Galaxy Z Fold 7 feels like a perfect foldable with a striking look!!
The Galaxy Z Fold series has been the pinnacle of foldables in the smartphone industry, thereby demonstrating Samsung's brand recognition. Last year, we had the Galaxy Z Fold 6 (Review), which was a solid product in its own right, and now with the Galaxy Z Fold 7, the brand is aiming to continue its top spot, as Samsung has nailed the design.
With AI being the biggest talking point for the Galaxy Z Fold 6, the Galaxy Z Fold 7 brings a solid experience in terms of newer AI features in the software, an upgraded primary camera, but the main talking point has to be the new slim form factor and the newer design, which feels like a huge upgrade. There are a few other areas where the Galaxy Z Fold 7 brings fewer upgrades, which will be discussed in the further review.
So, how good of an upgrade is the newer Galaxy Z Fold 7 over its predecessor, i.e. Galaxy Z Fold 6, and is it worth considering with that premium price tag out there?
Let's find out in the full review.
Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 7 Design:
The Galaxy Z Fold 7 sports a design similar to that of its predecessor, the Galaxy Z Fold 6, but it is now much slimmer and lighter as well. When you open the foldable, there is the presence of a newer hinge, which Samsung likes to call the Armour FlexHinge, which is more durable when compared to the Galaxy Z Fold 6. The newer hinge hides the crease, thus making it look premium.
The edges are slightly sharper than before, but you would not feel the sharp edges around. In terms of thickness, the Galaxy Z Fold 7, when unfolded, is slimmer at 4.2mm compared to the 5.6mm thickness on the Galaxy Z Fold 6. When folded, the Galaxy Z Fold 7 is slimmer at 8.4mm, which is way thinner compared to the 12.1mm thickness of the Galaxy Z Fold 6.
In terms of weight distribution, the Galaxy Z Fold 7 weighs around 215grams which is 24grams lighter than the Galaxy Z Fold 6. The display present inside now has 50% thicker Ultra-thin glass, which is more durable. On the outside, the cover display is slightly larger now when compared to its predecessor, thus giving you the feel of using a proper smartphone.
When folded, at the back, there is a similar pill-shaped camera module which houses the triple cameras and just outside the module, alongside lies an LED flashlight. The camera module is now more protruding when compared to the Galaxy Z Fold 6, so it may wobble when kept on a flat surface. There is the IP48 rating, which makes it water-resistant, but this time it misses out on dust resistance.
The Armour Aluminium frame houses the power button and the volume buttons on the side. The top houses the microphone, speaker grille, and a dual SIM card slot that takes two nano SIM cards. There is no additional slot for a microSD card for storage expansion. The bottom has the USB Type-C 3.2 Gen 1 port, two microphones and a loudspeaker grille.
Coming to the outer display, the Galaxy Z Fold 7 has a slightly larger 6.5-inch display compared to the 6.3-inch display on the Galaxy Z Fold 6. The inner display has been upgraded to an 8-inch display from the 7.6-inch display of its predecessor. There is no more the hidden selfie camera inside the display compared to last year, and the inside selfie camera is now clearly present, which is located at the top of the centre.
In terms of display protection, the Galaxy Z Fold 7's cover display is protected by Gorilla Glass Ceramic 2, while the back panel is protected by Corning Gorilla Glass Victus 2. The Galaxy Z Fold 7 is available in four different colours - Blue Shadow, Silver Shadow, Jet Black, and Mint. Overall, the build and design feel like an upgrade over the Galaxy Z Fold 6.
Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 7 Display:
The Galaxy Z Fold 7 sports a larger 8-inch Full HD+ (1968x2184 pixels) 2X Dynamic AMOLED display, with slightly higher resolution than the Galaxy Z Fold 6's (1856x2160 pixels) display. Since it is an AMOLED display, you get punchier colours, and viewing angles are great. On top of that, this one is a 10-bit display.
The outer display of the Galaxy Z Fold 7 is also larger at 6.5 inches with a Full HD+(1080x2520 pixels) 2X Dynamic AMOLED display with a screen-to-body ratio of 22.1:9. Both the inner and the outer displays have an LTPO panel, which means the refresh rate can scale between 1Hz to 120Hz depending on the content in the display which means if you are watching a 60fps video, the display refreshes at 90Hz, while playing games like COD Mobile, the display refreshes at 120Hz.
Under Motion Smoothness settings under Display, there are two different options to choose from - Adaptive and Standard, where selecting the Adaptive mode lets the display scale between different refresh rates depending on the tasks running in the display, whereas if you want the best battery life, then the Standard Mode will cater for your needs.
