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If you’ve been waiting for foldable phones to start living up to their potential, that time may finally have come.
The Samsung Galaxy Fold 7 is the Korean tech giant‘s latest flagship foldable, and one of the thinnest and lightest on the market.
With an array of excellent cameras, a vivid display and some of the best AI features currently available, the Fold 7 is a serious upgrade from the previous Galaxy Z Fold 6.
But with prices currently sitting at £1,899, The Daily Mail’s Wiliam Hunter has put the Galaxy Fold 7 to the test to see if it’s worth that serious investment.
The Galaxy Fold 7 is available in a choice of three colours – Blue Shadow, Jetblack, and Silver Shadow – with storage options of 256GB, 512GB, and 1TB.
Its main selling point is a gorgeous 8-inch AMOLED folding display on the inside, coupled with a 6.5-inch outer display.
Where previous foldables have suffered from excessive bulk, the Galaxy Fold 7 has no such problem – measuring just 8.9mm thick folded and 4.2mm unfolded.
And while it might not be what Samsung was aiming for, the Galaxy Fold 7 might just be the perfect companion for your next camping holiday.
Samsung Galaxy Fold 7
Our verdict
Slim, light, and wildly versatile – the Samsung Galaxy Fold 7 is the perfect companion for wherever your travels take you.
With a great selection of super sharp cameras, genuinely useful AI tools, and a battery that’s big enough to last a full day, this is a great option for reading emails on the train or photographing a day out hiking.
If you’re thinking about replacing your phone, tablet, and maybe even your laptop with one device, there are plenty of reasons to think the Galaxy Fold 7 is the right choice.
The only thing holding the Galaxy Fold 7 back are some minor concerns about durability and a price that is outlandishly high compared to non-folding devices.
How we test our phones
When we test phones, we make sure to put them through their paces in as many real-world environments as possible.
That means seeing how they work at home, in the office, and out in public for all the situations your device needs to handle.
We evaluate devices based on their hardware, software, and overall appeal – testing everything from camera quality and battery life to how easy they are to type with.
Each phone is tested for at least a week, allowing us to provide an in-depth review to help consumers make an informed decision.
Why trust us?
Wiliam Hunter is a science and technology reporter at MailOnline and has been testing and reviewing products for two years. He completed a master’s degree in Newspaper Journalism at City University London in 2022.
Samsung Galaxy Fold 7 Review
The Daily Mail’s Wiliam Hunter tried out the Samsung Galaxy Fold 7, Samsung’s latest flagship foldable with a hefty price tag
Design
Straight out of the box, the Samsung Galaxy Fold 7 is a truly great-looking phone.
We received our test sample in the colour Blue Shadow, which has a really nice, subtle sheen that looks absolutely fantastic.
With the Galaxy Fold 7, Samsung has opted for a very minimalistic design with flat, sharp edges and no decoration, barring a tiny Samsung logo along the spine.
In the past, my biggest gripe with foldables has been that you end up combining the worst parts of a phone and tablet to get something that is less useful than either.
But thanks to the Galaxy Fold 7’s outstandingly compact design, I can safely say that this is no longer a worry.
At just 215 grams, the Galaxy Fold 7 is lighter than either the iPhone 16 Pro Max or the Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra, and is thinner than the Samsung Galaxy S25 Edge when unfolded.
In fact, using the outer 6.5-inch AMOLED screen, it’s really easy to forget that you’re holding a device that can quickly become a tablet almost as big as the iPad Mini.
The Galaxy Fold 7’s main selling point is the 8-inch AMOLED folding screen, which gives this device the practicality of a tablet in a size you can slip into a pocket
Display
Opening the phone out reveals an 8-inch display, which is an impressive jump in size from the 7.6-inch display on the previous Galaxy Z Fold 6.
Both the inner and outer displays look excellent, with nice bold colours, sharp contrast, and plenty of brightness.
Likewise, an adaptive refresh rate of 120Hz on both, compared to just 60Hz on the standard iPhone 16, makes playing games or watching TV on the Galaxy Fold 7 a treat.
