Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 7 is thin and lightweight but not for every budget
The new 'fold' says goodbye to the stylus but is the best foldable on the market. Unfortunately it costs as much as a laptop.
3' min read
3' min read
It takes very little time to understand the Galaxy Z Fold 7, just slip it in your pocket and you've almost got it all figured out. It's been six years at Samsung since the launch of the first 'foldable' flip phone, and today we're definitely out of the prototype phase. Let's say that today it is for all intents and purposes the first foldable phone that has nothing less than the highest-end smartphones. It is not bulky and heavy like those of the past, weighing only 215 grams and is 8.9 mm thick when closed. When closed it looks like a traditional mobile phone, when open it offers the user experience of a small tablet. Beautiful but very expensive, to use a slogan because while it may look like two Galaxy S25 Ultra stacked on top of each other in terms of thickness, it also costs more than two thousand euro.
Our test.
Let's say right away that it is the best foldable smartphone you can find on the market, assuming you like that kind of design. Foldables fall into two categories, those that fold like books and those that fold like a clamshell, like the old Motorola. The latter category is the most popular, the former now has the Galaxt Z Fold 7 as standard and is the one that was created for professionals. During our test, the first thing you appreciate is the weight, elegance and solidity. You no longer have that feeling of having an object to show off to friends while being careful when opening and using it. The hinge has been redesigned and you can feel it. The crease is there but the phone is so much improved that you don't care anymore. Even on a photographic level we are no longer in the presence of a smartphone that has anything less than the top of the class.
What I liked.
Beautiful is beautiful and we said it. With brightness up to 2600 nits; the crease is almost invisible and even if it's there it's fine. The image quality is definitely better than before, the 200 Mp camera combo with Snapdragon 8 Elite + 12 / 16 GB RAM guarantees excellent performance. Nobody has to complain anymore, even in gaming. Even in terms of longevity, updates are guaranteed until 2032. Software integration, however, has always been the real issue because if you are a manager and spend two thousand euros on a smartphone, it is because you want to at least partly replace your tablet or otherwise work intensively with your device. On this ground the improvement is really tangible, there are vast improvements, but we are really at the beginning of a new era.
The question of the nib.
Even without a stylus. Samsung had to sacrifice the S-Pen to achieve this thickness. Some will suffer greatly because the stylus has always been the Koreans' trademark for distinguishing themselves from the competition. But let's say that on foldables (and not only) it is something we can serenely do without.
What we didn't like.
The autonomy is not first class, so watch out for the battery also because the screen is nice and bright. Watch out for dust, remember it is still a foldable and so even though it looks it is not a combat phone. The zoom can be improved if we compare it to camera phones as well as the repairability is likely to be more expensive than a normal phone. The only problem is the exorbitant price: it starts at around EUR 2,099 and goes up to over 2,600 in the 1 TB configuration.
