Foldable Perfection That’s Tempting Me to Leave My iPhone

Year-over-year, the Z Fold 7 sheds some major weight, adds a flagship-level main camera, and increases performance while sprinkling just enough new Galaxy AI and Gemini features to not feel like Samsung went overboard. The Z Fold 7 also ships in what might be the nicest shade of blue that I’ve seen on any phone. (Yes, even prettier than the Pacific Blue iPhone 12 Pro and Ultramarine OnePlus 8 Pro.) In six years of reviewing Samsung Z Folds, I’ve not once felt compelled to leave my iPhone for one just to get an extra tablet-sized screen. Not even for better-made book-style foldables like the Pixel 9 Pro Fold or OnePlus Open, both of which I gave high marks. But the Z Fold 7 captivated me from the second I laid my fingers on it. The last time an Android phone truly made me want to leave Apple’s walled garden was the Galaxy Note 7, which took breaths away with its sleek, dual-curved display and had such a tightly packed design that faulty batteries literally killed it. Leaving Apple’s walled garden would be uncomfortable for my friends and family who choose to live in Apple’s ecosystem, but features like RCS for improved messaging interoperability and AirDrop-replacement apps like LocalSend for sending files to and from Apple devices make switching easier than before.

You really have to hold the Z Fold 7 in your hand to believe that it’s virtually the same thickness (8.9mm) and weight (215g) as a regular flagship bar-style phone. Even having used the foldable for a week, I still marvel at it every time I unlock the 6.3-inch cover screen with my fingerprint or face and use it like a regular phone, or unfold it to get the 8-inch screen. Both displays are really bright, really sharp, and support 120Hz refresh rates. The folding screen still has a visible crease—one that I expect to deepen with folds over time—and you’ll still feel the hinge underneath it every time your finger runs over it, but I rarely noticed it while reading, watching videos, or playing games. The crease is an engineering compromise that I don’t think foldables will ever solve (though Apple will reportedly try). You just learn to ignore it over time, the same way you stop noticing a notch or a hole-punch camera on non-folding phones.

I agreed to not do any drop or bend tests on the Z Fold 7 in order for Samsung to provide me with a loaner unit to evaluate, so I’ll have to leave the durability tests to attention-seeking YouTubers and TikTokers. But I did try lightly flexing the device when it’s open, and at its thinnest, and I didn’t feel it had much give with normal use. I’m not saying accidentally sitting on the Z Fold 7 won’t mean instantly destroying your $2,000 foldable, but Samsung at least beefed up the hinge and the “Armor aluminum” frame, toughened the glass backside, and doubled the thickness of the folding screen. The IP rating, unfortunately, is the same IP48; it would have been great to see a bump up in water- and dust-resistance, but I guess Samsung needs to save upgrades for the Z Fold 8 and beyond.

As you’d expect, $2,000 gets you the very best of what Samsung has to offer. Well, almost everything. I’ve got no complaints about the main specs: Qualcomm’s latest and most powerful Snapdragon 8 Elite with Galaxy chip, up to 16GB of RAM, and up to 512GB of storage. Unsurprisingly, the Snapdragon chipset is a beast on benchmarks, but I’d be lying if I told you I could feel a 38% CPU boost or a 26% increase in GPU performance for regular phone tasks like browsing the web, scrolling on social media, or sending emails. The 41% faster neural processing unit, or NPU, however, does seem to make on-device AI processing speedier. For example, generating summaries and wallpapers, or using AI writing and AI photo and audio editing tools, did seem speedier than I remembered last year. The battery is the same 4,400mAh capacity in the Z Fold 6, but I had no problems getting through a full day with power to spare, even when I was pushing the foldable hard with lots of apps, photography, and AI usage through Gemini and Perplexity.

I was more surprised that Samsung didn’t remove wireless charging or reverse wireless charging—either feature is usually the first to go when phones are put on the Atkins diet. Hell, there’s even a SIM card tray; Samsung could have easily switched to eSIM and used the extra space for something else like a larger battery. The one feature from previous Z Folds that didn’t make it into the Z Fold 7 is the S Pen. I’m not mourning the loss of support for the stylus that was sold separately, but I know S Pen loyalists will, since it makes sense to want a larger screen to write notes or draw on. I wouldn’t hold my breath for Samsung bringing it back or building it into the frame since it says usage was low, especially now that the profile, when unfolded, is the thinnest (4.2mm) it’s ever been.