You can even split the larger screen to run up to three apps at a time, which is fantastically useful for multitasking.
Alternatively, in one of my favourite features, you can leave the phone open halfway and prop it up like a kickstand to watch something on a smaller screen.
Throughout the few weeks of testing, the hinges on the Galaxy Fold 7 felt strong and durable, and the inner screen felt much more resistant to scratching than I had expected.
Samsung says it has improved the hinge’s durability with the Armor FlexHinge, which helps evenly distribute stress along the phone.
The inner screen feels much larger than the 7.6-inch display on the previous Galaxy Z Fold 6, and can run up to three apps at a time
An adaptive refresh rate of 120Hz on both, compared to just 60Hz on the standard iPhone 16, makes playing games or watching TV on the Galaxy Fold 7 a treat
Things might be quite different after a few years of use, but I didn’t ever feel like there was any risk of damaging the display through normal use.
However, the phone does come with a warning not to shut the screen if there is anything hard inside, so don’t expect to be able to treat the display too roughly.
Samsung also appears to have worked hard to reduce the visibility of the inner crease, which was a real pain on some older foldables.
While I wouldn’t say that it’s invisible, the crease is certainly a lot less noticeable, and it’s barely visible when watching a video.
Practicality
One of the biggest questions I had going into this review was how useful the Galaxy Fold 7 would really be.
I’m not a tablet user, and I don’t tend to watch a huge amount of TV on my phone, so I wasn’t sure that I was the right person to get the most out of this device.
I hadn’t expected the folding screen to be such a useful upgrade from a traditional slab phone. With the excellent split keyboard and extremely lightweight design, typing out lists or writing emails on the Galaxy Fold 7 is exceptionally easy
However, the Galaxy Fold 7 managed to prove its usefulness in an extremely unlikely situation: on a camping holiday.
Five days with limited electricity, barely any signal, and nearly perpetual rain might not seem like the best place to test a folding phone, but the Galaxy Fold 7 truly outperformed my expectations.
Although it only has the same 4,400 mAh battery as the Galaxy Z Fold 6, the Galaxy Fold 7 easily held out all day – even while using power-hungry navigation apps.
Throughout the whole trip, I only charged the phone to full two or three times and was never in danger of running out of power mid-hike.
Yet the biggest surprise was just how useful the folding screen turned out to be.
Whether I was pulling up a map on All Trails or searching Google for the best countryside pubs, having the option to open up to a bigger screen was a huge help.
Even something as simple as checking my emails to find the next campsite booking was made just that little bit easier thanks to the extra screen real estate.
For trips in the future, I’d be more than happy to ditch my standard slab phone in favour of a foldable this light and reliable.
The biggest surprise was just how handy the Galaxy Fold 7 proved to be on a recent camping trip. Whether checking a route on All Trails or just booking a campsite, the extra screen space made everything a breeze
My only concern is that the Galaxy Fold 7 might not be quite rugged enough for this kind of rough treatment.
The device is certified as IP48, which means it is water resistant up to a depth of 1.5 metres but isn’t dust resistant.
That means it’s not a phone you want to be taking to the beach or dropping in the dirt on a regular basis.
I also refuse to baby a review phone, which means they end up being shoved in backpacks, accidentally dropped on all manner of surfaces, and generally mistreated much more than the average device.
After just a few weeks of this abuse, my phone’s lovely blue exterior has already started to pick up a few superficial nicks and scratches, especially on the sharp corners.
The S25 Edge’s frame is made from reinforced aluminium, which Samsung calls Armor Aluminium – something which hasn’t been on a Samsung phone before.
I hadn’t noticed any similar damage on the titanium-framed S25 Edge, which might suggest the aluminium isn’t quite as tough.
Given that this phone costs up to £2,000, I would certainly want to put a case on it as soon as possible or treat it with a fair bit of care.
My only concern is that the new Armor Aluminium frame isn’t quite as durable as the titanium that comes with other Samsung models. My review phone picked up a number of small dents and scratches after a few weeks of hard use
Camera
If you’re still unsure whether the Galaxy Fold 7 is really worth taking on your next holiday, the cameras alone make it worth considering.
