The Galaxy Z Flip 5 has a fancy new cover screen that's considerably larger than the ones on older Galaxy Z Flips. But as we have said repeatedly, the cover display's shape is an odd design choice, one that hasn't gone down well with everyone, especially when compared to the cover display on the Motorola Razr 40 Ultra.
Of course, as far as practicality is concerned, the Razr 40 Ultra's cover display implementation isn't as good, as it is obstructed by the two rear-facing cameras. That isn't the case with the Galaxy Z Flip 5, though again, people have wondered why Samsung went for that folder-shaped cover display by stretching out the bottom left part of the screen.
Well, as we have used the Galaxy Z Flip 5 over the last few days, we have come to realize that the folder shape is also part of Samsung's goal of making the cover display as big, unobstructed, and useful as possible, especially when you're using an app on it.
See, that extended part of the cover display holds the back and home buttons, leaving the rest of the screen for whatever app you may be using. Without that additional space for the navigation buttons, Samsung would either have to hide the buttons and ask the user to swipe up from the bottom every time they want to access them or make them use gestures, both of which would result in a poorer experience.
So, yes, the Z Flip 5 cover display's unusual shape might not look great (though we feel that isn't the case when you actually use the phone in real life), but it's a great example of form following function, a design principle that Motorola clearly ignored for the Razr 40 Ultra.
Motorola does have the upper hand when it comes to the cover display specs. While the Galaxy Z Flip 5 has a standard 60Hz panel on the outside, the Razr 40 Ultra has a 144Hz panel with a higher resolution. However, the Z Flip 5 cover display gets considerably brighter than the Razr 40 Ultra's, so we wouldn't say there is a clear winner unless we take the higher practicality of the former into account.
