Samsung has just taken the wraps off the Galaxy Z Fold 7, revealing a sleek foldable design that is as slim as its closest rivals while packing in a high-performance 200-megapixel camera that is found on its Galaxy S Ultra candybar flagship phones.
In essence, this is a gadget that opens up an 8-inch foldable AMOLED screen without the penalties of weight and bulk of the past. At 215g, it is lighter than Samsung’s Galaxy S25 Ultra, while its 8.9mm thickness is not significantly more than the candybar phone, either.
Yes, the Honor Magic V5 foldable phone, launched last week, may aim to steal Samsung’s thunder, but the Chinese rival is a mere 0.1mm thinner with a “lucky” 8.8mm girth – it’s not something of real difference when you’re holding or using each phone.
The real limit, as Samsung, Honor or anyone else like Oppo or Huawei will say, is the thickness of the USB-C port in the frame. There comes a point when you can only make the chassis as slim as the port needed to juice up the phone.
The Galaxy Z Fold 7, at least from a hands-on media event in Singapore last week, feels fairly sturdy in its build, especially when you’re flipping it open and close. It doesn’t seem to flex as much as some extremely thin foldable phones may appear.
Samsung says its new Armor FlexHinge on the Galaxy Z Fold 7 is thinner and lighter, thanks to a new design. Plus, it does seem to reduce the visible crease in the middle of the foldable screen, from our quick hands-on last week.
An upgraded aluminium frame and hinge also promises better strength and hardness by 10 per cent, says the Korean electronics giant, perhaps to assuage folks who have broken their foldable phones before.
Of course, the new foldable phone’s sleek design doesn’t take into account its camera bulge. That may be a turn-off for some users, but for those who seek imaging performance similar to the best candybar phones will be pleased.
The crucial improvement here is the 200MP wide-angle camera that promises better detail and brighter pictures. If you’re looking for a foldable phone but have not wanted to give up your candybar phone’s camera, then the Galaxy Z Fold 7 certainly looks promising.
What you get in its triple-camera array at the back are:
- 200MP wide-angle camera
- 12MP ultrawide-angle camera
- 10MP telephoto camera
You also have a 10MP camera on the cover for selfies and a 10MP main camera inside the foldable screen that lets you do video calls on the road.
For imaging buffs, the Galaxy Z Fold 7’s 8-inch foldable screen comes in handy as well. With it, you can edit your photos and videos quickly, without waiting for a large screen to work on them.
Okay, a laptop or desktop PC might still be better for longer videos but quick Tiktok videos or YouTube shorts? The 8-inch screen, with a host of AI features like background audio elimination will help while you’re out and about.
Speaking of AI, the new phone comes with Samsung’s latest One UI 8 – yes, some phones are still being updated to One UI 7 now – which promises even tighter AI integration.
Want to get tips while playing a game? Without exiting the game, you can highlight just about anything on the screen and ask AI to help find information for a walkthrough.
To power all these capabilities, the Galaxy Z Fold 7 sports a Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Elite chip customised for Samsung. It also packs in 12GB of memory for the two basic models and offers a handy 16GB for the top-end version.
Among other improvements you can find on the new phone is a 6.5-inch Full HD+ AMOLED cover screen. This is an upgrade over the 6.3-incher on last year’s Galaxy Z Fold 6 and it’s actually as large as what you find on many a candybar phone.
For many tasks, you don’t even need to flip open the large screen. And perhaps, that’s the strongest point of this new foldable upgrade from Samsung – you can get all the goodness of a foldable phone while enjoying the simplicity of a regular candybar model.
Well, almost, because you do need to pay for that privilege. In Singapore, the Galaxy Z Fold 7 costs a grand S$3,328 for the top-end model with 16GB memory and 1TB of storage, while the 12GB/512GB one goes for S$2,878 and the 12GB/256GB version costs S$2,698.
Not cheap at all, but you can say that this book-like foldable, along with the Galaxy Z Flip 7 flip-screen phone and the cheaper Galaxy Z Flip FE also launched today, has pushed Samsung back in front, after Chinese rivals Honor, Oppo and Huawei unveiled attractive slim foldables in the past year.
