Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 7 review
The Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 7 gets a series of upgrades in the form of a thinner build and better camera — but it’s also ultra expensive.
Pros
Impressively thin
Camera is excellent
Software works well
Great performance
Good-looking screens
Cons
Battery life is only fine
Incredibly expensive
We’re a number of years into the availability of foldable phones, but it feels like they’re just now, finally, coming into their own. Gone are the days when buying a book-style foldable meant carrying around a phone two times the thickness of a traditional phone or using totally sub-par cameras. These days, there are a few foldables that are about as thick as a slab phone when folded. Case in point: The Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 7.
The new device keeps a similar overall look as the Z Fold 6, and isn’t going to break any records when it comes to performance or camera quality. It’s also expensive. Very expensive. Ironically, you’d pay less for two Samsung Galaxy S25 devices that you could glue together — and for the money, you’d get double the processing.
So, what do you actually get for a cool $2,000? Well, you get what’s arguably the best pocketable productivity machine out there. Only one problem. Even with a phone this size, are you really going to be more productive?
Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 7 specs
Dimensions
158.4 x 143.2 x 4.2 mm
IP rating
IP48
Display resolution
Exterior: 1080 x 2520 pixels
Interior: 1968 x 2184 pixels
Display size
Exterior: 6.5 inches
Interior: 8.0 inches
Display type
LTPO AMOLED 2X
Display refresh rate
1Hz – 120Hz
Display brightness
2600 nits (peak)
Chipset
Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Elite
Memory
12GB, 16GB
Storage
256GB, 512GB, 1TB
Rear cameras
Wide: 200MP, f/1.7
Ultrawide: 12MP, f/2.2, 120-degrees
Telephoto: 10MP, f/2.4, 3x optical zoom
Video
8K at 30fps, 4K at 60fps, 1080p at 240fps, 720p at 960fps
Front cameras
Exterior: 10MP, f/2.2
Interior: 10MP, f/2.2
Ports
USB-C
Battery size
4,400mAh
Charging
25W wired, 15W wireless, 4.5W reverse wireless
Connectivity
Bluetooth 5.4, Wi-Fi 7, 5G
Colors
Blue Shadow, Silver Shadow, Jet Black, Mint
Price
$1,999.99
Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 7 review: Design
By far the biggest and most important change to the Galaxy Z Fold comes in the form of the new design. At a glance, and based on images online, you might not assume the design is a big deal. The Galaxy Z Fold 7 looks very similar to the Galaxy Z Fold 6 in all ways but one — thickness.
For a foldable phone, that’s kind of a big deal, and the device does truly feel very thin, especially when unfolded. It’s hard to overstate this. The device is 4.2mm thick unfolded, which is around half the thickness of a device like the iPhone 16 Pro or Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra. The end result? When folded up and in your pocket, you might not feel much of a difference.
Truly, the phone feels amazing to hold — and it feels much different than it looks. That’s true both folded and unfolded — folded up it feels like a standard phone, instead of a thick phone. Unfolded, it feels incredibly thin. It is sometimes a little tricky to unfold, but you get used to where to place your fingers to do so easily. Just don’t expect to be able to unfold it with one hand.
To be clear, there are other super-thin foldable phones out there. For example, the Honor Magic V5 is around the same thickness, and Honor has been making thin foldables for a while now. But, those other super-thin foldables aren’t available in every market, and if you live in the U.S., the Galaxy Z Fold 7 is indeed a big deal.
That ultra-thin build does have its trade-offs. Namely, cameras haven’t gotten magically thinner just because the rest of the phone has, and while Samsung could opt for thinner cameras if it wanted, that would come at the expense of camera quality. We’ll get into how the cameras perform later, but for now, you can probably tell that they protrude from the back of the phone a fair more than they did on the Z Fold 6. When you’re holding the phone, you won’t really notice it, but you will when the device is on a table or desk — it moves a whole lot more. Perhaps a Pixel-style camera bar would be a better choice here, as it would avoid the phone wobbling around if you set it on a table. It would still move when unfolded, though.
