Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 7 review: the new standard for foldable phones

This $1,999 foldable is the one to get if you want the best folding phone in the US

Max Buondonno

and

Matt Swider

Jul 17, 2025

🏆 Rating: 5/5

✅ Pros

📐 Ultra-thin design makes this foldable feel like a normal phone
🪶 At 215g, it’s lighter than the S25 Ultra
📖 8-inch large tablet-like screen (up from 7.6-inch) when unfolded
🤳 6.5-inch Cover Screen (up from 6.3-inch) is easier to use when folded
📸 200MP camera from Samsung’s flagship Galaxy S25 Ultra
🎨 Great colors like Mint and Blue Shadow
🤖 Debuts Gemini’s Share Screen with AI
⚙️ Fast Snapdragon 8 Elite chip; up to 1TB of storage with 16GB RAM

❌ Cons

🔋 Battery life can be underwhelming
⚡️ Charging speed is slower than the S25 Ultra
🔥 It runs warm with moderate tasks
💰 $100 more than Z Fold 6 before boosted trade-in deals
🖋️ No S Pen support in order to go so thin

Samsung: Galaxy Z Fold 7

The Shortcut review

Even if ‘Ultra’ isn’t in the name, Samsung didn’t hold back this year. The Galaxy Z Fold 7 sets the new standard for foldable phones. It’s one of the most fun smartphones I’ve tested, and Google is going to have a hard time beating this one next month.

Samsung addressed our feedback in last year’s Galaxy Z Fold 6 review, crafting a phone with an ultra-thin design, wider screens, a flagship-level 200MP camera, and fast performance. It finally packs in the fundamentals of a top-tier smartphone without too many sacrifices.

The Z Fold 7 design nails the dimensions we wanted: an 8-inch tablet-like screen, a 6.5-inch Cover Screen, and a folded size that’s somehow thinner than the Galaxy S25 Ultra. It feels extra durable thanks to a stronger hinge and thicker glass, and there’s less of an unsightly crease. It’s an engineering marvel that can’t be matched in the US, while Samsung and Google’s software and AI features can’t be beat worldwide.

There are some downsides to the Fold 7’s ultra-thin design, though. The battery life may leave power users wanting, heat management can be an issue, and the digitizer has been removed, so there’s no S Pen stylus support whatsoever. Something has gotten thicker, and it isn’t pretty: the price. At $1,999, the Galaxy Z Fold 7 is $100 more than the Fold 6. You’re going to have to lean heavily on pre-order trade-in bonuses, but even those will only get you so far.

Are you a power user who has a thick wallet and wants an ultra-thin phone? Compared to the competition, the Z Fold 7 is by far the best foldable you can buy. And it’s likely to remain that way even after the Pixel 10 Pro Fold launches on August 20, unless Google offers some dramatic design changes.

💰 Samsung pre-order deals upfront

Full review

Displays

📱 Huge cover screen upgrade. The cover screen might be an underrated reason to buy the Galaxy Z Fold 7. The new 6.5-inch Dynamic AMOLED 2X display isn’t much larger than the 6.3-inch panel on last year’s Fold 6, but it feels a lot more spacious thanks to its wider aspect ratio, giving it a familiar, traditional smartphone feel. You no longer feel cramped when typing or scrolling on social media, and all of your apps will format correctly.

📺 A tablet in your pocket. Of course, the marquee feature of the Z Fold 7 is the folding display, which has gone from 7.6 inches to 8 inches. This AMOLED panel is the one to use for maximum screen real estate, and it looks better than ever thanks to the reduced crease in the middle. There’s plenty of room for watching movies, reading e-books, and multitasking with multiple side-by-side windows. It’s the perfect canvas for productivity on the go, and those times when you need a portable movie theater in your pocket.

💡 Bright, fast, responsive. Samsung’s display technology shines bright on the Galaxy Z Fold 7. The cover screen’s Full HD+ resolution, 120Hz refresh rate, and 2,600 nits of peak brightness make it sharp, colorful, and plenty bright. Meanwhile, the folding display’s Quad HD+ resolution looks just as sharp, while saturation and brightness remain at the same high-quality as its sibling display. The bezels are also incredibly thin, which gives the screen a very immersive feel.

