Design - Ultra thin, Ultra Light

Arguably the biggest highlight of this device is its super thin design. When closed its dimensions are closer than ever to a slab device. Its size when folded is more comparable to the S25+ than the S25 Ultra, as its the same height but slightly narrower. This makes its folded form factor closer to what a normal slab phone feels like and that is what most people would ultimately want in a foldable. For it to be a normal smartphone that can open up into a mini tablet, whereas previous generations of the Fold had the reciprocal of that. Whereas, using the Z Fold 6 always felt like “my phone is a pocket-able tablet” because of how thick and narrow it was. The Z Fold7 reverses that ideology into “my phone can open up to a mini tablet”. It’s weight being 215g feels so much lighter than the 239g Z Fold 6. This phone is slightly lighter than the 218g S25 Ultra. It’s genuinely mind-blowing when you hold this device in your hands. For me, novelty of this form factor still hasn’t gone away. I’m always amazed that this is a foldable and not just a regular candy bar phone.

Software - Utilitarian

The Z Fold7 is the first device to run Android 16 with OneUI8. Currently, it is the only device featuring Android 16 and OneUI8. A first in both areas. Samsung has been refining its software experience over the years since its inception of the first Z Fold. OneUI 8 showcases Samsung's refinement to how it implements its multi-tasking capabilities, which is imperative for a foldable to properly utilise the large canvas. Samsung this year added what they call a ‘90-10’ split. Essentially this similar to what Oppo with Boundless View. It allows split screen multi-tasking to expand beyond the screen’s physical boundary. This lets apps in the ‘90-10’ split operate at nearly full-screen experiences with both apps being active at the same time. The main app taking 90% of the active screen space whilst the second app hides tucked away on the remaining 10% of the screen.

Cameras - Ultra Cameras*

The only thing that’s ‘Ultra’ for the Fold7 is the primary wide camera. It has a slightly smaller version of the Samsung S25 Ultra’s primary 200MP camera. This is most likely possible due to Samsung being able to experiment a similar implementation on the Samsung S25 Edge that released before the Fold7’s release. I would’ve liked to seen newer lenses for the telephoto and ultra wide. Perhaps its due to the software processing with the new SoC that photos from telephoto and ultrawide are good in decent lighting. However, they can fall apart during low light situation. Overall, I’m content with the camera performance given how slim this phone. At the same time, with the camera island being thicker than the actual phone, it would’ve been nice to see a larger improvement that is closer to the S25 Ultra at the very least.

Battery - Good but not great

Battery is exactly as I titled this section in the heading, good but not great. It’s good for me as it lasts throughout my 8 hour work days and I’m always clocking out of work with my phone sitting at around 50%. That involves using admin apps and watching YouTube for about an hour on my breaks. If I ever use my phone heavily during work hours, I always have access to a charger so its not the end of the world if it doesn’t last me all day until the evening. However, it would be great it could. Another thing that would be great to have is faster charging. On days when I’m out and about on 5G all the time, I can get around 5-6 hours of screen on time. Not only is 25W slow considering its a very expensive phone. Another thing that is worth mentioning is that 25W is not a common charging specification that third party chargers can support. For example there are some that can support 20W or 30W but they will only do 15W charging on the Z Fold7 and not the ‘Super Fast Charging 2.0’. Though I think this is more prevalent in power banks than wall chargers. I know that everyone wishes the battery was bigger and that we have faster charging speeds, but at least it didn’t compromise any further when reducing the phone’s thickness.

Conclusion

If you have your Z Fold6 because of the S-Pen and dislike the camera cutout on the inner display, then it may not be worth it to upgrade to the Z Fold7. Otherwise, I see every change that the Z Fold7 got as an improvement that overall makes the experience of using the phone feel more like a conventional phone when folded. While it sucks that the cameras and battery specifications didn’t get any major improvements (especially the battery), at least it didn’t get worse. If you can get the phone with a trade-in deal outright or on a plan, I’d say go for it.

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