Foldables are still very much a new form factor in the smartphone industry. Manufacturers have been quick to make improvements year over year, but it feels like Samsung has somewhat stalled. The Galaxy Z Flip 6 is a good phone – that’s hard to deny – but it feels like little has changed.
I have the Flip 5 and I am able to run full apps on the cover screen, not just Samsung approved ones
The annoying thing is that this feature is just not enabled by default. You have to download an extra (free) app from Samsung that unlocks the full app support on the cover screen. It’s called Good Lock and it’s in Samsung’s Galaxy Store instead of the Play Store.
Not sure why they do this…I guess because they don’t want the average user to think that the cover screen will feel buggy if they try to run a non optimized app on it.
I’ll check; there’s a significant difference between the 5 and the 3, though. All I have for a front screen is a bar - it covers less than half of that side of the … door? Section? Anyway, there isn’t much real estate.
But I’ll check for that app, thanks.
Sorry, I didn’t mean you could run full apps on the cover screen of the 3. You can’t really. I mean you technically can, but it doesn’t work well at all because the screen is so tiny and usable.
What I mean was that on the Flip 5 and beyond, you are able to run full apps on the cover screen. It’s not only the Razr that has this functionality.
But on the RAZR, the apps don’t have to be custom built for the cover. In my Flip 3, they do.
You can run any app, from any store, on the Flip 5 cover?
Yes. The Flip 5 has a different cover screen than the 3. It’s significantly larger. Just look up a a photo comparison of how significantly different they are. Yes, you can run literally any app or APK file from the cover screen on the Flip 5. The ones I use most are Discord, Spotify, YouTube, Google Messages, Voyager, my notes app, and Red Reader (Reddit).
Sometimes they can be a bit buggy or don’t function very well (esp games), so I don’t like using certain apps on the cover screen.
The only caveat is you need to install a free app by Samsung called Good Lock from the Galaxy Store first. Evidently it is not available in certain regions. In these regions, then yes, the cover screen functionality is locked down to only a few approved apps.
OK.
Well, that’s good. It’s one of the things that frustrates me most about the 3, and it’s good they addressed it.
K, I just checked it. Any way to make sure I’ve got the right thing? It just looks like another store; I don’t see anything that will let me run any app (like, a clock from f-droid) on the cover screen.