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Galaxy Z Fold7 Review: Samsung Finally Gets the Fold Right
by Adam Doud on July 25, 2025
The Samsung Galaxy Z Fold7 is a breath of fresh air – no doubt about it. It's remarkable the amount of improvements that Samsung (and Google) have brought to the foldable space in the course of a year. However, it comes after arguably three or four years of…you know…no innovation.
On the plus side, the new phone has a 200-megapixel camera. Samsung decreased the thickness of the Fold by almost one-third. And there are strong new multitasking and software improvements to the Fold 7
On the minus side, Samsung tacked on an extra $100 to the price. And, there’s no S-Pen functionality, which will really rankle a small but vocal minority of users.
I've been using a Galaxy Z Fold7 review sample provided by Samsung for more than a week, and I've found it to be the best book-style foldable you can buy in the U.S. today. There are a few compromises that will annoy the die-hards, but most folks, including me, won't mind.
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Design: So thin, wow!
The headline of the Samsung Galaxy Z Fold7 is how thin it is. Measuring just 8.9mm when folded and 4.2mm when opened, Samsung caught up to most of its competitors overnight. The inside screen is also larger, matching the Google Pixel 9 Pro Fold's 8-inch screen. Both of these were absolutely necessary changes, especially given the Pixel Fold's position in the U.S. market starting last August – jumping from a 4.76% share to 12.9% in Q4 2024.
Read more: Google Pixel 9 Smartphone Lineup Adds Plenty of New AI Features
The result is that the phone, when closed, feels like a normal phone, though it's a tad narrower. Unlike previous years, this phone is very usable when closed; typing is easy with two thumbs. It will never stop being funny to me that one of the key ways I judge a foldable is how much you can use it when it's closed. The Samsung Galaxy Z Fold7 easily passes that test with flying colors.
However, we don't measure a phone's thickness at its thickest point – the camera bump, and this one is so tall it comes with its own Sherpa. The bump on the Z Fold7 adds another 60% thickness to the phone, and as a result, this phone wobbles on a table so much that it feels like you should be tapping out Morse code.
Display: S-Pen sacrificed in the quest for thin
One of the big sacrifices that had to be made, to hear a Samsung rep tell it, was the digitizer embedded in the display that enabled S-Pen functionality. According to the same rep, few people used it – around 70% of people who bought an S-Pen case for the Fold 6 still didn't use the S-Pen. That number feels…inflated, but at the same time, I don't have anything to refute it. Truth be told, I got the S-Pen case for the Fold 6, and while I used the S-Pen fairly regularly, it probably wasn't terribly often. RIP S-Pen digitizer. We hardly knew ye.
Samsung also redesigned the hinge so that it's 27% thinner, which contributes to the overall thinness. Doing so did not affect the crease in the inner display – it's still there and you can still see it, especially when viewing a solid color background, like when reading a book. It's gotten so much better than earlier generations, to the point where you can barely see it in some cases. But it's still there, and haters will still hate on it.
One other note, the inside screen is extremely glossy, which can make the phone hard to read when open on a sunny day. Often, what happens is the phone reflects what's in the background, making it hard to read. If you find the right angles, you'll be okay, but it can be on the annoying side.
Read more: Samsung’s Foldables Evolve: Fold7, Flip7, and the First Flip FE
Samsung’s OneUI 8: A multitasker's dream
On the software side, things are great, and it's a combination of Samsung and Google bringing you the goods. The Z Fold7 comes with OneUI 8, which is based on Android 16, out of the box, and it makes multitasking wonderful. You can do the usual stuff, like run apps side-by-side, and floating windows and all that, but Android 16 brings a 90/10 split view which, as the name implies, lets one app take up 90% of the window while it pushes the other app off to the side, so you can only see a thin strip of it. When you tap that strip, it slides your main app over and slides the other app into view.
This is very similar to OnePlus's Open Canvas, which is available on the OnePlus Open and the OnePlus 13 (though it's much more effective on the Open). However, OnePlus takes it a step further by allowing up to three apps to run simultaneously. That can be a bit much, but the flexibility of the 90/10 split is just fine for research purposes. I love it, and I'm so happy that Google was inspired by OnePlus's idea.
