After years of seemingly ho-hum refinements, Samsung has well and truly turned the corner with the Z Fold 7, delivering a foldable that is finally (almost) no-compromise enough to justify its high price of admission. But the real feat is just how well it hides in plain sight amongst regular candy bar smartphones. It’s hard to capture how much of a change shaving off a few mm here and a few grams there have made to the Z Fold 7, and this truly one of those phones you have to pick up to feel the difference.
In the hand, it feels surprisingly normal - at 8.9mm thick and weighing 215 grams, it’s only a tad thicker than the Samsung S25 Ultra or the iPhone 16 Pro Max, but it’s actually lighter than both and is about as comfortable to grip as flat-edged smartphones get these days. Crucially, the 21:9 aspect ratio on the outer 6.5-inch display is more akin to a candy bar smartphone, which makes a world of a difference in everyday tasks like messaging and browsing, and you don’t really need to open the phone to the inner screen that often, even though that's sort of the whole point.
Pry it open to its 4.22mm thin opened state and you’re rewarded with an expansive 8-inch panel inside, great for watching videos on the go, run two apps side by side or use the whole screen to see more of a document/spreadsheet. Both screens are 120Hz AMOLED displays with punchy colors, stunning clarity and a respectable 2600 nits peak brightness. The crease on the folding screen is barely discernable too. Bear in mind, the slim edges and firmer hinge do make it tougher to open the device and there’s a real risk of dropping the phone in the process, but there’s Gorilla Glass Ceramic 2 on the outer display and Victus 2 on the rear panel, plus a new reengineered hinge to better absorb shocks. It’s IP48 rated – good for the pool, less so for the beach.
When it comes to performance, the Z Fold 7 with its Snapdragon 8 Elite “for Galaxy" chipset expectedly handles everything you throw at it, though I’m sure there will be some who be disappointed in having to pay extra for the 16GB memory variant – the base 256GB and 512GB models ship with 12GB. And even though you can do practically anything on this device, the thinner chassis has led to some amount of thermal throttling when you play games at the highest graphics. The phone runs on One UI8 and Android 16, but the emphasis has been on refinement and adapting the AI features from the S25 series to the bigger display. Not that one is complaining, as the combo of Samsung and Google’s AI chops are absolutely top-notch. One feature some may miss is support for the S Pen stylus, as the phone lacks the physical digitizer layer on the display.
On cameras, the Z Fold 7 gets an S2 Ultra-inspired 200-megapixel wide angle lens, paired with a 10MP telephoto lens (with 3x optical zoom) and 12MP ultra-wide lens, plus there are two 10-megapixel selfie shooters on both displays. Granted, the primary shooter delivers oodles of details and accurate colors, but the telephoto and ultrawide do pack in less detail on account of their smaller, lower resolution sensors. I do love that you can complete ignore the selfie cameras and shoot with the rear cameras using the cover screen as a preview.
The only real quibble is the less than stellar battery life on the 4400mAh battery which, while impressively the same capacity as the stockier Fold 6, isn’t ideal (around 5 hours of screen time) if you tax the device with a lot of heavy work. That, and the slow 25W wired charging speeds – neither deal breakers, just stuff you’d expect Samsung to figure out for a phone priced at Rs. 1,74,999! For how close this foldable gets to being a normal phone - while still retaining its bragging rights - the Z Fold 7 earns an easy recommendation.
Rating: 9/10
Price: ₹1,74,999 onwards.
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