Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 7 review: Turning the page

In 2025, it's no longer enough for a smartphone to fold.

Devices like the Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 7 have become just another type of smartphone. You might not own one, but you probably know someone who does, and you've definitely seen more than a few out in the wild.

You can probably thank Samsung for that. Year-in and year-out, the company has been committed to trying to make foldables a mainstream success. At the same time though, the last few generations of Galaxy Z Fold have been overly-iterative in a way that undercut a lot of the enthusiasm that once seemed inseparable from the foldable form-factor. 

When it comes to design, brands like OPPO and Motorola have been pushing the envelope for foldables while Samsung has stayed put in a comfort zone of its own making. This time around though, the brand that brought foldables to the masses makes a welcome return to the cutting edge. The Galaxy Z Fold 7 sees Samsung step-up it's game in a big way.

I don't have enough insight into the production process behind the Galaxy Z Fold 7 to know exactly how many favours the design team owes to the recently-released Galaxy S25 Edge. I bet that number is pretty high, though. With that device, Samsung showed what a leaner version of its flagship formula could look and it feels like its latest foray into foldable form-factor has inherited a lot from that experiment.

Announced earlier this month, the Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 7 is the manufacturer's lightest tablet-sized foldable yet at just 215g. When folded, the device is around 8.9mm thick. Unfolded, it's less than half that at 4.2mm. For comparison, the Galaxy Z Fold 6 came in at 239g, 12.1mm and 5.6mm, respectively. 

Even if it's not quite as slim as the iPhone 16, Samsung are getting so close to the mark that I don't think the average consumer is going to sweat that difference too much. It's not just that the Galaxy Z Fold 7 feels lighter to hold and handle than its predecessors though, it's that it manages to be so much more lightweight without compromising the core appeal that comes with this kind of hybrid device. 

In this incarnation as much as any previous one, the most compelling thing about the Galaxy Z Fold 7 is that it's a premium smartphone that you can turn into a tablet in a pinch. When folded up, the device comes armed with a 6.5-inch Dynamic AMOLED cover display. Then, whenever you want to go bigger, you've got a secondary 8-inch Dynamic AMOLED 2X screen on the inside that's clocked at 120Hz.

The Galaxy Z Fold 7's internal display is a full 0.4-inches larger than the one found on the previous model, while its external one is about 0.2-inches bigger. That difference might sound small but it adds up to an experience where using the cover display doesn't feel like a compromise. Meanwhile, the larger screen is that much better for big-screen gaming, video content and digital comics. 

In addition to the overall weight and the way that the Galaxy Z Fold looks, Samsung has also taken the opportunity to bolster the durability of the device. Given that this is the manufacturer's most expensive handset and the history of foldable phones, that's always welcome news.  In any case, there's now a reinforced Armor Flex hinge and Advanced Armor aluminum frame on the outside, thinner ultra-thin glass on the inside, Gorilla Glass Victus 2 on the back, plus Gorilla Glass Ceramic 2 on the front. That setup compares pretty favorably to the Galaxy Z Fold 6, which features Gorilla Glass Victus 2 on both sides. However, it's worth remembering that Victus 2 offers 2-meters of drop resistance while Ceramic 2 offers only 1 meter of protection by comparison.

The bigger win here is that the subtraction in size that Samsung has made with the Galaxy Z Fold 7 hasn't come at a cost to the overall build quality and durability of the device. The same can't quite be said when it comes to features. For some, the most noteworthy change here is the dropping of support for Samsung's S-Pen stylus.

Going forward, the Galaxy S25 Ultra will be the only model in the mix to offer this particular perk. In some ways, this tweak to the formula is indicative of a broader refocusing by Samsung. With the Galaxy Z Fold 7, it feels like the company is throwing in the towel on trying to make its most expensive foldable more focused on the specific qualities that make the premium worth paying. 

Another feature that's been cut here is the under-display selfie camera that's been included as standard since the Galaxy Z Fold 3. When it comes to the seventh incarnation of Samsung's flagship foldable, you're looking at a more conventional display cutout camera setup.

Then, on the back of the device, you'll find a 200MP wide-angle lens with a larger sensor, a 12MP ultrawide lens that's 50% brighter, and a 10MP telephoto lens. That upgrade in primary sensor means that the hardware on the back of this device is now much more in line with what the Galaxy S25 Ultra has to offer. Of course, the Galaxy S25 Ultra has a telephoto lens with a lot more megapixels attached to it.

The absence of that missing ingredient doesn't do the Galaxy Z Fold 7 many favours when it comes to long-distance photography. Even so, the device mostly met my expectations when it came to daylight photography. Low-light performance was a little more uneven, but not entirely disappointing. Just don't expect Samsung's latest flagship for foldable fans to deliver the kind of astrophotography that Google and Apple's best devices offer.

As high as the asking price is, you're not really paying for high-end camera hardware so much as you are the foldable display and slim form-factor. Even so, the Galaxy Z Fold 7 delivers results that are good enough that I never felt like there was an enormous chasm between the price and the camera performance. 

When it comes to foldable hardware, that's not always the case. Fortunately and even if the camera on Galaxy Z Fold 7 doesn't quite set a new standard for smartphones writ large, it manages to get close enough to avoid feeling like an albatross on an otherwise exceptional handset.

As opposed to the exterior, the Galaxy Z Fold 7 doesn't come with many changes or surprises when it comes to the inside of the device. Under the hood, the handset is powered by the same Snapdragon 8 Elite for Galaxy found in Samsung's other premium devices.

This silicon has been paired up with 12GB, up to 1TB of storage and a larger 4400mAh battery. All told, this bump in specs promises to offer 38% better CPU performance and a 26% uplift in GPU performance when compared to its predecessor.

In practice, I'd struggle to pick much of a difference between the performance offered by Samsung's other premium devices like the Galaxy S25 Ultra or Galaxy S25 Edge. Apps loaded fast, and I had no real major issues or hiccups when it came to the overall software experience. The Galaxy Z Fold 7 didn't break a sweat when it came to multitasking, nor did it have any issues with more graphically-intensive games like League of Legends: Wild Rift, Diablo Immortal and Zenless Zone Zero.

Across both halves of the device, Samsung is also looking to make it a little easier to make the most of the Galaxy AI and Gemini-powered features it introduced with last year's Galaxy Z Fold 6. In other words, there aren't all that many big new features, but those that are included better support the cover display and multitasking capabilities of the Galaxy Z Fold 7. To cut to the chase, the full list of the device's AI features and apps is as follows:

Where previous Galaxy AI efforts have come with the small print that these features may only be free to use until the end of 2025, the company is now talking a little more openly about what the other side of that deadline will look like.

A Samsung spokesperson told Reviews.org that the company has "No plans to charge for default Galaxy AI features going forward".

An exact list or definition of specifically what features that does and doesn't cover remains to be seen. Still, it's a marked improvement on the company's silence prior to now.

Out of the box, the Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 7 comes with seven years of OS updates and seven years of security updates. That's pretty close to being as good as Android devices get. Even if it isn't an improvement on last year's device, that's still good to see given the asking price involved.

Then, on the inside, the Galaxy Z Fold 7 is kitted out with a 4400mAh battery. It's impressive that Samsung has kept the battery size the same despite the slimming down of the overall form factor. Despite the screens found on both halves of the handset being larger, I had little trouble getting through a full day on a single charge.

Burned down via streaming video from YouTube over Wi-Fi, the device took 27 hours and 6 minutes to go from a full charge to zero. That's a really impressive result that puts it well above devices that don't have foldable screens on them.