✍️ No S Pen support. The biggest downside to the foldable screen is the lack of S Pen support. Samsung got rid of it to prioritize the thin and lightweight form factor, and it’s left customers divided. Some swear by the S Pen and hate to see it go, while others (who seem to be the majority, according to Samsung) never used it in the first place. No matter what camp you fall in, if the day comes when you need an S Pen, you’ll have to buy the Galaxy S25 Ultra. As of right now, it’s the only 2025 phone Samsung sells that supports it.

More: Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 7 ditches S Pen support – here’s why

Design

🍕 Pizza, anyone? Matt had a great way to describe the design of the Galaxy Z Fold 7 in our hands-on: as a slice of Brooklyn-style pizza (where Unpacked was hosted). It’s thinner, bigger, and more “flavorful” than other foldables on the market. By “flavorful,” we mean that the device has more perks than other foldables; it’s just 4.2mm thin when open, it weighs an astonishing 215 grams, there’s a 200MP camera on the back, and it’s blazing fast. It’s different compared to all the thick-crust, traditional cheese pizzas out there, ya know?

👀 Ultra-reminiscent. Moving from the traditional Galaxy S25 Ultra isn’t so jarring, thanks to how this foldable feels – it’s thin even when folded up, and the cover screen is wider. Sure, the S25 Ultra’s display is slightly bigger, but the new Fold offers the same candy-bar vibe. It’s more on par with the shape of the Pixel 9 Pro Fold, giving you the traditional phone experience when you want it and a huge screen when you need it.

🎨 Two colors steal the show. There are four Galaxy Z Fold 7 colors, but two finishes steal the show. One is Blue Shadow, which is what my review unit came in. It’s a deep, saturated color that looks beautiful in person. The second-best color (in my opinion) is Mint. It’s a Samsung.com exclusive, with a light green accent on the back glass and matching aluminum rail. It’s a refreshing look that’s perfect for anyone who wants to stand out, although Jet Black and Silver Shadow are here in case you don’t..

🪨 Even more durable. It’s also more durable than previous Galaxy Z Fold devices. While Samsung is sticking with an IP48 rating for dust and water resistance, the FlexHinge uses a stronger, thinner construction for better reliability over time. The materials the phone is crafted out of are stronger than in years past. You’ll find Gorilla Glass Victus Ceramic 2 on the front, Gorilla Glass Victus 2 on the back, and Armor Aluminum around the sides.

Cameras

📸 The Ultra upgrade you’ve been waiting for. This year, the Galaxy Z Fold 7 gets the same 200MP main camera as the Galaxy S25 Ultra, and it makes a big difference in terms of the photos and videos you can take One of the biggest downsides to Samsung’s foldables has been camera quality, but this year, the conversation shifts.

📷 Main: So, is the 200MP camera any good? Absolutely. It’s the same sensor as the S25 Ultra and S25 Edge, which means it’s capable of producing excellent photos in a variety of lighting conditions. From dark NYC bars to sunny days at Pier 57, this camera can capture it all with good color, contrast, and detail. You can capture photos in 12MP, 50MP, and 200MP resolutions, all of which produce similar results. I only recommend taking 200MP pictures if you want to print them, while 12MP and 50MP are good for sharing to social media. This sensor alone gives the Fold 7 one of the best camera systems on the market.

🏞️ Ultra-wide: This is where things get dicey. Unlike the main camera, the ultra-wide didn’t get a big upgrade this year. Instead, it’s the same 12MP sensor as the Fold 6, complete with a slightly tighter 120º field of view (versus 123 degrees). The sensor wasn’t all that great last year, and it hasn’t improved much this year. While the upgraded ProVisual Engine processing algorithm helps to pull extra detail from each photo, the sensor struggles to collect a lot of detail in the first place. During the day, you can get some decent shots with good color reproduction, but at night, it struggles to produce the same results. Colors are often blended together and lose accuracy, and the night mode adds a bit too much exposure for pictures to look realistic.

🔭 Telephoto: There’s also a 10MP 3x telephoto lens on the Z Fold 7, the same one that was on the Fold 6. This sensor performs better than the ultra-wide; in my testing, it could capture similar colors and detail to the main lens, even in darker settings. While it’s still a challenge to get a great photo in darker scenarios, it does a good job in most settings. It also enables 30x hybrid zoom, which is far behind the S25 Ultra’s 100x Space Zoom. Maybe next year we’ll get a true Ultra camera setup.

