Samsung Galaxy Z Flip 7 Review

Design 

• Pocketable clamshell-style design
• Pretty thin and light
• New strong hinge system

With both its flip-style and book-style foldable phones, when it came to design, it’s fair to say Samsung had been left behind by a few rivals. At least when it came to building something truly compact and sleek, or making the most of the available space. More importantly, though, there were still compromises with previous versions. 

The outer screen was nowhere near as expansive and fully-featured as rivals like the Motorola Razr 50 UItra or the newer 60 Ultra. And the internal screen was so narrow, it wasn’t great for typing on, and wasn’t all that well suited to any content or games either. The aspect ratio was all wrong. 

With the Z Flip 7, all of those pain points have been addressed. The phone isn’t as long and narrow feeling, taking on a more useful 21:9 ratio. It’s slimmer. It has a larger screen on the outside that takes up about as much space as possible without spilling over the edges. 

I’ll talk more about the displays a bit later, but from a hardware perspective, both those changes were very much needed. 

Unfolded, the phone measures just 6.5mm thick, which isn’t far off from achieving the extreme levels of svelteness seen in the Galaxy S25 Edge. And Samsung managed to shave off those millimetres without compromising on battery power and performance levels. Which, again, I’ll get to later. 

The hinge feels easier to open and shut than the last one, but still manages to hold itself steady across pretty much any angle. It won’t snap shut, or snap open too keenly, and so if you want to rest it with the screen part open to record video, you can really get creative with those angles. 

Samsung says that the hinge has also been made more durable, despite being made more compact, and the water drop style fold in the internal display means the crease is less visible than previous models too. 

The end result is a phone that clamps shut with a satisfying clap, and can be flicked open one-handed – if needed – without feeling like it will damage the phone. And you still get the pleasure of being able to use a huge phone screen when open, and fold it away into a palm-sized square for easy storing and carrying. 

Whether it’s a small clutch, shoulder bag or, in my case, a tiny internal pocket in a pair of running shorts, it fits those spaces better than any regular phone can. 

One surprising new addition – which Samsung didn’t speak about much during its launch event – is the new fingerprint sensor in the side key. It’s a more modern type, so when you set it up, you don’t have to keep lifting your thumb and placing it back down again. 

Instead, you keep your thumb in contact, and just swipe and move your thumb around while the sensor continuously reads until its got a full scan. It’s so much easier to set up at the beginning, and I like that a lot. 

Previous types of sensors would often miss scans during set-up, or tell you to try again. With this method, that just doesn’t happen, and it seems to lead to a more reliable and consistent unlock experience too, while simultaneously being able to fit the scanning tech into a much slimmer button. Wins all around. For those curious, that same sensor is also in the new Galaxy Z Fold 7. 

Screens

• Larger 4.1-inch cover screen
• Bigger 6.9-inch foldable screen
• Both screens are wider and more usable than ever

Compared to the Motorola Razr series, the external display on previous Flip models has been lagging behind over the past couple of years. Not just in terms of the available space, but how the software made use of that cover screen. To an extent, that’s still the case – but Samsung is much closer to competing. 

The new 4.1-inch panel takes up nearly all of the available space, leaving a super-slim 1.25mm-thick bezel around the sides, and swallowing up the two camera lenses in the bottom corner. It shines as a monitor for selfies taken with the main cameras, with a new interface designed to make it easier to use and easier to see what’s going on. 

It’s when it comes to launching other apps that the experience feels a little cumbersome and less optimised than Motorola’s efforts. 

There are a few pre-selected apps you can launch on the outer screen with Samsung’s blessing – apps like Google Maps, WhatsApp, Messages, Netflix and YouTube. If you want to enable any others, you need to install Multistar, which is a launcher for the outer screen which lets you launch any app you want. This includes mini games, just like the Moto Razr family. 

It takes a little working around and enabling some settings to make it all work though. It’s not just available by default, making the process a bit more obstructive than it needs to be. And that’s not the only slight downside compared to the Razr. 

The other issue is that Samsung’s keyboard, which appears when replying to messages and chatting on the outer screen, is nowhere near as quick and easy to use as the Gboard alternative, and there seems to be no obvious way to switch to Google’s alternative. 

It’s more cramped, doesn’t seem as responsive, and doesn’t autocorrect. When typing in Slack, WhatsApp, and Messages, I found myself taking twice as long to write quick replies and actually giving up, opening the phone to use the main screen instead, which defeats the purpose of having the ability to reply on the outer screen in the first place. 

It’s meant to be quick, instant and convenient, but it’s hard to be any of those things when you’re fumbling on a poorly optimised keyboard and you’re having to be extra careful and precise with your typing. 

It almost flies in the face of the general approach to how the cover screen space has been arranged. With other widgets and controls – like weather, calendar, voice recorder and others – you don’t get full-screen widgets. 