Combined with a 120Hz refresh rate, there is a 240Hz touch sampling rate for faster touch responses during gaming. In terms of display brightness under high brightness mode, both the outer and the inner display can reach a brightness of 1400nits which is 200nits lower than its predecessor, i.e. Galaxy Z Fold 6, under direct sunlight. However, both displays have a peak brightness of 2600nits which remains unchanged from the Galaxy Z Fold 6.
There is an Extra Brightness Mode which, when turned on, results to 707nits of extra brightness. There are two different modes under settings to choose from - Vivid and Natural. Under Vivid mode, you get punchier colours with deep blues and blacks, and this covers the DCI-P3 gamut, whereas choosing the Standard mode results in slightly lower saturated colours with more of a natural tone, and this covers the sRGB colour space.
The outer display has an ultrasonic fingerprint scanner, which works perfectly and is accurate. The display of the Galaxy Z Fold 7 has support for HDR, and the presence of Widevine L1 lets you stream HDR content on OTT platforms, but this time, there is no support for Dolby Vision, which is slightly disappointing. Overall, the display is great for multimedia consumption.
Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 7 Performance:
The Galaxy Z Fold 7 sports the flagship Snapdragon 8 Elite chipset, and just like the Galaxy S25 Ultra (Review), the primary core of this chipset is overclocked at 4.47GHz compared to the 4.32GHz on other Snapdragon 8 Elite-powered smartphones. In terms of daily tasks, the Galaxy Z Fold 7 handles everything smoothly without breaking a sweat.
The Snapdragon 8 Elite chipset is paired with an Adreno 830 GPU, which is clocked at 1200MHz, which is 100MHz clocked higher than the regular Snapdragon 8 Elite chipset-powered smartphones. Compared to last year's Galaxy Z Fold 6, you get slightly better performance, and this is clearly noticed in most of the tasks, whether scrolling through webpages, playing games, rendering videos, etc.
In BGMI, the Galaxy Z Fold 7 easily ran with Smooth graphics and Extreme frame rate without any frame drops, except that you may notice some stutters while setting the frame rates to HDR. In other games like COD Mobile and Genshin Impact, the gameplay was smooth at the highest graphics settings. After longer hours of gaming, the Galaxy Z Fold 7 did feel slightly warmer to the touch.
It was not much warmer since there is a dedicated vapour chamber system, which has a larger area for dissipating heat faster. In terms of the CPU throttling test, the Galaxy Z Fold 7 had a sustained performance of around 65-70 per cent with some throttling present. When it comes to benchmarks, the scores came out the best in class since the primary core of the chipset has been overclocked.
In terms of network connectivity, you get support for good carrier aggregation, and there is support for all bands of 5G. The Galaxy Z Fold 7 is available in three different storage variants - 12GB RAM with 256GB storage, 12GB RAM with 512GB storage and another 16GB storage with 1TB storage, where all of the variants have LPDDR5X RAM with UFS 4.0 speeds for faster reads and writes.
Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 7 Software:
The Galaxy Z Fold 7 runs on the latest OneUI 8.0, which is based on Android 16. If you compare OneUI 8.0 with OneUI 7.0, there are not many differences, as OneUI 7.0 was itself a huge upgrade over OneUI 6.0, but with OneUI 8.0, there are a couple of new additions. When it comes to AI, Samsung has nailed all its smartphones with the latest AI features that always come in handy.
The Galaxy AI features are well optimised for foldables, like Multimodal A, which works well, and you can share the screen on Gemini Live. The Multimodal AI feature understands contexts much better, and you also get a much improved multi-tasking feature, where now you get a 90:10 split, a good improvement over the 70:30 split. Other features include the Now Bar and Now Brief, which were also seen on the Galaxy S25 Ultra.
The Now Bar lets you control most of the things, like which music is playing, shows the different directions while using Maps, shows live tracking of any order from third-party applications like Swiggy or Zomato, and many other tasks. The Now Brief provides personalised briefs based on content that are suggested, like current weather, multiple reminders, and even features like last night's sleep summary early next morning.
The Reminder application comes with additions where it can manage your to-do lists and drop the required reminders on time. There are a host of AI features like Call Assist, Writing Assist, Interpreter, Note Assist, Browsing Assist, Photo Assist, Drawing Assist, Audio Eraser, Health Assist, and Photo Ambient Wallpaper. These features were already a part of last year's OneUI 7.0, and a detailed explanation is written in the Galaxy Z Fold 6 review.
