Galaxy Z Fold 7 Review: Coming of Age for Samsung’s Foldable

Foldable phones have long been seen as proof-of-concept devices, being all bulky, heavy and riddled with compromises. But we now live in a new era of foldables where they keep getting more and more practical with each passing day. The Galaxy Z Fold 7 further supports that narrative and irons out those long-standing flaws to replace your slab phone, your compact tablet and even your e-reader.

For this review, I used the Galaxy Z Fold 7 as my daily driver for two weeks, taking it to work with me, on flights, to the gym and even lazing on Sunday watching Netflix. And honestly? For the first time in a long time, it felt less like I was testing a futuristic prototype and more like I was testing out my next phone.

Galaxy Z Fold 7 Unboxing

As you’d expect from flagship unboxings, there’s not much to see here. Apart from the device itself, here’s what you get:

There’s no charger, which certainly stings at this price point, but it’s the new normal. However, when I picked up the device and took a good look, all was forgiven.

Galaxy Z Fold 7 Design and Build

I tested the Blue Shadow variant of the foldable and it looks stunning. It’s also the most happening colourway, given that the other two colours available in India are Jet Black and Silver Shadow. The blue is also beautifully subtle, making it ideal for just about any environment.

Meanwhile, the matte finish on the rear panel hides my fingerprints very well. My only gripe is that the camera bump makes the phone wobble aggressively when laid flat on a table.

The Galaxy Z Fold 7 is shockingly thin and when unfolded, it's the equivalent of five odd credit cards. Not to mention that it’s also super light, and even lighter than some slab flagships like the Galaxy S25 Ultra. Due to this, it nails every day practicality.

When folded, it slides into jeans easily and doesn’t feel like I’m carrying a hefty power bank. Holding it for long calls or extended reading sessions doesn’t make my hand cramp, either. Even when brisk walking, I could keep it in my shorts pocket without that lopsided weight pulling me down. Solid weight balance overall, in other words.

However, this is one slippery device and during one-handed usage of the cover screen, I’ve had it almost slip out of my hands a little too many times. Let's just say that I had to start using both my hands.

Getting to the inner screen is also tricky if you have trimmed nails, and it took me a while to open the Galaxy Z Fold 7 at one go. The re-engineered Armor FlexHinge also feels quite nice and holds angles very firmly. Whether I had it propped up at 70° to watch a YouTube tutorial when playing the guitar or using Flex Mode for a hands-free video call, the hinge didn’t wobble.

I also noticed how the foldable closes flatter than ever, leaving almost no visible gap, which helps it look and feel more premium.

However, it’s not just eye candy and is quite the Hulk in terms of enduring day-to-day bumps. I have, in fact, dropped the phone from my bedside twice, mostly in a desperate attempt to turn the alarm off. Nothing happened. My coworker and our lead researcher, Ramjie, was once trapped in the rain with the device in his hand and nowhere to go. Nothing happened.

Galaxy Z Fold 7 Display Quality

The Fold 7’s screens are what make this phone special. The 6.5-inch cover screen finally feels like it belongs on a normal phone. On older folds, the cover display always felt too skinny, almost like using a TV remote. Here, it’s wide enough that I don’t feel cramped. I’ve typed out long WhatsApp chats, replied to emails, even scrolled endlessly on Instagram without once wishing I had unfolded the phone. For the first time, I could actually live on the cover screen if I wanted.

However, the real magic happens when you unfold it. The inner display is gorgeous, sharp, punchy and very bright at 2,600 nits. I took it out on a sunny day, half-expecting the usual glare, but nope, the screen held up beautifully. The peak brightness doesn’t compromise the contrast and keeps it strong.

With foldables, I would sometimes be dissatisfied because shadows would look washed out or greyed, especially near the crease. Yes, the crease is still there, but the blacks stay solid even around the fold line when the screen is on. Even when scrolling or binging a Netflix series, my finger just glides across naturally. It's probably the first Galaxy Fold where I didn't constantly think about the crease. 