Instead, you clump them together in one or two screens. It’s designed to save you from having to swipe through multiple screens, and being able to see everything you need to access in just one or two. It’s designed to save time. 

Personally, I’d rather have full-screen weather and calendar views, instead of needing to tap on those widgets to see a full-screen view. But I appreciate the thought behind why it’s been done this way. 

Despite the critique, the increased size and shape mean it is infinitely better than the previous outer display. With some software changes (and possibly the ability to use Gboard on it), that experience could be tweaked to make it just that little bit better. 

There are two features that make the primary folding internal display better than the one that came before. And it has nothing to do with brightness or refresh rates (which are actually, largely the same as before). Those two things: size and aspect ratio. 

We’ve gone up to 6.9 inches diagonally, from 6.7 inches. And instead of being a super narrow 22:9 aspect ratio, it’s been changed to 21:9. That means a noticeable increase in the surface area, and a shape that’s just a little more conducive to media consumption. 

You still get black bars on either side of content that’s more traditional in its aspect ratio, but it’s nowhere near as bad as before. And because there’s extra width, the display is a lot more convenient to type on two-handed. There’s more space for two thumbs, and that means it feels less like a compromise. In fact, I found it as easy to type on as I would any regular candybar-style smartphone. 

For context, it’s noticeably wider than the regular Galaxy S25, and not far off being the same width as the Galaxy S25 Edge, which is arguably one of the most comfortable phones to use for replying to messages. Add that to its skinny, lightweight design, and it’s actually a delight to use. 

Otherwise, it’s surprisingly bright, and despite not being coated in glass, it performed well in bright outdoor situations. I took it to the beach to shoot some photos during our hottest, brightest weekend of the year so far, wore sunglasses, and could still see the display perfectly clearly. 

It’s colour-rich, without being oversaturated and brilliant for catching up on my favourite shows. It feels as though that internal display is no longer a huge compromise over glass-covered slabs, removing another pain point of switching from a traditional phone to a foldable. 

Cameras 

• Same dual camera setup as Z Flip 6
• Much more natural colours this time
• Great performance for most

When it comes to camera performance, the Flip series rarely gets the top hardware or capabilities of the top-tier Samsung models. Phones like the S25 Edge, S25 Ultra and Z Fold have better sensors and – for the last two – more of them for things like zooming into scenery. 

But, as dual camera systems go, the Z Flip 7’s is actually pretty solid, and doesn’t suffer from the obvious weaknesses of its predecessors. It doesn’t oversaturate blues and greens as much, and the contrast levels seem sensible rather than cranked to 11. Even low-light photography using the night mode is a pretty solid affair. 

It won’t beat cameras like those on the S25 Ultra for clarity and quality, and definitely doesn’t approach the levels those zoom-equipped phones can reach when you want to zoom into a shot, but it doesn’t feel as hampered as it did. 

With the 50-megapixel primary sensor, you can zoom in to 2x and get a sharp, good-looking photo with natural depth and decent textures. It’s particularly useful when you want to get close to small objects, such as insects and flowers, giving you a macro ability of sorts without needing to rely on a flat, lower-quality dedicated macro sensor. 

I managed to shoot some in-focus, blur-free shots of a bumblebee collecting nectar from roadside flowers without any trouble. And there’s no obvious way of telling the shot was taken using a 2x digital crop zoom rather than a proper optical zoom. 

The primary camera balances highlights and shadows fairly well, although on a very sunny day at the beach, the bright light bouncing off pale pebbles on the shoreline still proved a bit of a challenge for the camera, which defaulted to overexposing slightly to keep the darker parts of the images looking stronger. 

Still, the blue skies weren’t overly blue, and greenery didn’t border on the Mountain Dew levels of green like older Flip models, so that’s progress at least. 

I shot images of my son skateboarding, and even that on-the-move motion wasn’t an issue. Images were crisp and in focus, with no struggling to focus or any motion blur. 

If there’s any criticism, it’s that sometimes the results can seem a little hazy. Just a tiny bit lacking in clarity and authenticity compared to some of the truly super cameras. Particularly if there was a bright source of light in the scene somewhere, at which point I’d often see lens flare creeping in (most obviously with the ultrawide lens). 

At night time there was still a bit of a tendency for the phone to process scenes with a bit of a cool/green tint, but I never struggled with focusing or motion blur. Even in particularly dark scenes, the cameras coped well with locking onto the subject and then drawing in light over 2-4 second exposures, reliably utilising its processing algorithms to eliminate shakiness from handheld shooting.

What’s more, none of the scenes looked overly bright – like it was trying to make it look more like daytime. 

Zoomed in, some of the details look a bit over-smooth, and the ultrawide was lacking a bit in clarity and sharpness in those low-light scenes compared to the primary lens, but I’d be happy to use this camera in pretty much any scenario. It’s not the best out there, but it’s good, and doesn’t seem to be the obvious weakness it used to be. 