There are some other design changes. The phone has a wider and taller footprint, which means that it offers larger screens.
While the thickness of the phone is clearly a step forward, there are other design changes that some might consider a step back. Notably, the front-facing camera on the inside screen has moved from being under the display to being a pinhole cutout. I’m not sure how I feel about this. To be sure, the pinhole camera is much higher-quality than the under-display camera, but I only ever used the front-facing camera of the inside screen for video calls. That said, the under-display camera was far from invisible. I’m basically indifferent about this change.
The hinge on the device felt strong enough. I didn’t conduct any durability tests during my review (I agreed not to as part of Samsung’s review program), but it generally felt like it was about as durable as the Galaxy Z Fold 6. It’s also IP48-rated, which means it should survive a dunk in water perfectly fine, but isn’t quite as resistant to dust and dirt. You still won’t want to get debris in the hinge, if you can avoid it.
Everything else is as expected. There’s a USB-C port on the bottom, along with a power button and volume rocker on the right edge. That power button also houses a fingerprint sensor, which was responsive and accurate.
Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 7 review: Display
As you would expect from Samsung, the display experience on the Galaxy Z Fold 7 is excellent. Both the cover display and the inside screen are stunning, and there’s really nothing to complain about here.
The cover screen is a 6.5-inch LTPO AMOLED 2X display with a 1080p resolution. All that basically means that it’s relatively crisp and detailed, with a super-responsive feel, and the ability to range down in refresh rate to save on power, when appropriate.
The interior display sits in at 8.0 inches and has a 1,968 x 2,184 resolution and 2,600 nit peak brightness. I found it to be easily bright enough for use outdoors, even in direct sunlight.
Basically, there’s very little to criticize about the displays on offer by the Galaxy Z Fold 7. They look great. Some might want higher-resolution screens, but I found the resolution to be easily crisp enough, and a higher resolution would impact battery life.
Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 7 review: Performance
Under the hood, the Galaxy Z Fold 7 is more or less what we would expect. It comes with a Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Elite processor, coupled with either 12GB or 16GB of RAM depending on your configuration. The end result is that it’s easily powerful enough to handle everything you might use it for in 2025, including mobile gaming, heavy multitasking, and more.
That’s particularly important on a device like this, where productivity is kind of the biggest use case. Even when running multiple demanding apps at once, I never experienced stutters or lag. Plus, demanding games loaded quickly and looked great. If you’re a DeX user, you’ll appreciate the performance for desktop-style productivity.
That said, while on paper the phone has similar specifications to other high-end Android devices, it may not quite perform as well for sustained periods of time, given its thickness. The phone did heat up a little, and while it didn’t get super hot in my usage, over long gaming or productivity sessions, you may find that it has to throttle a little. Frankly, this is to be expected, and I still expect that most will find the phone to be more than powerful enough.
Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 7 review: Battery and charging
Powering the Galaxy Z Fold 7 is a 4,400mAh battery, which is smaller than top rivals. The Oppo Find N5 has a 5,600mAh battery, while the new Honor Magic V5 will step things up to 6,000mAh.
That said, I found that the actual battery life wasn’t that bad. Was it amazing? No, though that largely depends on how you use the device, and how much you use the interior display versus the cover display. But, in my usage, it still got me through a day of even moderate usage, including short stints of gaming and longer stints of productivity and scrolling random social media networks. I certainly wish that the battery was a little better, especially for those days when I do want to spend more than a few minutes gaming, or for when I might be traveling or something. But, in day to day use, I think most will still be fine with how long it lasts.