However, what makes the Galaxy Z Fold 7's inner display shine isn't just the size, it's the AMOLED's quality too. The blacks are so deep that when I was rewatching The Witcher on Netflix, those dark scenes just melted into the bezels. Streetlights and all that action popped against the pitch-black background in a way that made me forget my monitor. The same goes for darker shows like Stranger Things, where the Upside Down looks way more eerie when the shadows are actually jet Black instead of a washed-out grey.

There's, of course, the issue with aspect ratio and watching content on the cover screen feels more full. On the inner screen, unless you zoom into the content to fill the screen, those black borders will distract you. I did get to a point where it doesn't bother me anymore, but it takes a while.

What really makes the big screen click is how versatile it turned out to be for me. Reading long articles feels almost like you're reading on a tablet, with all that real estate. Multitasking on this is also super satisfying. I’ve had Google Docs and Gmail open side by side while editing, or YouTube playing in a floating window while I doomscroll on X, and it's such a delight. It doesn't feel like a party trick any more and is actually a solid productivity tool.

Then comes the Flex Mode, which might be my favourite Fold trick. Prop it halfway open and it turns into a mini laptop. I've typed Slack replies at a café with the bottom half as the keyboard and the top half showing the conversation, and I didn't feel the need for my laptop. For video calls, it doubles down as its very own stand. 

Galaxy Z Fold 7 Performance Tested

Using the Galaxy Z Fold 7 day in and day out feels effortless. The Snapdragon 8 Elite for Galaxy makes everything feel super snappy and responsive. Apps open instantly and switching between them is also seamless.

Even when I had 25-odd apps open in the background and three apps open on the inner screen (Notion and Gmail side by side with YouTube floating on top), the Fold 7 didn't stutter once. However, RAM management is not the best, and I'd often find 6 out of 10 apps reload when I shifted to them after a while. 

Those benchmark numbers were quite Elite too, as you'd expect. From sustained performance to balanced thermals, the flagship foldable handled it all very well:

Gaming and heavy workloads are where the Galaxy Z Fold 7 really flexes. On the big display, playing games like Genshin Impact or Call of Duty Mobile not only looks stunning, but also runs at consistently high frame rates. Here's a quick look at the games and the kind of settings I enjoyed on the Fold 7:

After about half an hour, the back of the phone gets warm at around 40°C, especially near the camera module, but never uncomfortably hot. It also cools down to 35°C pretty quickly. The cooling system seems solid here and does a good job of keeping throttling in check. I didn't see any sudden dips in performance, even during extended gameplay. This balance of raw power and thermal balance is what makes the Fold 7 a very reliable all-rounder. 

Galaxy Z Fold 7 Software and Updates

Samsung's One UI 8 is tuned to take advantage of the foldable with seamless animations as apps adapt quickly when you switch from the cover screen to the inner screen and vice versa. There's also a healthy amount of customisations available if you want to tweak the look and feel of the UI.

Of course, it's not perfect, and some third-party apps like Swiggy don't scale well on the inner display. Besides, I have also noticed some micro stutters in the UI when summoning the recent apps panel or scrolling through the app drawer. 

However, AI features came in quite handy and made the experience smarter. I found myself relying on Photo Assist and Generative Edit to clean up pictures and remove distractions every now and then. Then, there are also the writing and browsing assist tools that help condense long pages or emails. Additionally, one can also make use of the Live Translation and Text Translation features. There's a lot of AI here, in other words.

Overall, the Galaxy Z Fold 7's software is what makes the hardware meaningful. Without it, the big inner screen would just be a novelty and with it, the device feels like a genuine productivity beast. It's not flawless, but it's the closest Samsung has come to making a foldable feel less experimental and more polished as an everyday device.

Galaxy Z Fold 7 Camera Tested

While the Galaxy Z Fold 7's camera hardware isn't a massive departure from last year, there are some efforts put into image processing and it shows in real-world results. 

