Measuring 4.2mm thin when unfolded and only 8.9mm when folded to a phone, the Fold 7 finally overcomes one of a foldable’s biggest problems: cumbersome size.
Since they started popping out a few years ago, foldable phones have been an intriguing idea worth following, especially if you love yourself a big screen.
Devices that blend a big screen and a small one in a gadget you can technically pop in your pocket? It sounds like the dream.
Only there has been a catch: the size has been a little too unwieldy for most.
It’s not really the size, per se, but more the thickness. Measuring between 12mm and 15mm over the years, foldable phones have been a lot like smushing two phones together and throwing them in your pocket. That sounds about as comfortable as actually having two phones in your pocket at the same time, and the reality isn’t far off.
That thickness and slightly cumbersome design may have been foldable phones haven’t really taken off just yet. After all, why sacrifice the sleek and modern design of a mobile if you don’t need to. Big phones today max out with 6.9 inch screens and 8.25mm thickness. Why blow it all up for an extra inch of screen size and a much thicker device?
In its seventh generation, however, Samsung is blowing the idea of a foldable phone in a positive way. Not just another iteration, the seventh generation of its Galaxy Z Fold is finally hitting the thickness we expect out of every phone these days.
In fact, it’s so slim, the Fold 7 is slimpossibly thin.
Design
The evolution of Samsung’s first foldable, the Galaxy Z Fold 7 actually looks like a device that has finally done something different. Seven generations in, Samsung is proving it can do more than a mere iterative update with a different processor and camera, which is largely what the last few models in this range have felt like.
The Fold 7 looks new, and importantly, it feels new, too.
It’s wider, and more like a regular phone. It’s encased in aluminium which looks lovely and feels it, too. We had the “blue shadow” model for the Fold 7 review, and it’s just a delightful look. Sleek and slim and blue and cool.
The slim part can’t be overstated, either. While most foldable phones really do look and feel like two phones smushed together with a 12 to 15mm thickness, the Z Fold 7 is slim like any other flagship phone you might be considering. It measures 8.9mm, which isn’t much thicker than the 8.25mm iPhone 16 Pro Max.
Unfold it, however, and the real magic begins.
When the Z Fold 7 is in tablet mode, the industrial engineering really stands out. You’ll find a 4.2mm thick tablet waiting for you, making for what is arguably the thinnest of any tablets to date.
To put it into perspective, the USB-C port that we all know and rely on (and that the Z Fold 7 charges from) is 4.16mm thick. The Z Fold 7 is only 0.04mm thicker.
Not only is that design clever, but it manages to weigh less than previous Fold models, as well. The phone has understandably been put on a diet, and now it weighs roughly 24 grams less than the Fold 6 before it, and nearly 50 grams from the Fold 4 a few years ago.
At 215 grams, the Fold 7 doesn’t feel like the big phone it claims to be. That’s clever, too.
Features
Inside of that clever design, there’s a surprising amount of technology, basically matching Samsung’s 2025 foldable flagship to its other 2025 non-foldable flagship, the S25 Ultra.
You’ll find a Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Elite processor on board, paired with 12GB RAM in the models with 256GB and 512GB storage, but it gets upgraded to 16GB RAM if you opt for the more expensive 1TB edition of the Fold 7.
Google’s Android 16 arrives on the phone out of the box, complete with seven operating system updates, giving you an idea of just how long this phone should last, at least in theory. Samsung’s One UI overlay is along for the ride, too.
The back sees a three camera system, while there are also two front-facing cameras for each of the screens.
At the back, the main camera system includes a 200 megapixel F1.7 wide camera, a 12 megapixel F2.2 ultra-wide, and a 10 megapixel F2.4 3X telephoto, giving you a range covering 0.5X to 3X. Meanwhile, the front cameras for both screens provide 10 megapixels at F2.2 with no auto-focus, a bit of a surprise since autofocusing should be included on every camera these days.
There aren’t a heap of wired connections — just the USB-C at the bottom of the phone — but wireless is well covered on the Fold 7. That includes 802.11a/b/g/n/ac/ax/be WiFi 7, Bluetooth 5.4, Near-Field Communication (NFC) for Google Pay and Samsung Pay, Ultra-Wideband (UWB) for Samsung SmartTag trackers, GPS, and that whole 4G/5G thing we love connecting to.
The Fold 7 also technically supports 3G, but since there’s no 3G network to connect to in Australia, it seems like a bit of a moot point.
