(Credit: Joseph Maldonado/PCMag)
I've long been intrigued by the concept of foldable phones and have tried several over the years. However, each one involved trade-offs compared with other flagship phones. They're more expensive, awkward to carry, and lack the robust camera features of their traditional counterparts.
In the limited time I've had to look at Samsung's latest foldables—the larger Galaxy Z Fold 7 and the more compact Galaxy Z Flip 7—it seems like Samsung may have solved some of these issues, resulting in devices that may well catch on with the general populace.
To me, the big news is the Galaxy Z Fold 7. Samsung has made this year's model bigger, yet thinner. Folded, it now has a 6.5-inch 2,520-by-1,080 display in a package that measures 72.8 x 158.4 x 8.9mm and weighs 215 grams (7.53 ounces).
This means the folded screen is now finally as wide as what you find on most conventional smartphones, as opposed to the oddly narrow front cover screens on previous versions of the Fold. Yet the Fold 7 is 24 grams lighter than the Fold 6.
More importantly, the new "Armor Flex Hinge" is 30%, or 3.2 mm, thinner than the Fold 6. It's barely thicker than a Galaxy S25 Ultra (8.2 mm). The result is the first foldable phone that is as easy to pocket and as thin as the phones I usually carry.
Inside, the Fold 7 is bigger as well, with an 8.0-inch 2,184-by-1,968 AMOLED display, up from the 7.6-inch 1,856 x 2,160 display in last year's version. This is in part due to even smaller bezels.
Catching Up on Camera and AI Features
The Fold 7’s other major development is the camera. While previous Folds lagged behind the flagship Galaxy S25 Ultra in terms of camera quality, this year's version now includes a 200 MP wide-angle main camera, just like the S25 Ultra. Samsung says it redesigned the camera to make it thinner, so it now works on the foldable. This should make standard photos and videos as good with the Fold as with the Ultra, which is a big deal.
The Fold 7 also has a 10-megapixel selfie camera, a 12-megapixel ultrawide camera, and a 10-megapixel telephoto (3X optical) camera. This should all be quite good, though the phone is still a bit behind the S25 Ultra, which has a 50-megapixel ultrawide and a 50-megapixel periscope telephoto lens for 5X optical zoom.
And of course, Samsung made a big to-do about the AI features, which include all the latest tools, including Android 16 and the newest version of Google's Gemini AI assistant, out of the box. New features include Gemini Live, which lets you share your screen and get AI results based on the content in both Samsung and Google applications.
On the larger display, which continues to support multiple windows, you can now drag and drop results between windows. Features like Circle to Search now work in gameplay. Photo editing has been improved, and in quick testing, I was impressed at how well "generative editing" (things like erasing unwanted objects in a picture) works. And now on the larger display, you can see old and new versions side by side.
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If you haven't tried Gemini on a current Android phone, I'd recommend giving it a go. It works so much better than it did a year ago and is way ahead of Apple's Siri. The convenience of having one-button access to Gemini should be a major selling point for Android phones.
Overall, the Galaxy Z Fold 7 looks like a great choice for people who want a phone that does more. It has almost everything the S25 Ultra has, except for pen features and the periscope zoom lens, but it adds the ability to fold out to an 8-inch tablet, a very useful feature for people who would otherwise have to carry two devices. The biggest drawback remains the price—it starts at $1,999. Still, with all the new features, it’s a lot more attractive.
Galaxy Z Flip 7: Bigger Displays, More Camera Features
Many of the same enhancements are true for the smaller Galaxy Z Flip 7. Samsung has increased the size of the cover screen (which the company calls the "Flex Window”) to 4.1 inches, from 3.6 inches on last year's Z Flip 6.
The Flip 7's interior screen is now a 6.9-inch AMOLED display, up from the 6.7-inch display on last year's model. That's about the same as the screen on the Galaxy S25+, which makes it a much more competitive option.
It's thinner as well, measuring 75.2 x 85.5 x 13.7mm folded and 5.2 x 166.7 x 6.5mm unfolded. That's notably thinner than the Flip 6, which was 14.6 mm folded and 6.9 mm unfolded. I still think it's a bit thick for most pockets, but it's better.
Samsung promotes the Flip for selfies. It can stand up and has plenty of photo-taking features, including new ones that automatically zoom in and frame the people in your photo. Like the Fold, it comes with Android 16 and the latest AI features.
The Z Fold 7 has the Qualcomm Snapdragon Elite 8 for Samsung—pretty much the same as the S25 series—while the Z Flip 7 has a new 3nm Samsung Exynos 2500.
Starting at $1,099 with 256 GB of storage, the Z Flip 7 is certainly also a high-end phone. And Samsung is introducing a Z Fold 7 FE version at $899 with 128 GB, making it a bit more affordable. I can see this as a good choice for people who do a lot of social media posting or just want a distinctive option at what is now a reasonable price (especially after carrier discounts).
But given the pricing of the higher-end models, I'm not sure foldables are ready to go totally mainstream. Still, this year's models look like a big step in that direction. Soon enough, perhaps we'll all have foldable phones in our pockets.