Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 7: 5 reasons to buy (and 3 reasons to skip)
Are you in the same boat? And if so, should you be planning on setting aside a (fairly substantial) stack of cash to buy the phone now that Galaxy Z Fold 7 preorders are underway?
We're in the process of testing and reviewing the Galaxy Z Fold 7 to give you our definitive buying advice on the latest foldable phone from Samsung. But we've seen enough from Samsung's Galaxy Unpacked presentation and our initial hands-on time to make a case for why you'd want to buy the Galaxy Z Fold 7. And we've also spotted a few things that might make you pause before mashing that buy button.
Here's an overview of the five best reasons to buy a Galaxy Z Fold 7 and three why you might want to skip the phone this time around.
Galaxy Z Fold 7 preorder: up to $1,150 off w/ trade-in @ SamsungFree storage upgrade! Samsung is knocking up to $1,150 off Galaxy Z Fold 7 preorders when you trade-in an older phone. Additionally, you'll get a free storage upgrade with your preorder, so you'll get a 512GB version for the same price as the 256GB base model.
I've compared the Galaxy Z Fold 7's thinness to other phones, and the short answer is you'd have to go a long way to find a phone as slender as Samsung's new foldable when it's open. Specifically, you'd have to go to where the Oppo Find N5 and Honor Magic V5 are sold, and those phones are pretty hard to come by outside of Asia.
But as impressive as the 4.2mm-thin profile of an open Galaxy Z Fold 7 may be, don't overlook the 8.9mm-thin design of the folded-up phone. That's a very thin device, making the Galaxy Z Fold 7 easier to tote around while still enjoy the benefits of having a super-sized screen.
Samsung also didn't skimp on durability to make the Galaxy Z Fold 7 so thin. A new Armor Flex hinge evenly dispenses stress as you open and shut the phone, while both the frame and hinge use Advanced Armor Aluminum for increased strength and hardness compared to previous models.
Even with all that, the Galaxy Z Fold 7 is lighter than before, tipping the scales at 215 grams. That's 3 grams lighter than the Galaxy S25 Ultra, and that phone doesn't have the multiple screens that the Z Fold 7 carries around.
When it comes to snapping photos with a foldable phone, I always preferred the Galaxy Z Flip models to the larger Fold, but some improvements to the Galaxy Z Fold 7 may cause me to adjust my thinking. Like the Galaxy S25 Ultra and Galaxy S25 Edge, the Z Fold 7 now offers a 200MP main camera for richer, more detailed photos.
Samsung says the new main camera on the Galaxy Z Fold 7 can capture 4x the detail of previous Galaxy Z Fold models, which featured a 50MP main lens. Images should be 44% brighter, too, while the ProVisual photo processing engine has beeen tweaked to work faster, boosting the sharpness of images.
The selfie cam on the interior display — long the weakest part of the Galaxy Z Fold's camera setup — gets an update with this version. The 4MP sensor makes ways for a 10MP one, and an expanded 100-degree frame should allow you to fit more into any shots you take with that camera.
Size matters when it comes to phone screens, as more expansive displays make it easier to get work done on the go. Both the exterior and interior screens get a size boost on the Galaxy Z Fold 7, with the cover display expanding from 6.3 inches to 6.5 inches. The main panel on the Z Fold 7 is now 8 inches, up from 7.6 inches on the previous model.
Of the two displays, the more significant change is probably to the external panel. That screen on past Folds has felt a bit cramped so the extra 0.2 inches of space on the Galaxy Z Fold 7 should make it feel more like using a conventional phone. That's significant as there are times when you're not going to want to unfold your device, instead getting work done on the cover display — and that will be easier to do on the Galaxy Z Fold 7.
One of my recurring complaints with foldable phones is that device makers really haven't provided much of a justification to pay up for a foldable other than that larger screen. Foldable-specific features feel few and far between.
The Galaxy Z Fold 7 changes that, and Galaxy AI is a big reason why. Samsung is optimizing some of its AI tools to take advantage of a foldable phone's design, making this new model a much more compelling option than before.
