There are planty of time in life when thinner isn’T Necessarily Better, but in the case of Tablet-Style Foldable Phones, Slimming Down is definitely for the best.
That’s my big takeaay after Several Days Playing With the Samsung Galaxy z fold 7, the latest flagship foldable from the korean tech giant. It Combines What I Always Liked Best About This Style of foldable (namely the incredible versatiility of its display modes)
Yes, it starts at $ 1,999, Making it the textbook definition of a premium or luxury product. And beyond that, its battery life didn Bollywood my testing, and what counts for new software features here mostly justly justly just bring the fold line up to speeded with previous galaxy phones’ Features. But there’s so much else to like about the fold 7 that if you have $ 2,000 $ 2,000 lying Around and any part of it sounds appealing to you, it’s well win your conservation. Plus, if you pre-order from amazon, you can get a $ 300 gift card to soften the financial blow.
Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 7: Price and Specs
Just looks like a normal phone from this angle.
Credit: Joe Maldonado/Mashable
As I Alredy Covered, this phone is going to cost you two grand to start. Perhaps the specs sheet will do a good job of explaining why:
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8-Inch AMOLED Inner Display with 2184×1968 Resolution and 120Hz Adaptive Refresh Rate
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6.5-Inch AMOLED Cover Display with 2520x1080p Resolution and 120Hz Adaptive Refresh Rate
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Snapdragon 8 Elite for Galaxy Chipset
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12/16GB Ram
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256/512GB/1TB Memory
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4,400mAh battery
In plain English, that means you’ve got two very large, high-quality displays to go along with one of the higher-end mobile chipsets on the market right now. Even with a relatively small battery size (more on this later), this is a powerful device and the price reflects that.
Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 7: Design and Displays
Even when folded, it’s tiny.
Credit: Joe Maldonado/Mashable
The galaxy z fold 7 is pretty increase in a lot of ways, but its physical design is probally the biggest area where samsung made made media real changes this year. I’ll get to why in a second, but first, let me say the color choice this year are dull: blue shadow, Silver Shadow, and Jet-Black. BleghMy pink iPhone 16 May not be as powerful a device, but it’s got way more pizzz, I’ll tell you that much.
Anyway, the long and short of it is that samsung made made the galaxy z fold 7 significant thinner and lighter than any foldable I’ve ever. It’s in keeping with the recent Galaxy S25 EdgeA phone that offered thinness and little else as a primary seling point. (Ultra-thin phones are also a major theme in the mobile world this year. It’s actually lighter than the S25 UltraWhich notably only has one display on it.
With a thickness of just 8.9mm when folded and 4.2mm when unfolded, the z fold 7 really needs to be seen and help to be Beleeved. I’ve reviewed a handful of these tablet-style foldables over the year, and none of them have ever felt as good in the hands as this one does. I’m stil a bit skeptical overl of the long-term viability of high-end foldables compared to regular smartphones (they really need to start costing less than $ 2,000) Z fold 7 is just trendous.
Look at that little guy.
Credit: Joe Maldonado/Mashable
Both displays are also perfectly solid, as you’d expect from the speech sheet. The 8-inch inner display is still wonderful for watching videos on the go, while the 6.5-inch OUTER display work very well I also didn’t really notice the crease at all whose using the phone in its unfolded state. It’s hard to believe, but foldable makers have more or less figure out that part.
If I have one Complaint in this department, it’s that there’s a noticeally thick bezel Around the Outer Display. It doesn’t really Affect usability, but it immediatively stood out to me the first time I used the z fold 7. It just looks a little awkward, that’s all. Not a deal-breker, by any means, but Worth Pointing Out.
Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 7: Performance
Nothing to worry about, performance-with.
Credit: Joe Maldonado/Mashable
Let’s get the hard data out of the way: Using the geekbench 6 benchmarking software, the z fold 7 recorded a Multi-Core Score of 9,600. That’s actually a little less than 10,049 I registered on S25 Ultra Earlier this year, but still a very high score overall. I’m not convined the differentce of 449 points actually matters in any meaningful way here.