The charging tech is fine. The device can charge at 25W with a wired connection, which is fairly slow, and I would have liked Samsung to at least match the 45W charging speed of the Galaxy S25 Ultra. The phone supports Qi2 charging speeds, 15W, but it’s only “Qi2 ready.” That means that while you’ll be able to use Qi2 chargers to get the full 15W charging speed, it doesn’t have the magnets for Qi2 accessories, and it won’t hold in place on a charging stand magnetically without a Qi2 case or something else that adds the magnets. It also has 4.5W reverse wireless charging for your earbuds or other small devices.
Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 7 review: Camera
One of the biggest criticisms of devices like the Z Fold series is that the camera tech simply doesn’t match the likes of the Galaxy S25 Ultra. On the one hand, I understand why — a thin build is more important than ever on foldable phones, and the Galaxy S25 Ultra is a far thicker device, so it can absorb those larger cameras. On the other hand, I also understand why someone paying this much for a phone would expect camera quality that’s at least on par with Samsung’s best slab phones.
For the Galaxy Z Fold 7, Samsung is at least attempting to close the gap between the Fold and the Ultra. For starters, it’s putting the 200-megapixel main camera from the Ultra into the Z Fold 7. That camera delivers 2x optical-quality zoom through a sensor crop, meaning it can basically crop the image before the photo is captured and processed, outputting an image that’s the same resolution, so it’s not technically digitally cropping. The phone also has a 12-megapixel ultrawide camera and a 10-megapixel telephoto camera at 3x zoom.
Despite not offering the 5x periscope telephoto camera from the Galaxy S25 Ultra, the camera system on the Galaxy Z Fold 7 is still very versatile, and can capture great shots in basically any situation. In fact, most of the time, images were indistinguishable from those captured by the Galaxy S25 Ultra, including in low lighting. Photos were colorful, crisp, and detailed, and simply looked excellent.
As expected, the only exception to that came from images at over 5x zoom, where the S25 Ultra was able to lean on the periscope telephoto lens. The difference was particularly apparent in low lighting, where the Z Fold 7 lost detail quicker than the S25 Ultra.
But, honestly, the S25 Ultra is only a lot better in some niche situations. Zooming to over 5x isn’t necessarily a super-common thing to do. And, for some, the ability to take much better selfie shots by using the rear-facing cameras in the unfolded position will make up for it.
That’s all to say that the camera system on the Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 7 is better than ever, and closer to Samsung’s best than ever. It’s not there yet, but don’t assume that it’s sub-par, because it’s actually very, very good.
Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 7 review: Software
The Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 7 ships with Samsung’s One UI 8, and if you’re used to Samsung’s software and like it, you’ll love what’s on offer here. Everything is more or less where you expect it to be, and it’s all very Samsung-y. There are a few extra apps though, like LinkedIn and Outlook, which you may or may not actually use. Thankfully, some of these can be uninstalled, though others can only be hidden.
The phone is great when it comes to taking full advantage of the extra screen space too. Apps can go into split screen mode or a windowed mode, and it’s pretty easy to resize them as needed. And, you can choose for the home screen to be mirrored on both displays or customize them individually.
The bones are all there for a great foldable experience. You’ll have to decide for yourself if you actually plan on using that inside screen, but that’s a separate conversation.
Conclusions
The Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 7 represents a solid step forward for Samsung’s foldable devices. I love the fact that it’s so much thinner, and the camera does represent a step forward over the Galaxy Z Fold 6. The phone is ultra-expensive though, and for many, too expensive. If you have the cash to spend and want Samsung’s best foldable yet, you’ll love what’s on offer here.
The competition
In regions like the U.S., the biggest competitor to the Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 7 comes in the form of the Google Pixel 9 Pro Fold. I prefer the software experience of the Pixel 9 Pro Fold, though the camera isn’t as good as the Galaxy Z Fold 7, and it’s not as powerful. It does come at a lower price, though.
Should I buy the Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 7?
Yes, but only if you’re willing to pay an arm and a leg.
The post Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 7 review: An ultra foldable in all but name appeared first on BGR.
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Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 7 review: An ultra foldable in all but name originally appeared on BGR.com on Wed, 16 Jul 2025 at 15:30:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.