For instance, results from AI-powered searches and tasks appear in their own split view or floating view window, so that whatever it is your working on doesn't get covered up. That way you can more easily refer to something like Circle to Search results or writing suggestions without losing sight of your original work.
I also appreciate that the Galaxy Z Fold 7's larger screen can give you a before and after view of changes wrought by generative AI. In his hands-on time with the Galaxy Z Fold 7, Mark Spoonauer was able to get side-by-side comparisons of an image to see how the AI-edited version looked compared to the original.
I'm primarily an iPhone user, able to upgrade to new software versions the moment they're released. For that reason, I've never understand how Android users can cope with the haphazard update schedules for their phones — that a new version of Android might be available, but they can't download it until their phone maker is good and ready to release it.
That's not something you'll have to suffer through with the Galaxy Z Fold 7. Android 16 is out, and so Android 16 is the version of the software that will run on your new phone. That also means Samsung's One UI 8 interface is readily available, too, so you won't be taking your brand new phone out of the box only to wait for the new software features to show up weeks or months later.
The Galaxy Z Fold 3 was the first of Samsung's foldables to support the S Pen. It's an addition that made sense, and not just because the Fold essentially replaced the old Galaxy Note phablet in Samsung's lineup. The large display on the Fold lends itself to sketching and note-taking, and the S Pen has proven itself to be adept at both.
You won't get that benefit with the Galaxy Z Fold 7, though, as Samsung has dropped S Pen support from this model. The likely culprit is that thin design I was singing the praises of earlier. To get the Fold that thin, I'm guessing Samsung did away with the digitizer layer on the displays that enable the S Pen to work.
"When we look at the insights from what our customers were using on the Galaxy Z Fold series and what they wanted, fundamentally they wanted a thinner and lighter device," Kadesh Beckford, a smartphone specialist manager with Samsung UK, told my colleague Richard Priday in an interview about the new phone. "And with us we definitely pay attention and listen to our customers. So with those insights, we implemented what they asked."
Maybe that's a trade-off the majority of Fold customers are happy to make. But if you value S Pen compatibility, this is not the model for you.
The Galaxy Z Fold 7 runs on a 4,400 mAh battery, which is the same power pack that the Galaxy Z Fold 6 used. That phone wasn't well known for lasting a long time on a charge — it posted an average result of 10.5 hours on our battery test, which essentially matches the average smartphone result.
Yes, the Galaxy Z Fold 7 will have the benefit of a more power efficient Snapdragon 8 Elite chipset to help it eke out more battery life. But I don't see the Galaxy Z Fold 7 threatening to land on our best phone battery life list any time soon.
In fact, the entire battery and charging setup for the Galaxy Z Fold 7 leaves much to be desired. Samsung didn't make any changes to charging speed for the new foldable phone, which still features 25W wired charging. When you're paying this much for a device, that's hard to swallow.
Speaking of what you have to pay for a Galaxy Z Fold 7, I hope you were sitting down when Samsung announced the price. The Galaxy Z Fold 7 now starts at $1,999, which is $100 more than the starting price for the Galaxy Z Fold 6. That phone, in turn, saw a $100 price hike from its predecessor.
Were you to opt for the 1TB Galaxy Z Fold 7 — and why not since Samsung packs 16GB of RAM into that model — you'd pay $2,419. That's 16-inch MacBook Pro M4 territory.
To be fair, a preorder deal at Samsung gives you a free storage upgrade. So you can pick up a 512GB Galaxy Z Fold 7 for the same $1,999 price as the 256GB model. Nevertheless, the higher a price rises, the smaller its potential audience gets. And a $1,999 phone is going to have a very small audience indeed.
Only after we complete our Galaxy Z Fold 7 testing will we be able to say whether Samsung's new phone justifies that lofty cost. But at first glance there's a lot to like about the new phone, even if there are few noticeable flaws as well.
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