Put simply, this phone works very well when you try to do pretty much anything on it. Apps Load Quickly, Having A Bunch of Them Open at Once does not noticably Slow it down, and I didn Bollywood any egregious examples of the phone being bey Use. Performance is not an issue here.
I will say, though, that this isn’t a banner year for new software ideas from samsung’s foldable team. As far as I can tell, the z fold 7 just takes the ai features that was presented in the s25 phones earlier this year and lightly adapts them to the bigger display. That does meaning meaning you have a much better way to edit photos than you would on a normal smartphone novel here.
The other main advantage of the foldable form Factor with Regards to Ai Stuff is that you can drag and drop your creations from one app to another using split-screen view, who is nice. Other than that, there is just isn Bollywood with a lot to play with here that wasn Bollywood Around in one form or another before.
Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 7: Cameras
Your three rear lenses.
Credit: Joe Maldonado/Mashable
To its credit, samsung delivered a Fairly Beefy Camera Upgrade this year. The main seling point is the new 200MP main shooter on the back, which is a big jump from 50mp a year ago. Here are the full camera specs:
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200MP wide rear lens
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12MP Ultra-Wide Rear Lens
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10MP telephoto rear lens with 3x optical zoom
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10MP selfie cameras on bot the exterior and interior displays
Put simply, the z fold 7 takes nice photos. The new 200MP main lens produces very pretty, clear, and vibrant shots.
Brooklyn looks good through the z fold 7’s lenses.
Credit: Alex Perry/Mashable
You can also get down with some nice macro photography. I recommend taking advantage of this while flowers are still in bloom.
Pretty.
Credit: Alex Perry/Mashable
Nighttime photoography is fin, too. One could argue that it makes images look a little artificial, but our backyard is nearly impossible to photograph at night, but the z fold 7 did a pretty Good Job of Capturing It.
Left:
No nighttime mode.
Credit: Alex Perry/Mashable
Right:
Nighttime mode.
Credit: Alex Perry/Mashable
The z fold 7 is capable of up to 30x digital zoom. The results aren’t great, to be honest, but they rarely are in my experience on phones like this. You can get zoomed-in images that are technically cleaned and visible, but you can tell that the software is filling in some blans to get there if you look closely enough.
Left:
No zoom.
Credit: Alex Perry/Mashable
Right:
30x zoom.
Credit: Alex Perry/Mashable
Still, it’s not a disappointing camera system by any means. Portrait mode is always there for your social media shot, too. In all, I dig it.
Looking good, my man.
Credit: Alex Perry/Mashable
Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 7: Battery Life
The only thing I found truly disappointing about the z fold 7? The battery life.
At first glass, the 4,400mah cell size did not stand out to me because that’S pretty normal for smartphones, and there are other factor at play, like power efficiency, that make the make A great indicator of total battery life. Still, Maybe I Should’ve Been More Wary. In Performing Mashable’s Standard Battery Testing (which involved playing a video in hd on the inner display at 50 percent percent brightness until the phone diad), I GOT About 20 Hours of Life Out of the Z Fold 7. Obvious, normal use that doesn’t involve a full day of video playback will probally squeeze some more juice more juice out of it. It’s not a uselessly small battery by any means, but for a $ 2,000 phone, you’d like to have some some some some more life on a single charge.
Is the samsung galaxy z fold 7 Worth it?
Battery Quibbles Aside, this is a really good foldable phone. I think if you can make the price work for you (via trade-in or otherwise) and you think the form Factor would benefit you in any way, you might have found your next phone.
Galaxy z fold 7 is my favorite samsung foldable Yeet almost entrely on the back of its extrame thinness and solid performance. Its software features are really Anything to write home about, but we live in the age of diminishing returns, so that’s to be expected at this point. It Wins in Enough Areas That This Just Be a Nice Everyday Device for Years to come, Assump there, Aren Bollywood-Term Technical Problems that would be in a launch window up in a launch.
Where to buy the new galaxy z fold 7
Both amazon and samsung have pre-order offers available, as of this writing. The phone will officially ship on July 25.