Monster performance, mediocre battery life
Samsung is using Qualcomm's flagship processor, the Snapdragon 8 Elite, to power the phone, and this is the only Samsung foldable to sport the 8 Elite this year. The Z Fold7 comes with storage options from 256 GB up to 1 TB, and with RAM options of 12 GB and 16 GB.
The Snapdragon 8 Elite is a monster and easily burns through games like Asphalt Legends with no problem. The phone can get a bit on the warm side during extended gameplay, but not so hot to be concerning. On a particularly hot day in Chicago, when I visited Six Flags Great America amusement park, I spent much of the day taking photographs and videos, as well as reading on the Kindle app, while waiting in line. I noticed the phone started to get warm, but it never overheated.
The Fold7 has the same-sized 4,400 mAh battery pack as last year's Fold6. What's impressive is that Samsung managed to pack the battery into a significantly thinner phone; however, like the Fold6, that also means the Fold7 is a one-day device. That's not bad, per se, but it's also not great. We're living in a time where a flagship phone is a day-and-a-half or two-day phone, so when you look at it that way, it's not amazing. However, it'll get you through a day of medium to heavy use (cellular data, no WiFi), and that's perfectly adequate; though I wouldn't bet on it if you're playing hardcore gaming titles all day.
As for charging, Samsung still offers a conservative 25W charging speed, which is also not amazing. It's not bad for the U.S., but overseas, those phone makers are teaching us all what's possible with battery tech. It's not uncommon to see charging at speeds of 80W and up in phones over there. They're driving Ferraris while we're still dribbling along on tricycles. Something has got to give – though Motorola shows promise. The company’s new edge phone (gen 6) can charge at up to 68W with the company’s charger.
Cameras get a big upgrade
In the past, cameras have been a cut corner on foldables. I'm pleased to report that's not the case anymore. These cameras are not the best I've seen on a smartphone, ever, but they're right up there with the foldables I've tested in the past. The champion here is the 200-megapixel main camera, paired with a 10-megapixel 3x telephoto camera, and a 12-megapixel ultrawide camera. There are two selfie cameras – both are 10 megapixels, though the one on the inside has a 100-degree field of view. By the way, the inside selfie camera is no longer an under-display selfie camera, so it's visible all the time.
Like a lot of smartphone cameras, your results will vary depending on your lighting. During the day, these cameras will stand up to most other phones on the market, regardless of whether they fold or not. Video capture is great too – you'll feel like your phone is on a track if you're walking and filming.
You can zoom up to 30x, as long as your subject is blocky and has a lot of straight lines, like an American flag, for example. Portrait mode is also very good. Normally, the sticking point for portrait mode comes from wispy hairs. On my head, the camera basically covers them up, but in a good way. On my daughter's head, it can actually isolate a lot of the hairs and keep them in focus.
At night, things get a bit more dicey. Moving subjects are a non-starter, as is the selfie camera. That's not anything new in smartphones, but the main camera is quite good at subjects that are still. Even portrait mode is pretty usable at night. Walking and filming still displays some judder with your footsteps, which is very common in smartphone cameras, but it's far less pronounced than on a lot of other phones, which is a pretty big deal.
In both photos and video, there's still a good deal of grain in the darker areas (take a look at foliage in the photo below). If you're sharing your photos and videos to social media, or you generally view them only on a phone screen, you'll be in good shape. If you try anything larger, you'll notice a lot of issues very quickly. But honestly, I'm pretty impressed with what Samsung did with these cameras.
The bottom line
Samsung made a lot of hard choices with the Galaxy Z Fold7, and across the board, I believe it made all the right ones. The company (finally) responded to the market and what its competitors were doing, and that's a relief. Now, there are more horses back in the foldable phone race, which will push these devices even further, and that's exciting. It's almost like getting in on the ground floor again, but this is a ground floor that's worth its weight – or lack thereof – in gold.
The Samsung Galaxy Z Fold7 starts at $1,999.99 (for a limited time, Amazon is offering a $200 gift card with your purchase). You can choose from storage options ranging up to 1 TB, as well as RAM options of 12 GB and 16 GB. Color options are Jet black, Blue Shadow, and Silver Shadow.
[Image credit: Adam Doud/Techlicious]
