Samsung Galaxy Fold 7: Review

The Samsung Galaxy Fold 7 is all about convenience.

For those unfamiliar and new to foldable phones, the latest may pack a somewhat hefty price tag for ownership, but if you're serious about using the best of what's around and haven't been already taken in by the foldable crazes, then it could be the phone for you.

The idea of having a phone that's also a tablet speaks to Samsung's desire to cover all the bases and ensure that every single entertainment proposition for your needs could be met - as well as performing the basics of a phone.

But not everything's a huge success with this - and as the market moves to making foldables slimmer, there's inevitably something that has to break.

The biggest issue with the Fold 7 is that the chubbiest of fingers may struggle to open up the sleek and tight phone itself. An unusual thing to note, but with the lack of any direct clip or button to press to fold it out, occasionally it becomes a battle to actually open the thing to peruse its tablet qualities. 

Equally, the triple cameras that are mounted on the back side of the phone, while offering superlative imagery quality (more on that shortly), feel distinctly mounted, making the phone's need to sit level being squarely on the shoulders of the front screen - which provides the possibility of scratches.

And talking of the camera, the fact you can only enlarge the view three times feels somewhat of a misfire - three times magnification is solid enough, but for further distance, the Fold 7 forces you to fiddle around with a picture within a picture to ensure the right image is taken from afar.

Also, and this is a minor niggle, but will guarantee to annoy after a while - even though you may be used to the fold on the phone's display when you open it, there's a distinct visual of the actual line being seen which irritates initially if this is your first time. Plus, the screen display can look smudged after repeated use from fingerprints and so on - something that's exacerbated during the daytime.

But enough of the bad of the phone, what about the good? It has to be said, despite the eye-watering cost, there's much to recommend it.

It's surprisingly lightweight, and perhaps one of the lighter phones out there on the market. Weighing in at just 215 grams, this makes it even lighter than Galaxy S25 Ultra. And given its ultra-thin nature (just 8.9 mm thick when folded and 4.2 mm thick when unfolded), the device is one of the sleekest in the market place..

But make no mistake - that doesn't mean that Samsung's compromised on the power of the device within your pocket.

When folded out to tablet size, the device is easy to hold ensuring that more time is spent doing what you need on screen, rather than worrying if you're about to drop it. A gorgeous 8-inch AMOLED display makes visuals pop - from the banal emails to HD videos being streamed, this is a phone that really truly tackles the quality and aims way higher than it needed to.

And gaming also pops on the screen, something akin to having a portable console in your hands is just utterly lovely to be frank. Visually, it's clear, concise and mightily impressive.

Equally, the phone's battery life is something to write home about. Having had this for 12 days and gauging moderate use like most people would, the phone's only needed a total of 2 charges - something which anyone who's had to fiddle with worrying about power loss will testify is no mean feat. Granted, if you use it a bit more heavily, the charge will be needed to be deployed a little more regularly. But for most users, this is way above standard - and extremely welcome.

In terms of the camera, while the actual lenses protrude somewhat disgracefully out of the side, the visuals are stunning.

20x Magnification

For example, the pictures (above and below) of a stone-bevelled bin on the streets of Auckland, are taken from various magnifications - from the bottom through to the very top. It's impressive to see how much detail is captured by each magnification and how clear it looks.

Highest magnification x30

Lowest magnification 10x

The bin in question

And imagery from atop a rainy bus shows incredible amounts of detail in the waterdrops alone under the most basic of magnifications. It really is eye-opening stuff.

Still-life portraits also pop - from the image of a cat looking like a lion on the Serengeti to the image of downtown Auckland taken using the camera's nighttime filters, the phone captures beauty where others would have struggled to breakthrough. With the  upgraded 200MP main sensor the camera more than performs, and with AI Galaxy on hand to help either clean up imagery or just generally chip in, there's plenty to do with this to keep ahead of the imagery game.

It's still just a phone though - and any attempts to use it as a tablet for anything other than light duties such as scrolling, emailing, watching videos and answering calls sort of fall short - but the signs are the Samsung Galaxy Fold 7 could be leading to a more integrated work solution in your pocket. Light and portable, it has real potential to become a worker's every day tool - whether that happens though remains up to the developers.

FOR ALL THE SAMSUNG GALAXY FOLD 7 TECH SPECIFICATIONS, CLICK HERE

Bluetooth and set-up are easy enough to do and the phone's initial first few moments are quickly dispatched with ease to allow people to just get on and use it. With some 256GB of memory, there's more than enough storage around - although somewhat worryingly, basic set-up and only a handful of apps and images have used around 20% of that. So potentially the storage could become an issue early on.

While its $3,500 price tag does feel heftier than the weight of the actual phone itself, the Samsung Galaxy Fold 7 is a real nice-to-have that verges on a must-have for phone lovers. Casual users may be put off by the expense initially, but if it's possible to get this on a contract and a cash-in, a deal could very be well worth it. 

In the time it's been tested for this review, it's replaced a plentitude of uses - from phone to tablet to streaming music device, it covers all the bases and does so very well. Aesthetically, the metallic blue model pops and while it may scratch over time (making a cover in some form essential for longterm protection), in its early stages, the phone radiates classiness.

There is an argument that things like the phone bump and the foldable lines are compromises to be made for the benefit of the ultra-thin nature - it can't help but noted that the phone sits awkwardly on one side and while it may be acceptable to many, it's a price that does feel like there's no easy solution ahead.

That said though, ultimately, the Galaxy Fold 7 is a phone that anyone who's serious about sleek, portable ultra-thin technology can't afford to be without. It gives a lot to its users and Samsung fans, and while it could be an indication of where the technology is going in future, for now, this is a superlative phone that really does need to be in your pocket.

The Samsung Galaxy Fold 7 was loaned for a trial period for the purpose of this review before being returned to Samsung.