Galaxy Z Fold7 review: Slimmer, smarter, and closer to perfection

Time of India

6 days ago

Samsung
was the first to enter the foldable market. While each generation brought incremental improvements, it's in 2025 that the company seems to have thrown everything it has into perfecting the form. The Galaxy Z Fold7 is the proof, a sleeker, lighter device with a more usable cover display that finally makes the foldable concept feel complete.
Alongside it, the Z Flip7 also gets a bold edge-to-edge redesign, but here, we're focusing on the more expensive sibling. After 20 days of testing the Z Fold7, one thing is clear: this isn't just an upgrade; it's a statement. With flagship-grade internals, refined design, AI-powered software, and true multitasking chops, the Z Fold7 is no longer just a futuristic gimmick but a real contender for your next daily driver. The big question is, at this premium price point, is it finally worth the plunge?
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Price & Availability
Samsung Galaxy Z
Fold7 is available in three variants. You can buy the device from Samsung's website, Amazon, or offline stores as well.
Price
Variant
12GB
RAM
+ 256GB Storage
₹174,999
12GB RAM + 512GB Storage
₹186,999
16GB RAM + 1TB Storage
₹216,999
Design
The Samsung Galaxy Z Fold7 represents a monumental leap in the foldable segment, truly maturing the form factor for the Indian market. It arrives with a meticulously crafted build, utilizing Advanced Armor Aluminum for its frame and a re-engineered Armor Flex Hinge, ensuring both robust durability and a noticeably lighter footprint.
The display protection, with Corning Gorilla Glass Ceramic 2 on the front (folded) and Gorilla Glass Victus 2 on the back, instills confidence for daily commutes and bustling city life.
The most impactful change is the dramatic reduction in bulk. At just 8.9 mm when folded and a mere 215 grams, a significant weight cut from its predecessors, the Z Fold 7 now genuinely feels like a standard bar phone in hand when closed. This exceptional slimness and reduced weight, making it lighter than even some popular premium smartphones, is a game-changer for portability. Coupled with a larger, more expansive 21:9 cover screen, it's incredibly easy to navigate with one hand, whether you're quickly checking
UPI
notifications, glancing at social media feeds, or taking calls on the go, without the need to constantly unfold.
Despite its impressive sleekness, the device maintains a distinctly solid and premium feel. The refined Armor Flex Hinge is a marvel of engineering; its excellent tension allows the phone to hold its position at various angles, making it perfect for Flex Mode usage during video calls or content consumption. This level of meticulous design and the sheer convenience it offers for the discerning Indian consumer truly justifies the premium price tag.
The Galaxy Z Fold7 is available in a sophisticated array of colors, including Blue Shadow,
Silver Shadow
, and Jet Black. Our review unit, the Blue Shadow variant, looks particularly neat and striking in person, adding a refined aesthetic to its groundbreaking design.
Display
The Samsung Galaxy Z Fold7 nails the concept of dual displays, offering a seamless blend of flexibility and functionality. Both screens are top-tier Dynamic AMOLED 2X panels with adaptive 120 Hz refresh rates and LTPO tech, adjusting smoothly between 1 Hz and 120 Hz for fluid visuals and better power efficiency. The 6.5-inch Cover Display, with its FHD+ resolution and 21:9 aspect ratio, surprised us with how useful it became in day-to-day use.
Whether it was checking WhatsApp, making UPI payments, navigating Google Maps, or scrolling through Instagram, this screen felt like a reliable daily driver, bright enough even under Delhi's harsh midday sun. It handled quick content consumption and light productivity tasks with ease. But it's when you unfold the device that it truly shines.
The 8.0-inch inner display, with its sharp QXGA+ resolution and up to 2600 nits of brightness, is a powerhouse for multitasking, media, gaming, and productivity. Watching shows, editing presentations, or reviewing documents felt incredibly immersive, with the crease barely noticeable once you're engaged. In the end, the Z Fold7 delivers a premium, versatile experience thanks to the thoughtful synergy between a practical outer screen and a stunning, expansive inner display.
While the Galaxy Z Fold7's displays offer a truly immersive and premium experience, we couldn't help but feel that the lack of an integrated S Pen is a missed opportunity. Surprisingly, we found ourselves missing the S Pen here far more than we did on the Galaxy S25 Ultra. Given the expansive inner screen, it feels tailor-made for tasks like note-taking, sketching, or precise editing,, yet the absence of a built-in stylus limits that potential. We wouldn't mind a slight bump in thickness or even the inclusion of the S Pen in the box, especially considering the device's premium price. On a foldable built for productivity, the S Pen doesn't feel like a luxury;; it feels like it should be standard.
Software
The Samsung Galaxy Z Fold7's software experience is powered by One UI 8, running on Android 16, a commendable start. Samsung has also committed to an impressive 7 years of major Android OS upgrades and 7 years of security updates, ensuring long-term software viability. This is crucial, especially given the price point.