On the back, you have a 200-megapixel main camera, a 12-megapixel ultrawide, and a 10-megapixel telephoto lens with 3x optical zoom.
Then, on both the outer and inner screens, you have another set of 10-megapixel selfie cameras.
The Galaxy Fold 7’s main camera is really impressive, with super-sharp details and really nice colours.
Even on overcast days, the greens of plant life pop and people’s faces don’t have any of that washed-out quality so common to some smartphone cameras.
I was also really impressed with the detail you can achieve with macro shots, thanks to the auto-focus on the 12-megapixel ultrawide camera.
The strong optical zoom is also a really nice touch, and one that is missing on other Samsung offerings such as the Galaxy S25 Edge.
The Galaxy Fold 7 offers a 200-megapixel main camera, a 12-megapixel ultrawide, and a 10-megapixel telephoto lens with 3x optical zoom. Even under poor lighting conditions, these cameras produced some great photos (pictured)
I was also really impressed with the detail you can achieve with macro shots, thanks to the auto-focus on the 12-megapixel ultrawide camera.
Samsung’s AI editing tools made removing unwanted details from pictures extremely easy. Simply tapping on these hikers gave me the option to move them around or remove them entirely
You can see just how impressive Samsung’s AI editing tools are in these before (left) and after (right) images
You can really see just how much detail that telephoto camera can maintain while zooming in on some extremely distant features.
Software and performance
In terms of computing power, the Galaxy Fold 7 is an absolute beast of a smartphone.
Samsung has packed in the Snapdragon 8 Elite chip alongside 12 GB of RAM – as much as you would find in some laptops.
That allows the Galaxy Fold 7 to effortlessly run up to three apps simultaneously without any hint of stuttering.
Booting up Genshin Impact, a game which was recently deemed too demanding for the PS4, performance was exceptionally smooth even at the highest graphic settings.
But the biggest surprise was just how good Samsung’s AI features are with all that computing power behind them.
The Galaxy Fold 7 runs on One UI 8 based on 16, which gives you access to AI writing tools, drawing, audio editing, and transcription tools alongside functions like Circle to Search.
You can access Google Gemini by long-pressing the side button, which offers some extremely useful tools. Here, the AI gives directions to the best parking spot on a hiking trail from an image of the route
Samsung has integrated the Google Gemini AI, which can be activated simply by long-pressing the lock button.
That makes it easy to ask the AI questions about pictures from your gallery or whatever might be on your screen.
Gemini was easily able to identify the actors Eugene Levy and Annie Murphy from an episode of Schitt’s Creek, and even told me the episode name to boot.
Most impressively, the AI was even able to give me Google Maps directions to the best parking locations after being shown a walking route on All Trails.
Samsung’s AI tools also making touching up your holiday snaps an absolute breeze.
With a few quick taps, I was easily able to remove a few unwanted hikers from my photos, leaving behind nothing but pristine scenery.
Price
There’s no avoiding the fact that the Galaxy Fold 7 is an extremely expensive phone.
With the base model costing £1,799, the Galaxy Fold 7 is already significantly more costly than Samsung’s flagship smartphone, the Galaxy S25 Ultra, at £1,099.
With the base model costing £1,799, that is already significantly more costly than Samsung’s flagship smartphone, the Galaxy S25 Ultra, at £1,099.
Similarly, you could almost buy two Google Pixel 9 Pros, costing £999 each, for the same price.
However, compared to other foldables on the market, the Galaxy Fold 7 is actually quite fairly priced.
For example, the Pixel 9 Pro Fold has a very similar starting cost of £1,749.
Likewise, the OnePlus Open costs only a fraction less at £1,699 – although that does include 1TB of storage as standard.
If you consider the fact that the Galaxy Fold 7 has some of the best hardware and software of any foldable, that price starts to look a bit more reasonable.
Samsung’s latest foldable packs everything you need from a tablet into a package that’s slim enough to slip in your pocket.