Samsung also equips a fingerprint sensor on the side of the phone underneath the power button, a 4400mAh battery, and a water resistance rating of IP48. Don’t expect the Galaxy Fold 7 to survive a trip to the beach where the particles of sand are fine, but it should survive a splash or two of water should it accidentally fall in the drink.
Display
Part of that spec sheet also includes the screen, or rather screens, because like all foldables, you’ll find more than one. Both are new, and not basic updates on what we’ve seen from Galaxy Z Fold models prior, of which we’ve reviewed most of.
The extra width we noted in the design comes from the cover screen, which is now a 6.5 inch display, more like what any other phone looks like. It’s 0.2 inches more than the Fold 6 and 0.3 inches on the Fold 5, and while that doesn’t seem like much, the net result means the Fold 7 feels like a real phone, while the Fold 5 and 6 felt slimmer than they should have been.
You’ll get Samsung’s Dynamic AMOLED 2X technology here, boasting a 2520×1080 Full HD+ resolution, and it looks great, but it’s not alone. The inside screen has changed, too.
Instead of a 7.6 inch flexible screen, you now get an 8 inch almost square display, giving you that little bit extra room which can make all the difference. It’s so big, in fact, that it’s like seeing two phone displays on the one, and makes multitasking more like using two phones at once, even if the phone thickness doesn’t make it quite so obvious anymore.
Like the cover screen, Samsung is using another Dynamic AMOLED 2X panel, but this one is slightly different due to its 8 inch size. Instead, it offers a 2184×1968 resolution with a supported maximum refresh rate of 120Hz, because, really, fast screens deliver animations much more nicely.
Of particular note is the crease because, well, good luck finding it.
Technically the crease is still there if you look. You can see it when the light warps in the middle, so you know it’s there. Your finger can kind of feel it too, a minor slope in the middle that comes back up quickly.
But unlike the foldable phones from a few years ago, the screen crease is actually difficult to see and difficult to feel.
Samsung has practically done it. The crease is no longer a problem. It’s akin to magic.
In-use
The design and spec sheet might have changed, but using a phone-that-is-also-a-tablet has not.
Grab the phone in its standard phone design, which is now wider, and use it as a phone, or unfold it into the 8 inch tablet form-factor and use it like a tablet. Those are your two main use-cases for the Fold 7, which still works more like a phone and a slightly bigger phone because Android on tablets still doesn’t have a lot of “made for tablet” style apps.
Truthfully, that’s not a Samsung issue per se. While Apple iPads have a lot of apps that take advantage of the extra screen real estate, many Android apps still feel like oversized phone apps, a problem we note in many of our Android tablet reviews.
Unfortunately, the Fold 7 doesn’t really get over this. Samsung has increased that feeling by removing support for the S-Pen stylus in the Fold 7, a move that decreased the screen size (yay!), but also killed some of the extra productivity capability on the hardware.
Like cursed frogurt, it’s both good and bad, but it does take some usability away from the Fold series, at least for now.
And that means the majority of the apps you run on the Fold 7’s tablet mode will likely be oversized phone apps: a bigger map, a web browser with more screen real estate, a slightly larger Netflix app, a note-taking app with a larger split keyboard layout, and so on.
From our experience, the 8 inch size never feels quite as tablet-like as what Apple achieves in the similarly-sized iPad Mini, but it’s also better than expected. Bigger maps make a difference, as do bigger videos.
It really is a neat transition. It’s like holding a convertible in your hands, able to go from a big phone to a bigger screen. That’ll be handy for a few.
AI features
Like so many other phones this year, there are AI features to talk about. There’s some AI text editing, some AI used to search, and perhaps if you need to use some of the AI for translation seen in recent years, it’s there, too.
There’s also a way to ask Google’s Gemini about what you see. Snap a photo that you don’t understand, and ask Google what it sees via Google Gemini Live.
And Samsung has updated its “Now” feature with an AI that tries to encompass everything in your life, part of that multi-modal approach to AI the company always talks about. It basically means a look at your photos, calendar, weather, and other bits and bobs for a personalised brief that you can unfold and see on that big screen, should you choose to.
But the AI feature that really grabbed us this year was the AI image editing, a feature that isn’t remarkably new for Samsung, but really comes into its own thanks to the 8 inch screen size.
That 8 inch inside foldable screen is basically measured like having two versions of the front screen line up next to each other, which means if you want to edit images, you can see a before and after.