See Galaxy Z Fold 7 at Samsung.com

The cameras on Samsung’s Z Folds have always been a few steps behind the ones in the Galaxy S series. That’s not the case anymore—the Z Fold 7 has the same 200-megapixel main camera as the S25 Ultra. There’s also a 13-megapixel ultra-wide and 10-megapixel 3x telephoto lens. The cameras punched into the cover and folding display are 10 megapixels each. Photos from the main camera look great with sharp details, vibrant dynamic range, and tons of resolution to get optical-quality 2x and 3x shots (crop-ins using the 200-megapixel sensor). The rest of the Z Fold 7’s cameras are fine. The ultra-wide lens now has autofocus and can take close-up macro photos, and the 3x telephoto is good enough (the 10x, 20x, and 30x digital zooms take fuzzy photos with low-res details). The camera on the inside of the folding screen has a slightly wider 100-degree field of view that’s handy for fitting more in a selfie or group shot.

Videos look better than before with improved quality in low-light situations and less noise. And you can record in 10-bit HDR, which just means your videos will display more colors and content will appear brighter. I was delighted to see smoother video stabilization with less jerky movements when panning the Z Fold 7 or walking and recording.

Samsung’s One UI 8 is one of, if not the, best customizations of Android I’ve seen. It’s fast and smooth and has extra levels of personalization that I wish Pixel phones had. About the only thing I don’t like is how much Samsung is starting to borrow from iOS. Sure, Apple’s moving on to Liquid Glass (or perhaps more like frosted glass if the latest iOS 26 developer beta 3 is anything to go by), but there are some areas of One UI 8, like the Lock Screen clock and widget customization, that look too similar to iOS. Gander at the sliders and tell me they’re not the same. It’s a small thing, but I suppose Samsung’s tweak of Android 16 is nowhere near as blatant as the shameless copying you’ll find from Xiaomi or Huawei phones.

It’s 2025, and that means you can’t buy a new phone—foldable or not—without being bombarded with how AI is going to change how you use it. Samsung’s usual plate of Galaxy AI features, including generative photo editing, translations, and summaries, returns on the Z Fold 7, with some new ones that can only be described as minor. With its larger screen, you can compare original and edited photos side by side or use the Audio Eraser tool to remove background noise such as wind or traffic. They all work as advertised and better than the same or similar AI features on other phones (especially iPhone’s embarrassing suite of Apple Intelligence features), but they’re not exactly $2,000 selling points. Nor is multimodal Gemini Live, which lets you type, talk, or “see” what’s on screen or through the camera and then respond. There’s little that having Gemini pre-loaded into the Z Fold 7 can do that you can’t do just by installing the Gemini app on another phone. Sure, it’s nice to load up Gemini on the Z Fold’s larger screen in fullscreen, as a split-view app, or as a floating window and not have the keyboard take up the whole bottom half, but I wouldn’t say it’s game-changing by any means. Gemini is still just a chatbot in a window that you can summon on command. If I’ve saved any time using Gemini on the Z Fold 7, I haven’t felt it much. I’m still spending a stupid amount of time looking at social media.

I cannot stop gushing over the Z Fold 7 every single time I pick it up. There are some minor observations that I’ve noticed in my week of using it, like the fact it can get hot in the summer heat faster than I’ve experienced on any other bar-style phones. (It’s so thin, there’s just less room for a vapor chamber or cooling.) The pill-shaped camera bump, while not as massive as on other foldables, causes the phone to wobble like crazy on a table. But none of these small compromises bother me when I can slip the Z Fold 7 in my pocket and my pants don’t sag. I also love that I can read manga without having to pinch to zoom all the time to see the text or watch a movie without needing to squint (though the “Flex mode” where you turn the Z Fold 7 into a little laptop is still silly). I’ve always believed in the benefits of a phone that unfolds into a tablet. It’s just the thickness and weight, and other concerns like durability and unavailability in the U.S., that have always stopped me from putting my money where my mouth is. The Z Fold 7 is more expensive than before, and $2,000 is a lot of money for a phone (the cost for repairs isn’t cheap either), but I’m obsessed with it, and thank god there are installment plans that break up the cost into monthly payments. I know my iPad mini, with iPadOS 26’s Liquid Glass developer beta installed, is missing me, but I just don’t care. The Z Fold 7 is my new gadget love, and I guarantee, it’ll be yours too if you can stomach the price.

See Galaxy Z Fold 7 at Amazon

See Galaxy Z Fold 7 at Samsung.com