flip was Qualcomm's primary processor until the Snapdragon 865 arrived at the end of 2019.The Snapdragon 855 was found in most top Android phones introduced last year and the Plus variant adds a little something extra to handle intensive graphics. Samsung augmented the Snapdragon 855 Plus in the Z Flip with 8GB of RAM.

We ran Geekbench 5 on the Galaxy Z Flip to measure the phone's overall performance and found this to be helpful: the Z Flip's single-core score was 752 and its multi-core result was 2,685. This is the same as Samsung's Galaxy Note 10 Plus, also powered by the Snapdragon 855, which had single-core and multi-core scores of 736 and 2,691, respectively.Samsung's other foldable with the Snapdragon 855 and 12GB of RAM phone, the Galaxy Fold, had a multicore score of 2,619. [The iPhone 11 Pro Max's multicore score of 3,517 is the Geekbench 5 high watermark. However, the Galaxy Z Flip outperformed another foldable phone, the Motorola Razr, which recorded a single-core score of 391 and a multicore score of 1,406. Motorola used the lower-performing Snapdragon 710 instead of the 8-series system-on-chip.

When it comes to graphics, the Galaxy Z Flip offers the benefits of the Snapdragon 855 Plus. Samsung's new Fold scored 1,124 in GFXBench's Aztec Ruins Vulcan test (off-screen), beating the Galaxy Fold (1,038) and Note 10 Plus (1,058). iPhone 11 Pro Max at 1,657. still in the lead, while the Motorola Razr scored 308.9, more than two frames per second lower than the Z Flip result.

We also tested the Galaxy Z Flip's 6.7-inch OLED display in its unfolded state. This display captured 129.1% of the sRGB color spectrum, in contrast to the Motorola Razr's remarkable tint and result of 203.2%. However, the Z Flip's performance was on par with other Galaxy phones, whether it be the foldable Galaxy Fold (124.8%) or the traditional Note 10 Plus (118.6%).

Slightly disappointing was the screen brightness of the Galaxy Z Flip. Measured with a light meter, it was 368 nits, a far cry from the 525 nits measured on the Galaxy Fold. However, a darker screen may be a trade-off you get with flip phone design; when we tested the Motorola Razr, it measured 386 nits.

Testing of the Galaxy Z Flip is ongoing. For an evaluation of the camera, battery, and folding experience, see our Galaxy Z Flip review-in-progress.