Alternatively, you can also edit photos to be even larger on that 8 inch screen, and that’s genuinely appealing.
Even if you opt to use a larger camera and transfer images over to the phone — such as we did, capturing Ms 8’s soccer on a Sony A9 and sending the images to the Fold 7 — you’ll find you can quickly clone out unwanted parts of the photo, and let the AI replace elements all too easily. It’s a little like painting obstacles away from the photo, and clearing it up.
Technically, other AI features on other devices can do this as well. Editing photos isn’t a new thing. But doing it on a phone you can also shove back into your pocket? That’s quite new.
Performance
That bigger screen doesn’t come with really any obvious compromises in performance, thanks in part to Samsung’s choice of processor.
Just like the S25 Ultra from earlier in the year and the S25 Edge not too long after that, the Z Fold 7 is powered by this year’s chip of all chips, Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 8 Elite, basically the flagship processor to beat. That should give it plenty of chops for the next few years, evident in the benchmarks alone.
Compared to what’s out this year, it’s pretty clear the hardware is mostly the same, so the Fold 7 delivers excellent performance.
And if you’re coming from a previous Galaxy Z Fold model, there’s plenty more in the tank, as well. Upgrades aplenty, it seems provided your Fold model is older than last year’s Fold 6.
Unsurprisingly, the hardware in the Fold 7 works well, and should provide years of benefit. It’s more or less identical to Samsung’s other Galaxy S flagships this year, complete with the occasional proprietary tweak or two the company has made for its own use.
In terms of 5G performance, that’s up there, as well, provided your network is cooperating at the time.
Tested in Sydney, Australia on the Telstra 5G network (by way of Mate Mobile), the Galaxy Fold 7 delivered speeds as high as 528Mbps, though Mate’s network handicap would eventually limit the speeds back to a respectable 255Mbps.
Like all mobile tests, your mileage can and will vary, but provided your reach is solid and your network has capacity, you should be able to hit decent speeds on 4G or 5G using the Galaxy Z Fold 7.
Camera
Next up is the camera, and this is a key area for the Fold 7, largely because previous Fold cameras haven’t quite lived up to their potential.
Oh sure, you used to get three cameras. That’s fine, but they were never as good as the Galaxy S Ultra models, which would arrive with at least a hundred megapixels and better low-light. By comparison, the Z Fold models would feel like weird cousins with the cool screen tech, but the less impressive camera.
That has mostly changed this year.
While the three camera setup in the Z Fold 7 isn’t the same as the four camera stack used in S25 Ultra, it’s also a lot better than the Fold series has ever offered. For starters, you get the 200 megapixel sensor used across the other flagship models, and that’s a big deal. That has never graced a Samsung foldable model yet.
In use, the quality is pretty much smack dab where it needs to be: excellent clarity in daylight, lovely low light, and pretty much the same flagship tier results we found on the S25 Ultra earlier in the year.
You won’t find the extra telephoto lens giving you 5X optical, but with ultra-wide’s 0.5X through to a 3X telephoto, you may not care. Plus the portrait camera delivers decent images, as well. It’s not exactly the same as the S25 Ultra, which clearly still has the edge. The Ultra comes with a 5X zoom and more megapixels, but the Fold 7 handles its own where it counts.
This is exactly what the flagship Galaxy Fold range needed: a flagship camera, or as close to one as the model can get.
Battery
While the camera has changed, the battery technically hasn’t, offering the same 4400mAh battery amount as the past few years of Galaxy phones.
That’s not to say there aren’t any optimisations here; there definitely are, and the battery life of the Fold7 surprised this reviewer.
Testing it for the Fold7 review, we found it could handle a full 24 hours when used for our standard use test with a little more stretching to the next day, though that translated to roughly 3 to 4 hours of screen time max.
If you live off your phone day and night, and rely on the screen, the Fold 7 will need a charge after 24 hours. Call it a nightly recharge, because that’s what it is. Use it less, and you may find a little more than 24 hours is possible.
Most people will charge the Fold 7 nightly, and some may even charge it before the day is over. It really depends on how much you live off that screen, inside or outside.
Value
The big question is this: is it worth it?
We ask simply because the Fold 7 is high-priced and expensive. There’s just no other way to say it.
Priced from $2899 in Australia, you may as well call the Galaxy Z Fold 7 a $3000 phone, because it basically is. The official pricing is $2899 for the 256GB model (which we reviewed), $3099 for 512GB, and $3549 for a 1TB Fold Z 7.