During our review, we primarily leveraged the most useful Galaxy AI features seamlessly integrated into One UI 8. Circle to Search was a standout; whether we were identifying products in images or looking up information from any screen, it offered instant, contextual results. Live Translate proved incredibly handy for breaking down language barriers during calls or quick conversations. Generative Edit impressed us with its ability to effortlessly resize, remove, or reposition objects within photos right on the device.
Beyond AI, One UI's distinct features for the main display were heavily utilized. The persistent
Taskbar
dramatically boosted our multitasking efficiency, allowing rapid switching and easy drag-and-drop between apps. The robust Multi-Active Window capabilities enabled true split-screen productivity, proving invaluable for side-by-side work. Crucially, all these powerful features, from AI enhancements to foldable-specific optimizations, worked smoothly and flawlessly, highlighting Samsung's commitment to a polished user experience on its flagship foldable.
Performance
The Samsung Galaxy Z Fold7, tailored for the discerning Indian market, is engineered to handle virtually any task with remarkable ease. Powering this formidable device is the Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Elite for Galaxy processor, a custom-tuned variant designed for peak performance and advanced AI capabilities. For Indian consumers, the device is offered in robust configurations: 12GB RAM with either 256GB or 512GB of internal storage, and a top-tier variant boasting 16GB of RAM paired with a capacious 1TB of storage. These options ensure abundant memory and storage, leaving no room for complaints on that front.
In terms of raw performance, the Z Fold 7 truly excels. From fluid app navigation and seamless multitasking across its dual displays to demanding gaming sessions and heavy productivity workloads, the device delivers a consistently smooth and responsive experience. We found that it maintained its composure even under significant strain, confirming its flagship-grade capabilities for daily use.
Providing power for this performance is a 4,400mAh battery. Despite its capacity, which might appear modest for a device with two high-refresh-rate displays, we found the battery life to be quite solid, consistently yielding over 6 hours of screen-on time during our extensive usage. For most users, this translates to comfortably getting through a full day without needing an immediate recharge. The Z Fold7 also conveniently supports 15W wireless charging and 4.5W reverse wireless charging.
However, when it comes to wired charging speeds, the Z Fold7's 25W support presents an area for potential enhancement. While functional for topping up the battery, in the 2025 flagship landscape where some competitors are offering significantly faster 100W+ charging solutions, Samsung's approach remains more conservative. This is a consistent characteristic we've observed across Samsung's top-tier devices, including the Galaxy S25 Ultra. For users in the fast-paced market who value rapid recharges, this aspect highlights an opportunity for Samsung to further elevate the overall premium experience.
Camera
The Samsung Galaxy Z Fold7 finally delivers a truly flagship-grade camera experience, marking a significant leap for the foldable series. Its rear camera system is formidable, headlined by a 200MP main sensor, which consistently captures incredibly detailed and vibrant photos with impressive clarity. In daylight, images showcase excellent sharpness, rich, true-to-life colors, and outstanding dynamic range, faithfully reproducing scenes.
Even in challenging low-light conditions, thanks to its advanced ProVisual Engine, the output is significantly improved, rendering brighter photos with noticeably less noise and preserved textures, making night shots genuinely usable. This is complemented by a 12MP ultrawide lens (now with autofocus) and a 10MP 3x optical telephoto lens, offering superb versatility from expansive landscapes to detailed zoomed shots.
For selfies, the Z Fold7 features two dedicated cameras: a 10MP cover display camera and an improved 10MP main display camera. Both deliver sharp, clear self-portraits with good dynamic range in daylight, and offer decent performance in low light.
Video performance is excellent across the board. The rear cameras support up to 8K at 30fps and 4K at 60fps across all three lenses, delivering stable, high-quality footage. Crucially, the front cameras also support 4K at 60fps video recording, making them excellent for vlogging or high-resolution video calls. A standout feature is the ability to use the cover display as a viewfinder for the main rear cameras, empowering high-resolution selfies and vlogs with the best available optics. This comprehensive setup positions the Z Fold7 as a serious contender in mobile photography and videography.
Verdict
The Samsung Galaxy Z Fold7 is the most refined and complete foldable smartphone yet, successfully blending sleek design, flagship performance, and true multitasking capability. It's lighter, slimmer, and far more usable in daily life thanks to meaningful design upgrades and polished software powered by One UI 8 and Galaxy AI. Both displays are excellent, and the camera setup finally delivers a top-tier experience. That said, the phone remains prohibitively expensive. However, this is the first time a foldable truly feels like a complete package. For users who can afford it and are eager to experience the bleeding edge of smartphone innovation, the Z Fold7 is a worthy and exciting plunge into the future of mobile computing.