Talking about daylight performance first, it's excellent across the main and ultrawide cameras. In good lighting, the primary 50 MP sensor consistently delivers sharp, detailed and natural-looking colours. In the brick building shots, for example, textures in the walls and window shutters were rendered nicely.

The dynamic range is wide enough as well to handle the cloudy sky without blowing out highlights. The ultrawide maintains a consistent colour profile, although details drop toward the edges. 

The telephoto's performance is also dependable up to 3x optical, with usable results at 10x in good light. The gold statue shot highlights how well the Fold 7 can handle subjects at a distance. Colours are punchy and details hold up decently even when zoomed. Beyond that, though, there's some softening at times but nothing too serious.

When capturing human subjects, I have noticed how, although the background mapping is solid, the pictures may appear washed out. 

Low-light performance is also quite nice. The shot of the house, for example, demonstrates the Fold 7's ability to balance highlights from artificial lights while still retaining shadow detail in the plants and walls. There's definitely some noise in these shots, and finer textures get slightly smoothed out under aggressive noise reduction.

However, I've noticed that the Galaxy Z Fold 7 has a tough time focusing on subjects at night. I was out on a run and by the end of it, I wanted to capture a photo of the stats on my smartwatch; let's just say that it took me several tries to make the foldable focus on the smartwatch display without blurring it out. 

Portraits and selfies are decent, but far from being the best. In the close-up selfies, skin tones looked natural and edge detection around hair and glasses was handled well. However, there's some AI processing which can, at times, cause selfies to look very weird.

Let's have a look at the picture, where a sweaty me is trying to get a selfie after some serious workout. Both the under-display and cover screen cameras also lag behind in sharpness and detail. While it's fine for video calls, it's not reliable enough for keepsake photos.

Video comes out quite nicely too, as expected from a Samsung flagship. Stabilisation is smooth and 4K videos look crisp with vibrant colours. I liked that I could record 4K @ 60 FPS videos from the selfie shooter as well. The front can also do up to 8K @ 30 FPS, which is a great bonus to have. Switching between lenses while recording is also seamless, making the Galaxy Z Fold 7 a reliable option for creators to have on the move.

Galaxy Z Fold 7 Battery and Charging

Battery life is probably the only place you will be slightly disappointed with. Initially, there was a software optimisation issue which would cause a massive idle drain of about 2 to 3% every hour. Thanks to this, the foldable was delivering only around 3.5 hours or so of SoT. 

However, kudos to Samsung for being excellent with updates and after a recent update, this idle drain was fixed and I started averaging around 5.5 hours on a single charge, which translated to a little over a full day of use. The idle drain was also down to just around 1.2%. Mind you, that was after I took calls all day, did some heavy multitasking on auto brightness and texted my hands away.

Fast charging did seem slow as per today's standards, with the phone taking an hour and half to fully charge. While 25W is a bummer, you do get used to it. 

Bottom Line: Should You Buy the Galaxy Z Fold 7?

If you've ever looked at foldable phones and thought, "cool idea, but not for me", the Galaxy Z Fold 7 will change your perception. This isn't the bulky or fragile science experiment that early foldables used to be. Now, it's a phone that's meant to be your best companion on a daily basis and after two weeks of carrying it everywhere, it stopped feeling like a review unit and more like my main phone. 

Yes, it's expensive. Yes, the cameras, while decent, will not outshine the Galaxy S25 Ultra. And yes, the battery isn't "wow" by today's standards. But, if you can stomach the price and these small trade-offs, you end up getting what's not just Samsung's best foldable yet, but the first one I'd actually recommend without hesitation.

But, if you don't want to go all the way for the Z Fold 7, the Vivo X Fold 5 is an excellent option to consider for Rs 1,49,999. Not only is it priced less, but it also offers ZEISS-branded cameras, a better 6,000mAh + 80W battery and fast charging combo. While it's not as sleek as the Z Fold 7, thanks to all the upsides, it's a great alternative.

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