In a bold move to revive the foldable smartphone market, Samsung has launched its new Galaxy Z Fold7, a sleek and significantly lighter iteration of its renowned foldable series. At 215 grams, the Z Fold7 is lighter than the Galaxy S25 Ultra and 24 grams lighter than last year’s Z Fold6, marking a notable shift in the direction of foldable devices.
The latest model is part of Samsung’s ongoing efforts to dominate the foldable space, a market that has faced several challenges since the launch of the first foldable phone, the Royole FlexPai, in 2018. Despite being a leader since the introduction of the Galaxy Z Fold in 2019, Samsung has seen its share of the market shrink due to competition from Chinese rivals like Honor and OnePlus, as well as the American brand Motorola.
Ben Wood, a senior analyst at CCS Insight, explained, “Samsung, who had become a little bit conservative, has found their mojo again, and they have delivered a product which really is a best-in-class folding device.”
The $2,000 Galaxy Z Fold7 and $1,100 Galaxy Z Flip7 are the thinnest and lightest models in Samsung’s foldable range. When folded, they are as slim as standard smartphones, making them nearly half the thickness of earlier Samsung foldable designs.
“This is a reset of Samsung’s foldable design to a different era where you really do get a super-premium phone that folds out into a tablet with software experiences designed for that,” said Avi Greengart, an analyst at Techsponential. He further emphasized that “especially in the United States, no one has seen anything like this.”
Key to the Z Fold7’s appeal is its enhanced material composition, which improves the phone’s durability, an issue that has plagued previous foldables. The device uses OLED technology and flexible polymer plastic, replacing traditional glass screens to enable the phone to fold without compromising on display quality.
Samsung has also pushed the boundaries with the camera performance of the Galaxy Z Fold7, now equipped with a 200-megapixel wide-angle lens, four times the resolution of its predecessor, the Z Fold6. This places it on par with the best smartphone cameras available today.
Along with hardware upgrades, the Z Fold7 features advanced AI tools, powered by Google’s Gemini suite, which provide new interactive experiences for users. These AI capabilities allow consumers to interact with the phone’s camera in innovative ways, such as asking for shopping advice or tips on repairing everyday items.
However, while these AI features are impressive, Thomas Husson, an analyst at Forrester, cautioned, “This is not a radical change with a new multimodal interface that drastically reinvents the consumer experience.” The future of foldable phones may hinge on how well these tools resonate with users in an already saturated smartphone market.
As sales growth for foldable phones has slowed, with users increasingly holding on to their devices longer, it remains to be seen whether Samsung’s new AI features will spur the necessary demand for upgrades.