Regardless of how you look at it, the Fold 7 is a roughly $3K phone, which is a lot of money to pay for a phone. Granted, it’s a phone that’s also a tablet, and one of the thinnest to date, but that’s also three thousand dollarydoos.
In an era where cost of living has really taken centre stage, that’s a lot of money for a phone, even one as clever as this.
Even the 1TB Apple iPhone 16 Pro Max maxes out at $2849. Sure, it’s not a foldable, and it’s likely a foldable iPhone will cost more as would a super thin iPhone Air, but Apple hasn’t managed to hit the $3K price point for phones yet. We’re really in “yikes” territory now.
That brings us back to our question of value: as a $3K phone, is the Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 7 worth the cost?
For that we’re not sure.
There is undoubtedly a lot of very clever technology here, from a design that seems impossibly slim to a high-end camera and a clever foldable screen where the crease is difficult to find.
Samsung has built something seemingly from the future in the Fold 7. It’s a marvel.
But is it $3K worth? We’re not sure.
Given the cost of high-end phones — and how Apple’s 16 Pro Max is nearly the same price — we’d say the value isn’t perfect, but is near enough to where it should roughly be.
Yes, it’s expensive, but then again the latest technology always is. And no foldable phone has managed to build something quite like what Samsung has delivered.
What needs work?
If you can get over the hump that is the price, you need to contend with what is arguably one of the more unusual issues in the Fold 7: the lack of balance when placed on a surface.
In what is probably one of the strongest cases for Samsung moving away from the traffic light camera design on the back, and more to Google’s camera bar like on the Pixel 9 Pro XL, the positioning of the camera on the top left corner means the phone doesn’t really lie at an incline when placed on a surface. It just kind of leans against the camera and wobbles when you touch it.
Heaven forbid you decide to leave your phone on the kitchen table or your desk, because yep, it’ll do exactly this.
It’s really quite a strange situation: the Galaxy Fold 7 is this otherwise beautiful piece of industrial engineering, showing what a company can do when they challenge expectations and build something that goes further than mere iteration. And yet, it’s almost like no one paid attention to the phone when it was left as a phone.
Do that and the Fold7 is a little like jelly (or Jello for our friends in the US): wobble, wobble.
In the grand scheme of things, it’s such a minor issue, as is the lack of an S-Pen. If you have the Z Fold 6 and you’re bemoaning this omission, keep your model for the moment, because Samsung could theoretically bring it back later. It’s entirely possible the Z Fold 7 is an experiment to see whether people prefer a thinner foldable sans-stylus, with a return alongside an “ultra” foldable Samsung has previously hinted at.
What we love
Wobble aside, the thing we love about the Fold 7 is that it does away with the very thing that has prevented this reviewer from embracing them more: the size.
Previous foldable phones have been clever. We’ve found the Galaxy Z Fold range interesting up until this point, and Google’s Pixel 9 Pro Fold almost won us over for regular use.
But the size was a problem for every foldable phone-tablet hybrid. It’s one of the reasons we’ve been more into the clamshell style of folding phones up to this point.
The Motorola Razr 50 Ultra has been a favourite of this reviewer in the past year, largely because it felt small and capable… like a regular smartphone. Foldable tablet-style phones hadn’t managed to achieve this.
The Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 7 fixes all of that. Not only is it thin with you unfold it, but it’s relatively thin when you fold it closed, too.
It’s roughly the same thickness as an iPhone 16 Pro or even Samsung’s Galaxy S25 Ultra. It’s near enough for jazz, and that is near enough for me.
And when you do unfold it, the Z Fold 7 manages to be the thinnest tablet around, possibly ever. It’s even slimmer than the 5.1mm M4 iPad Pro 13, a model that Apple actually built with help from Samsung. Yikes.
Final thoughts (TLDR)
The Fold 7 is slim and impressive. It’s slimpressive. There’s no other way of saying it. It’s the foldable threat Samsung needed.
Just about everything Samsung could have changed has changed, and almost all for the better.
Sure, the lack of a stylus will annoy some, and the wobble is a weird little teething issue you’ll try not to point out to friends. An external case may fix the latter, though in turn, will also raise that thickness that little bit more.
However, outside of these issues, the Fold 7 is a winner. Impossibly slim and easy to hold, it may well be the first real standout phone of 2025. Highly recommended.
