Editor’s Desk
Android Central’s Editor’s Desk is a weekly column discussing the latest news, trends, and happenings in the Android and mobile tech space.
For me, the cover screen experience is one of the most important aspects of the modern flip phone. At first glance, it can seem gimmicky, but the external display is actually pretty useful and helps keep the phone pocketable. In fact, I find myself utilizing the cover screen more than not when I use a flip phone. That said, no cover screen experience is perfect, although one company does come close.
Motorola has pretty much set the standard on what a cover screen should be with its Razr smartphones, while Samsung has gone a different route with the external display on the Galaxy Z Flip line. Still, both offer fairly similar experiences on both devices, and both have their strengths and weaknesses.
With that in mind, I decided to put them to the test to see which was the easiest to use without opening the phone. I would spend a whole day using only the cover screen on the Motorola Razr Plus 2024 and Samsung Galaxy Z Flip 6.
Samsung has a lot of work to do
Off the bat, the Galaxy Z Flip 6 was a bit frustrating. Even before I got started, I had to go through quite a bit of set up to make sure I could get what I needed out of the cover screen, and Samsung doesn’t make it easy.
Getting set up to use apps on the Galaxy Z Flip 6 cover screen is a bit of a chore in itself. While the One UI 7 update makes things a little more accessible, Samsung still limits cover screen interactions (especially notifications) to the apps you have set to use on the cover screen.
Furthermore, you can add more apps from the cover screen; you have to open the phone to edit cover screen widgets and add more apps that you may need. This is why the setup took some time, as I had to ensure I had all the apps I knew I would use within a 24-hour time span.
After everything was said and done, using the cover screen throughout the day was a bit of a mixed bag on the Galaxy Z Flip 6. Using the panels was a fine way to check the weather, control music, and perform other quick, glanceable tasks. The apps I set to work on the external display also worked mostly as expected on the smaller screen, although it did pose some challenges.
The somewhat small display made apps appear vertically scrunched, and some UI elements would awkwardly overlap. This would limit my view and even hide functions on apps like YouTube Music and Google Calendar, although they weren’t unusable. However, the limitations of the Galaxy Z Flip 6 cover screen would hinder me in other ways.
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The quick settings menu on the cover screen is a fixed set of eight toggles that you can’t change. Many of these are options that are actually useful, but the fact that I can’t add others is really annoying, especially since I can edit quick settings on a Galaxy Watch.
I also can’t just tap and hold the Bluetooth toggle to add a new device. I would have to open the Settings app (which you also can’t access from the quick settings menu) and do it from there, which is pretty inconvenient.
Multitasking is also just not really a thing on the cover screen. If I open one app, I can’t open a Current Apps view to switch to another app. I would have to exit the app, swipe back to the Launcher panel, and then open the next app I was looking for. This becomes incredibly inconvenient when I need to copy something from one app and paste it into another.
Oh, and did I mention that even if you have Gboard as your default keyboard, you’re stuck with Samsung Keyboard on the cover screen? Yeah, that’s a no from me, dawg.
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Ultimately, the Galaxy Z Flip 6 failed the experiment. The experience was just too cumbersome with the limitations when multitasking, interacting with notifications, or trying to perform certain tasks that would require me to open the phone.
Better luck with the Razr
Things were a bit different with the Razr Plus 2024, and while I was able to get through an entire day without opening the phone, the experience highlighted some of the shortcomings of the Razr cover screen.
Unlike the Galaxy Z Flip, I didn’t have to go through any lengthy setup to get the cover screen ready. There were no apps to download to get my apps to work on the Razr cover screen. I just enabled the app widget, tapped the pencil icon on the cover screen, and chose what apps I wanted or didn’t want. I could always add or remove apps whenever I wanted without opening the phone.
Just like with the Galaxy Z Flip, Motorola also has a host of panels for quick access to weather, contacts, games, and even widgets. The home screen also lets me set four app shortcuts for your most used apps, which is pretty handy and saves me from having to swipe over to the app screen.
As far as how apps work, it’s pretty similar to the Galaxy Z Flip 6, although the larger cover screen means apps have more room to stretch. This keeps the app’s own UI elements from blocking other parts of the app, although it also highlights another problem with Motorola’s implementation: the cameras.
Because the dual camera system is set within the bottom right corner of the display, the sensors often block certain aspects of the UI. This is mostly a problem with text fields where buttons like Send are usually set to the bottom right side.
Fortunately, you can press and hold the bottom navigation bar to shift the bottom of the app UI up. It scrunches the app a bit, but you’ll have full view of the parts covered by the camera, then you can press and hold it again to bring back the full screen view. It’s not a huge issue, but it can feel cumbersome to do this constantly. Still, it shows Motorola thought hard about how to get the most out of the external display.
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Social media apps like Instagram are also awkward to view on the Razr. Watching Reels or Stories will often just show a zoomed-in section of the video instead of a full view. The only time you can see the full view of Story is if you’re watching your own, which is an odd behavior.
Aside from that, most apps behave and function as expected, which is refreshing. I can even multitask with a Current Apps view, which is extremely useful, and using the Galaxy Z Flip 6 cover screen, which doesn’t have one, made me realize how much I rely on it. That also goes for the quick settings menu, which is much more robust on the Razr Plus and lets me have as many as 15 toggles that I unfortunately can’t edit.
The downside is that Motorola doesn’t allow me to open the Settings app from the cover screen, which is a weird omission. The Bluetooth toggle is also somewhat limited, letting me connect to previous devices but not pair with new ones. Fortunately, I didn’t find myself needing to set up new wireless earbuds.
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Finally, the Razr Plus cover screen plays nicely with Google Services. Google Wallet on the Galaxy Z Flip 6 is usable from the cover screen, but tapping a payment terminal won’t pull up any sort of UI for visual confirmation, something the Razr will do.
I also cannot utilize 2FA on the Galaxy cover screen when signing into a Google account. It will just pull up a notification that I can’t interact with, whereas the confirmation screen will appear on the Razr so I can tap Yes. I do this quite often, so it’s an annoying limitation on the Z Flip.
There is no perfect cover screen… yet
There are few reasons why you’ll want to use just the cover screen on these phones, unless you find the main display broken or unusable for some reason. However, the experience really highlights how they’re different and where their strengths and weaknesses lie.
It’s clear the Razr Plus 2024 has a better cover screen, but Motorola should continue to optimize it with future updates. A Settings app would be nice, for example, and it would be cool to view vertical videos on social media apps in their entirety instead of just a partial view.
Samsung needs to revamp its cover screen experience, starting with eliminating the MultiStar requirement to use third-party apps. That would be a major step to improving the phone and would definitely help me consider making the Galaxy Z Flip my primary phone over the Razr.
Still, both the Razr Plus 2024 and Galaxy Z Flip 6 are great phones, and even well into 2025, they remain two of the best flip phones on the market. That is until the Razr Plus 2025 and Galaxy Z Flip 7 arrive, both of which could bring welcome improvements to the cover screen.