Left: 10MP cover screen selfie camera | Right: 10MP folding screen selfie camera (Credit: Max Buondonno / The Shortcut)

🤳 Selfie: The two 10MP selfie cameras on the Fold 7 are very good. I especially appreciate the one on the folding screen, which replaces the god-awful 4MP under-display shooter that was on the Fold 6. It takes a massive step up in quality as a result, which means for the first time in a while, you can feel confident sharing selfies you take on a Galaxy Fold to social media.

🎥 Video: Video quality reminds me a lot of what you can capture on the Galaxy S25 Ultra. Save for the ultra-wide camera, the 4K 60fps clips I captured on the Fold 7 look sharp, bright, and full of life. During the day, video quality can easily rival the iPhone 16 Pro, which is saying something. At night, clips can get overexposed a bit too easy, while the ultra-wide camera falls apart quickly. Still, you can get some great video from this camera system. Plus, there’s support for 8K video, if you feel so inclined.

🎞️ Camera vibe check: Is this the Ultra camera system that Samsung keeps talking about? Yes and no. It’s a hybrid of past Z Fold devices and where Samsung wants to take its cameras. The 200MP shooter is a great touch that puts the Galaxy Z Fold 7 on the same playing field as the iPhone 16 Pro, Pixel 9 Pro, and S25 Ultra. However, its ultra-wide and telephoto capabilities leave a lot to be desired. All the editing tricks in the software, coupled with great video quality, help to make up for the lack of raw hardware performance. But at the end of the day, the Z Fold 7’s cameras fall short of what the S25 Ultra can do. That being said, the cameras are closer than they’ve ever been, and with a little more work, we could get a folding phone from Samsung with true flagship-level cameras in the near future.

Performance

🏎️ Flagship power. You don’t have to worry about your phone keeping up with your workload with the Galaxy Z Fold 7. Samsung packs in the Snapdragon 8 Elite chip, which has been specially optimized for Galaxy devices. It’s one of the fastest processors on the market, and it shows; I failed to get this thing to slow down no matter what I threw at it. From gaming to productivity apps and more, there’s nothing this phone can’t handle. It’s what you’d expect from a $2,000 phone, but it’s nice to see that expectation met.

🧑‍💻 Built for multitasking. Part of the reason it’s so good at multitasking is the amount of RAM inside, which is 12GB for most people and 16GB for those who buy the 1TB storage tier. The 256GB and 512GB models will perform perfectly fine, but for those who think they need a few extra gigs of memory to handle their workloads (perhaps you’re a regular DeX user, to which I say: that’s impressive), you can always go for 1TB/16GB.

🔥 Too hot too often. One of the issues with having such a thin phone is that it’s difficult to keep all the parts inside cool, since there’s no room for a proper cooling system. As a result, the Galaxy Z Fold 7 tends to run far hotter than other foldables I’ve tried. Sure, New York City keeps going in and out of heat waves, but even in an air-conditioned coffee shop, it warms up quickly after taking a few photos. When gaming, it can get even warmer; it doesn’t get too hot to touch, but it feels unnatural, to say the least. The battery and camera housing tend to get the warmest, so if you plan on taking lots of pictures all day, you might want to turn off auto-brightness to keep it cool (which helped me a few times).

Battery life

🪫 Underwhelming endurance. Battery life is the weakest point of the Galaxy Z Fold 7. The 4,400mAh cell isn’t big enough to last a full day with heavy use; instead, it can barely get through a full day with moderate use, so long as you don’t use the folding screen too often. The thin form factor doesn’t allow for a battery much larger than this, and Samsung still hasn’t made the switch to silicone-carbon batteries like the OnePlus 13 did, which gives you more capacity in the same-size cell. The result? Battery life that feels more like a $900 phone instead of one that costs over twice as much.

More: Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 7 battery life test: it’s thin in more ways than one

⚡️ Slow charging (by today’s standards). There was a time when 25W charging was considered fast, but with other phones that charge at upwards of 65W and Samsung’s own S25 series supporting 45W, it’s hard not to ding the Z Fold 7 for limiting recharge performance. It can take over an hour to recharge your phone if it dies, which isn’t great by 2025’s standards.