There is also the Circle To Search feature, which now works in many games, where if you circle on any subject in the game, it will provide the details of it. There are a lot of customisations present where you can change icon shape and size, colours, fonts and different AOD styles on the lockscreen. In terms of software updates, the Galaxy Z Fold 7 will receive another seven years of AndroidOS updates and security patches.
Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 7 Cameras:
The Galaxy Z Fold 7 comes with an upgraded camera setup when compared to its predecessor, i.e. Galaxy Z Fold 6, as it sports a 200MP f/1.7 Samsung ISOCELL HP2 sensor for the primary camera, a 12MP Sony IMX564 sensor for the ultrawide camera, and a 10MP ISOCELL 3K1 sensor for the telephoto camera with support for 3x optical zoom. The outer display has a 10MP f/2.2 selfie camera.
The inner display camera also gets an upgraded 10MP f/2.2 unit compared to a 4MP unit on its predecessor, i.e. Galaxy Z Fold 6. The primary camera sensor is similar to the one found on the Galaxy S25 Ultra. The images from the primary camera come out with sharper details and a wider dynamic range. The colours look saturated without any kind of oversharpening, and even the noise is not very present in the background.
The contrast is on the higher side, and the white balance is handled perfectly. The regular 200MP mode provides images with good dynamic range and sharper details, but tends to be slightly softer with a bit of noise in the background. The colours look saturated without any kind of oversharpening with the 200MP mode, also. The 50MP mode also yields almost similar results as that of the 200MP camera mode.
The 2x zoom from the primary camera works well for images that come out with sharper details, a wider dynamic range, and almost no background noise. At night, Auto Night Mode is triggered automatically, resulting in sharper details, a good dynamic range, and saturated colours with less background noise. The contrast and white balance are handled very well.
Without the dedicated Night Mode, the results came out good, but still, the details looked softer, and the noise was on the higher side. The colours look punchier without any kind of oversharpening in the background. The 2x zoomed images from this camera shot at night came out with sharper details, with good dynamic range and less noise in the background. Without the Night Mode, the details looked softer, and the noise is on the higher side.
The ultrawide camera does a good job in terms of details that look sharper with almost no noise in the background. The dynamic range is wider, but still not as wide as that of the primary camera. The colours look punchier with some amount of oversharpening, but you would notice much. The contrast and white balance are well maintained at all times.
During the night, the ultrawide camera does a good job in terms of details that look sharper, and has good dynamic range with less noise in the background. Just like the primary camera, here also the Auto Night Mode gets triggered automatically, and all the results came out very good. Without the Night Mode, there is quite an amount of noise in the background, and the details look a tad softer, but still, the dynamic range is quite wider.
However, if you look closely, there is not much difference between images taken with and without Night Mode. This time around, there is autofocus support for the ultrawide camera, which means you can take very good macro images that look sharper and have wider dynamic range. The colours look saturated with no hint of oversharpening, and noise is well under control.
The 3x telephoto camera does an excellent job in terms of details, which look sharper and have a wider dynamic range with less noise in the background. The colours look saturated without any kind of oversharpening as such. Beyond 5x zoom levels, there is a bit of noise noticed, and details also look softer. Similarly, the Auto Night Mode gets triggered automatically at night for the 3x telephoto camera.
At night, the 3x telephoto camera does an excellent job in terms of details, which look sharper and have good dynamic range with less noise in the background. The details in the shadows look good, and contrast is well handled. However, without the Night Mode, the details look softer, and the dynamic range takes a slight hit. The colours look saturated without any kind of oversharpening.
The inner selfie camera is bumped upto 10MP from the 4MP one on its predecessor, i.e. Galaxy Z Fold 6. The inner display selfie camera is no longer hidden and is clearly visible. The selfies come out with sharper details, wider dynamic range, and colours (skin tones) look saturated without any kind of oversharpening in the background. The selfies have almost no noise present.
The outer selfie camera does a good job in terms of details, which look sharper, have good dynamic range with natural-looking skin tones and less noise in the background. However, the inner selfie camera captures slightly wider images as it has a slightly wider field of view compared to the outer selfie camera. There is a fair bit of oversharpening noticed in the selfies taken from the outer selfie camera.
In terms of video recording, the primary camera can only record 8K videos at 30fps whereas all other cameras can record 4K videos at 60fps. The videos from the primary camera come out with sharper details, wider dynamic range, and less noise in the background due to the presence of OIS. The colours look punchier with good contrast and proper white balance.
