Samsung owned yesterday by showing off its Galaxy Z Fold 7 and Flip 7 foldables, as well as newly redesigned watches. For the first time in a while, this feels like a big Samsung launch, with all of the products getting significant changes or upgrades. Like the Flip 7’s bigger cover display and AI features, the beautiful new designs of the Galaxy Watch 8 series, and the dramatic changes to the Fold 7, all have given us a jolt of excitement we don’t often expect from Samsung.
The Galaxy Z Fold 7 is really getting the improvements we needed to see from them after a couple of years of letdowns. We are finally getting a true upgrade this time, one that might have you considering making the switch to one. As your resident foldable hater, even I’m tempted to get one in the hand for a bit.
Before you do that, there are some things you need to know, both good and (potentially) bad.
1. Lighter than the Galaxy S25 Ultra, almost as thin. This is actually a crazy one. The redesign of the Galaxy Z Fold 7 has brought us a device that folds in half, yet is almost as thin when folded as Samsung’s non-folding Galaxy S25 Ultra. The Galaxy S25 Ultra measures in at 8.2mm thick, while the new Galaxy Z Fold 7 is just 8.9mm thick (!) when folded. When unfolded, the Fold 7 measures at just 4.2mm. But to up that impressive number, Samsung has found a way to decrease the weigh to just 215g, which brings it under the 218g of the S25 Ultra. Wild numbers.
2. 16GB RAM, but only with 1TB. The Galaxy Z Fold 7 has 16GB RAM for the first time, but the chances of you getting the version with that might be slim. Samsung is shipping versions of the Fold 7 with 256GB and 512GB storage, both of which only get 12GB RAM. If you want the full 16GB, you’ll have to fork out for the insanely priced 1TB model that retails for $2,419 without discounts.
3. Fancy new Corning Gorilla Glass Ceramic 2. On the cover display, the Fold 7 has Corning’s new Gorilla Glass Ceramic 2 glass, which first debuted on the S25 Edge, a phone no one cares about or wanted. So really, this is kind of like the first device to get this Ceramic 2 glass. What does that mean for you? Corning claims it’ll survive more drops, but just be aware that it isn’t necessarily any more scratch resistant than previous releases, like their Victus glass.
4. Cover screen hits 1080p officially, grows to 6.5″. Maybe more importantly for cover glass fans, the new cover screen is officially 1080p for the first time. The previous displays were 968p (Fold 6) and 904p (Fold 5), both of which were “HD+” because they didn’t quite hit 1080p. The Fold 7 has a 2520x1080p screen with variable refresh rate of 1-120Hz. It is once again a Dynamic AMOLED panel that measures in at 6.5″, the biggest we’ve seen.
5. No S Pen support this time. Samsung quietly discontinued S Pen support this time around, so that means you can’t use an S Pen on your Galaxy Z Fold 7. I believe their reasoning for the change was that in order to make the device as thin as it is, they couldn’t bring the layer necessary for S Pen support. Does that suck? Maybe! If you have previous S Pens and wanted to use them with this new Fold 7, you can’t. However, I actually wonder how many people were using an S Pen with the Fold series since Samsung wasn’t including it and you needed to buy it separately. I’d love to see those numbers. Either way, S Pen fans will be sad, while the rest of us will go find a snack.
6. New hinge, less crease complaining. Anyone who has ever used a foldable like the Fold series, knows that the crease in the middle of the larger display is both an eyesore and slightly annoying to slide your finger across. With the Fold 7, Samsung is introducing a new Armor FlexHinge that is as thin as it gets without decreasing the durability, so they say. But maybe more importantly, that crease is hardly visible. Just look at this picture that Tim took.
7. A real flagship camera, finally. For 6 years, Samsung kept selling us a $2,000 foldable phone with a camera typically found in close-to-budget devices. We couldn’t ever figure out why, so we kept complaining about it. And well, they finally listened and are delivering a true main camera sensor that should compete. Samsung is giving the Galaxy Z Fold 7 a 200MP “pro-grade camera experience” and their “next-generation ProVisual Engine” for image processing. We can’t wait to test it, but this should bring a competitive camera that the Fold series always deserved.
Pre-orders are live and you can save up to $1,200 for doing so.
PRE-ORDER GALAXY Z FOLD 7 ($1,200 in savings)
"pro grade 200mp camera"
I've never understood how people fall for the "more is better" when it comes to camera sensors.
If more were better, why does my d-slr "only" have 26 megapixels and some of the most expensive
mirrorless cameras max out around 50 mp or so?
It's not the NUMBER of pixels, it's the SIZE of the pixels coupled with the glass in front of the sensor.
Shoot, one of my lenses is as expensive as the entire phone!
Instead of more sensors what they should do it go with LARGER sensors and cut the size down to
30mp-50mp and increase the size of the sensor to 1". But the slim, sexy, stylish, colorful bunch would
poo-poo the retractable lens in the back of the camera. "more" lenses is all they know.
When you pack too many super tiny pixels next to each other, with all those data lines next to each other
and then try to take a photo in poor lighting conditions, the camera will crank up the gain, in order to attempt
to capture what little light is available. Cranking up the gain, can cause signals from one data line to jump over
to the other data line, known as "cross talk". The signal to noise ratio…
The camera captures the light, the processing software tries to knock it down, resulting in a flat photo.
Yeah, the best camera, is the one you have with you. But, if you are going to go somewhere to really capture
photos, get a REAL camera. These 200mp sensors, digital zoom and what not are just gimmicks for people
that think more must be better.
Knew of all of these. #5 is why I'm not getting a Fold for the 6th year in a row.
We are getting close to making me consider one.
We still need a bigger battery and a true Ultra-level camera system. But it's getting close.
if they can get the exterior screen to, say, 6.7" or so, get 5x optical zoom and get the battery up to at least 5k mAh, we can start talking.
On the other hand, we need the Galaxy S Ultra to actually make some meaningful improvements and we have a ZERO compromise experience.
The link doesn't work.
But…is that camera really ACTUALLY good now?
I have my doubts.
Main camera should be. Same fantastic sensor as the S25 Ultra. But with the ultra-wide and zoom cameras using less than flagship sensors, they may still lag behind. In other words, there are still some compromises being made on the camera front.
I'm not sure it's TBD as the lens are different and actually substantially worse than the s25 ultra. They've been described as prone to significant edge fall off and flare
Solid point. Will be interesting to see how it holds up in side-by-side testing.
I'm curious to see side by side images as well. In some tests, to my naked and aging eyes, the S25 Edge's images look better than the S25 Ultra's images so in certain situations!