Performance

• Exynos 2500 chipset
• Slower than the Z Fold 7, but perfectly fine in use
• Can get hot if pushed to the max

Eyebrows were raised when Samsung announced the new Z Flip series would not be using the latest Snapdragon 8 Elite chipset. Instead, Samsung is using its own in-house Exynos 2500 processor platform. 

Given the lack of available internal space for components and the thermal requirements to keep a large, powerful chip running efficiently, it’s a decision I completely understand. And one that, perhaps controversially, I think is the right decision. 

Through our testing and analysis of benchmark data, it’s clear that the processor has more power than last year’s top Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 platform, but it doesn’t reach the levels of the 8 Elite from this year. So, unlike last year, there’s a performance gap between the Flip range and the Fold range. 

Given that the Flip isn’t really a device aimed at competitive gaming and power-intensive tasks, that’s not something I think is an issue at all. Especially given the thermal performance of the Flip, it would likely also mean that any jump in power would be hampered by thermal throttling and underclocking. 

What matters is that with the chip inside, and the 120Hz display, the phone is as fast and responsive to gestures and everyday use cases as almost any high-end phone on the market. It’s quick and gets things done without chugging sluggishly away. Even on hot days when you’d think it’d overheat and slow down, it coped admirably with any real-world usage I could throw at it. 

The only time I felt it get hot and saw the effects of it slowing down was when running it through a demanding 3DMark stress test – which is enough to push any phone to its limits. In that test, you could see that, if pushed to the extreme for longer periods, it would reduce performance power in order to keep the test going. 

Software

• One UI 8 based on Android 16
• A few new Flip-specific features
• Seven years of OS upgrades

There’s not a huge amount to be said on software that hasn’t been gone over in our reviews of other Samsung flagship phones in 2025 – even if it’s the upgraded One UI 8 and not One UI 7 from the Galaxy S25 range. 

It’s still very much One UI, with the usual AI bits thrown in, but what makes the Z Flip different to the likes of the Galaxy S25 models is that it has a couple of tweaks designed specifically for its folding display. 

Regardless of the app you’re in, if you part-fold the phone to a near 90-degree angle, an icon appears in the bottom half. Tap it to push the content to the top half, and activate a touchpad on the bottom. 

This lets you use the bottom part of the screen as a trackpad, moving a cursor around the screen, or scrolling using the sidebar. There are even quick toggles for doing things like dropping down the notifications shade and launching split-screen mode. 

And, if you have a video playing in YouTube, you’ll get video-specific controls for scrolling through the timeline, playing and pausing, or skipping forward or back. 

Samsung software – as always – is full of Samsung apps, many of which are duplicates of the Google apps also preinstalled, making it feel quite bloated. You can delete and uninstall the ones you don’t want, and with some jiggery pokery, switch out default Samsung services like Samsung Wallet, Browser and Bixby for Google’s Wallet, Chrome and Gemini. 

Battery life

• All-day battery life for most
• Same 25W wired charging as Z Flip 6
• Full charge takes around 90 minutes

As for battery life, the Flip series has been steadily improving its performance over the past couple of years, resulting in a 4300mAh battery that should get anyone but the most extreme power users through a full day.

I’m not a particularly heavy user, but with many of the previous Flip models, getting to the end of a full day hasn’t always been easy. Especially once I started using the internal screen for things like long sessions in Mario Kart, WhatsApp or watching videos. 

But the new version doesn’t have that issue. In fact, on really light usage days where I’ve only used a couple of hours of screen time in a day, I’ve just about got it towards the evening of a second day. 

An hour of watching Netflix on 50% screen brightness drains about 7% of the battery, and half an hour of casual gaming will do about 6% drain. With 3 hours or so of general use in a day, split between social media, messaging, video watching, and gaming, I can reach the end of the day at 11pm and still have over 40% left over. 

Refilling afterwards, if you have a fast charger, is relatively convenient too. With 25W fast-charging support, it can refill about a third of the battery in 15 minutes, or around half the battery in half an hour. A fully charged battery, however, takes nearly 90 minutes. 

That’s a far cry from the fastest charging tech on offer from the likes of Xiaomi, Honor and Oppo – which can refill a full battery in half that time – but it’s speedy enough that you shouldn’t have to plug the phone in for much more than an hour at a time. 

If you’re a daily overnight charger, that won’t affect you at all, and there are plenty of charging optimisations available to make sure that your charging habits cause as little long-term damage to the battery as possible. 

At the same time, there’s a lingering sense of frustration for me that one of the smallest batteries found in a modern Android phone can’t be topped up at a higher speed. 

I’d love a 30-minute full refill charge on this phone. Or even if it were 45W like the Galaxy S25 range enjoys, that would be an improvement. As an example, the S25 Ultra’s larger 5000mAh battery can do a 70% charge in the same time it takes the Flip to do just half.

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Should you buy it?