At night, the videos from the primary camera come out with sharper details, with a wider dynamic range, and almost no noise in the background with the Auto Night Mode turned on. Without the Auto Night Mode, the colours look saturated, though without any kind of oversharpening. Without the Auto Night Mode, the details look softer, and the noise is on the higher side, too.
The videos from both the ultrawide and the telephoto cameras come out with good details that look sharper, colours look saturated without any kind of oversharpening, and noise is also less in the background. However, the videos do suffer in terms of oversharpening in the background, but the videos come out better on the telephoto camera compared to the ultrawide camera, which needs a lot of improvement.
The videos from both selfie cameras come out with good details that look sharper, but there is a huge amount of noise in the background, and skin tones look a bit washed out. The inner selfie camera is the better performer of the two. The outer selfie camera is just average, but still, the video quality from both selfie cameras is an improvement over its predecessor, i.e. Galaxy Z Fold 6.
There are a couple of new features, like the Galaxy Log video feature, which allows you to download videos from your smartphone and perform colour grading of the video footage. Then there is the AI Audio Eraser, using which you can control the level of noise in the videos, where you can eliminate the wind, crowd and noise in the videos and also adjust the sound in the videos, which is great.
Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 7 Battery Life:
The Galaxy Z Fold 7 sports an identical 4400mAh battery as that of its predecessor, i.e. Galaxy Z Fold 6, but with the presence of a newer Snapdragon 8 Elite chipset, we do expect better results since the chipset is based on a 3nm process. With normal usage, the Galaxy Z Fold 7 can easily last two days, and with heavy usage, it can easily last for a single day with some charge left.
With normal usage that includes streaming social media, scrolling through webpages, playing games for 1-2 hours only, etc., the Galaxy Z Fold 7 easily lasted for two days with some charge left, and the standard screen-on time came around 6-6.5 hours, which is good. With heavy usage that includes playing games like COD Mobile for longer hours, taking images and videos using all the cameras, etc., the foldable easily lasted for one day with some charge left.
The standard screen-on time with heavy usage came out around 5-5.5 hours, which is good, but considering the more efficient 3nm process-based chipset, there is no such improvement, as these results remain similar to its predecessor, i.e. Galaxy Z Fold 6. In terms of charging speeds, Samsung is sticking with similar charging speeds, which means the Galaxy Z Fold 7 supports 25W fast charging just like its predecessor.
Just as always, the foldable is not equipped with a charger inside the box, which is a huge disappointment. The 25W fast charger can be purchased separately from the market or online, and using this dedicated charger, you can reach 0 to 50 per cent within 30 minutes, whereas a full charge from 0 to 100 per cent will take around 1 hour and 30 minutes, which is good but still quite time-consuming.
Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 7 Audio Quality:
The Galaxy Z Fold 7 sports a dual stereo speaker setup, which sounds adequately loud and clear with no distortion in the sound. The audio output does not feel muffled even at the highest volume settings. There is the presence of Dolby Atmos, which provides excellent sound output while watching videos, listening to songs, etc.
Verdict:
As an overall package, the Galaxy Z Fold 7 has a lot going for it, as Samsung always tries to get the best out of each of its foldable devices, and the same here is the story. The standout feature is the design of this foldable, where Samsung has perfectly crafted a slim form factor, and, aside from that, all other aspects have also been taken care of.
Other things that work in favour are the display, along with stereo speakers which is great for multi-media consumption, and the performance is top tier with the flagship Snapdragon 8 Elite chipset thus providing great gaming capabilities, the camera performance has been very good with the slight changes in the camera setup, the software experience has to be the most refined one with great features and the software update lifecycle.
The battery life is also very good. However, there are still a few areas where the Galaxy Z Fold 7 feels short. The Snapdragon 8 Elite chipset is great for multitasking daily, but there is a lot of thermal throttling noticed, and the foldable does feel slightly warmer. The primary camera performance is excellent, but still, the camera outputs from other cameras need a huge scope of improvement, especially at night.
Though you get good battery life, the charging speeds are still not the best, as 25W fast charging does feel slower when compared to the competition out there. On top of that, the absence of a charger does feel like a pain. Another drawback has to be the removal of S-Pen support, which could have made the experience much better. The Galaxy Z Fold 7 is a worthy upgrade over the Galaxy Z Fold 6, considering all factors except for the S-Pen support.
As an overall package, if you can live with the few shortcomings, then the Galaxy Z Fold 7 is a solid product out there.
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