🥱 ‘Qi2 Ready’ = boring. The Galaxy Z Fold 7 is certified “Qi2 Ready,” which just means it supports 15W wireless charging. The Qi2 standard, which has been around for years at this point, regularly fails to get adopted by the world’s largest smartphone brands, and Samsung is carrying on that trend with its latest foldables. You won’t find magnets in the Fold 7 or Flip 7 that would make them Qi2 certified; instead, you have to buy a special case with magnets built into it. The faster wireless charging is nice, but c’mon, Samsung - just give us some magnets already.

🤝 Wireless PowerShare is still around. For those curious, yes, you still get reverse wireless charging with Wireless PowerShare on the Galaxy Z Fold 7. It’s still locked to 4.5W, but it’s enough to juice up your earbuds or smartwatch in a pinch.

Software & AI

🦾 Gemini takes center stage. Samsung’s big AI focus with the Galaxy Z Fold 7 has largely been Gemini. That’s because you can now use Gemini Live on the big screen with the device’s rear cameras, which lets you ask questions about your surroundings in real-time on a much larger canvas than before. It’s a great upgrade, one that helps the Z Fold 7 feel like the AI portal that Samsung wants it to be. Of course, you can still type to Gemini, use voice commands, and more.

🤖 Galaxy AI presses on. Samsung threw in all of its Galaxy AI features it’s been promoting on its past few devices, including Photo Assist, which is now better at removing unwanted subjects and objects from your photos. The Now Brief is also improved with more content, and I must say, it feels more robust than the previous version of Now Brief, which would only give me weather and calendar details (and sometimes traffic info if I was traveling somewhere that day). Features like Writing Assist and Transcript Assist are also here, rounding out an AI experience that’s both versatile and helpful.

📲 One UI 8 makes its debut. The Galaxy Z Fold 7 comes with One UI 8 out of the box, which is based on Android 16. The system doesn’t feel too different from One UI 7, beyond a fresh coat of polish and paint in some areas. Improvements to the Now Bar and Now Brief are nice, and I enjoy their relative simplicity, which makes the system feel smooth and easy to navigate. I still prefer the simplicity and customizability of Google’s Material 3 Expressive UI, but this is a close second.

7️⃣ Seven years of upgrades. The best part of the software experience? The fact that it’s supported for seven years. The Galaxy Z Fold 7 is promised seven years of major software upgrades and security updates, which means it should be running Android 23 one day. The same goes for the Flip 7, which makes these phones ideal if you plan on using your next phone for a long time.

Tidbits

Here are some other things I noticed about the Galaxy Z Fold 7 during my testing.

📳 The vibration motor feels strong and precise. It’s not quite as good as what Apple and Google have on their phones, but it’s very close.
🔊 Speaker quality is very solid on this phone. The amount of bass it can kick out makes no sense for how thin the Fold 7 is.
📱 I dropped it on a wooden floor at a Starbucks Reserve from about three feet in the air. No cracks, no dents. This obviously isn’t the most extreme drop test, but I feel like it speaks to something, right?
🤏 I’m still in awe at its thinness. Like… holy crap, how did they fit the USB-C port on this thing?

Should you buy the Galaxy Z Fold 7?

Yes, if…

✅ You want a tablet-like device that also feels like a regular phone
✅ You want a foldable without giving up Samsung’s flagship 200MP camera
✅ You want the top-tier performance of the Snapdragon 8 Elite
✅ You want the latest AI and software features

No, if…

❌ You use an S Pen regularly (stick with the Galaxy S25 Ultra)
❌ You want reliable battery life (get the Pixel 9 Pro Fold)
❌ You want a more compact, cheaper foldable (get the Galaxy Z Flip 7)

Samsung: Galaxy Z Fold 7

Max Buondonno is an editor at The Shortcut. He’s been reporting on the latest consumer technology since 2015, with his work featured on CNN Underscored, ZDNET, How-To Geek, XDA, TheStreet, Country Central, and more. Follow him on X @LegendaryScoop and Instagram @LegendaryScoop.

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