Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 7 vs Galaxy Z Fold 6: what's changing?

Samsung’s next big foldables — the Galaxy Z Flip 7 and Galaxy Z Fold 7 — are up for pre-order and shipping in a week. However, we do have review units on hand right now, and have run them through our elaborate tests. Is the Z Fold 7 the next big foldable thing? Is it that much better than the Galaxy Z Fold 6 from last year?

Well, it comes with a much thinner form factor, the very same 200 MP main camera that's on the Galaxy S25 Ultra, and bigger displays. So, it's definitely much more than a simple facelift!

Last year's Z Fold 6 wasn’t exactly a radical leap forward. A modest refresh with a flatter design and slightly tweaked dimensions, it felt like a device Samsung released just to tick the yearly upgrade box. Let's see if there's an evolutional leap here!

Galaxy Z Fold 7: up to $1,000 off with trade-ins

$1119 ⁹⁹

$2119 ⁹⁹

$1000 off (47%)

The Galaxy Z Fold 7 is available for up to $1,000 off at the Samsung Store. The promo is available on both the 256GB and 512GB models and requires a trade-in.

Buy at Samsung

Galaxy Z Fold 6, 256GB: available at Samsung

$1899 ⁹⁹

Get your Z Fold 6 with 256GB of storage at its standard price on Samsung. The smartphone is available in select colors. There are no trade-in or pre-trade-in discounts, but you can bundle the foldable with earbuds or a smartwatch to save up to 47% on accessories.

Buy at Samsung

Galaxy Z Fold 6 (512GB): $300 off at Amazon

$300 off (15%)

The Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 6 with 512GB of storage is $300 off at Amazon right now. The deal is only available on the model in Navy. There are limited quantities left in stock.

Buy at Amazon

The Galaxy Z Fold 6 was flatter, sharper, and marginally lighter than the Fold 5 before it — but let’s be real, it was more iterative than innovative. With the Z Fold 7, Samsung is headed into the future of foldables... or catching up with the competition, as the new Z Fold 7 is about as thin as the Oppo Find N5 and the latest Honor Magic V5. All three are touted as the world's thinnest, and differences come to parts of a millimeter.

So, the Fold 7 is Samsung’s thinnest foldable yet — clocking in at just 8.9 mm when closed. That’s a huge drop from the 12.1mm of the Fold 6. Combine this with an external display that's now wider, with a 21:9 aspect ratio and 6.5-inch diagonal, and you have a foldable phone that feels "normal" when used in its closed state.

The inner screen is stretching out too, from 7.6 to 8 inches. It still doesn't get a multimedia aspect ratio or anything like that, but more canvas is always welcome. Foldables have been adapted to, and excel at, multi-tasking on those huge, almost square-ish internal screens. Now, we get more room to do that in.

The hinge has also been reinforced, again, with titanium components. Samsung is using a 50% thicker ultra-thin glass for the main screen — yeah, say that 10 times fast. Basically, the point is to make the crease a little bit shallower and less noticeable. And it is... I know that pictures under studio lighting, where we are deliberately trying to catch a reflection does show a crease. But in real life it's barely there — even when running a finger across it.

We still get IP48 water-and-dust resistance, which means that it can survive a dunk in some clean water, but can't really keep specks of dust or sand out. So, don't be rolling on the beach with your Z Fold is the only advice we can give.

Both displays on the Galaxy Z Fold 7 are growing, but the real win is in the proportions. The outer screen’s width bump drastically improves the usability of the Z Fold 7 as a "normal" phone, while the inner screen’s slight size increase will be better for general quality of life usage.

Samsung’s excellent Dynamic AMOLED 2X panels aren’t going anywhere — we get buttery-smooth 1-120Hz refresh rates, high resolution, and searing brightness that can hit 2,600 nits peak. Actually, most of the display specs, minus the sizes, seem to be the same as the Z Fold 6's.

Display Measurements:

You will notice that, even though both screens are rated to have 2,600 nits peak brightness, the Galaxy Z Fold 6 measures quite low at 20% APL (basically "real-life simulation" scenario). That's because the phone often limits its max brightness capabilities to prevent heating issues (or is just having a bad day). It used to be an issue users complained about. Glad to see Samsung fixed it in a phone with a much thinner body!

But the rest is the same — the excellent minimum brightness for nighttime use to the very-good-but-still-OLED color accuracy. Of course, both these phones have multiple color calibration options — you can go for vivid or basic colors, you can activate Adaptive color tone and Eye comfort shield to filter out those blues.

Both phones have the fingerprint scanner embedded in the power button. The Z Fold 7 does something cool with the scanner — when registering a new print, you no longer need to awkwardly shift and place the finger down again. You just swipe across it multiple times! At this point, we don't know if that'll come to the Z Fold 6 with the One UI 8 update, or if its a Fold 7 thing. We do know that both scanners are super snappy and accurate, though!

The Galaxy Z Fold 7 has a Snapdragon 8 Elite for Galaxy — the same chip that delighted us from inside the latest Galaxy S25 series. It's built on a 3 nm process, and is probably the most powerful processor you can find on an Android phone right now.

By comparison, the Fold 6 runs on the tried-and-true Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 for Galaxy, which is still absolutely great.


RAM is 12 GB at the starting tiers. But if you upgrade to 1 TB of storage on the Z Fold 7, Samsung packages those with 16 GB RAM now. By comparison, the Z Fold 6 gives you 12 GB RAM across all storage tiers.

Video-wise, we have another jump forward, but this one is far less of a leap. And, in reality, this is where we want to see more improvements in mobile chipsets — the dangling balance between GFX super power, power-efficiency, and thermal management. The Z Fold 7 is, of course, a pretty good move forward despite its thin body.

Software-wise, the Fold 7 could debuts with Android 16 and One UI 8! Kind of funny here, as we just got done with the huge round of Android 15 updates for older Samsung flagships. Let's not start with the jokes about when we are going to get Android 16 on those, OK? OK? Fine, just one...

Thus far we couldn't see a lot of new tricks with One UI 8, aside from Gemini being optimized to work flawlessly between the different screens of the Fold, and being easier to access from the screen.

Both devices enjoy Samsung’s new 7-year software update policy, which is great future-proofing, so long as these updates are timely from now on. That means the Z Fold 6 should be good up until 2031, and the Z Fold 7 — 2032.

Cameras have always been the weak spot for Samsung’s Fold line. You typically had a choice — if you want a camera phone, you go for the S25 Ultra. If you want the big screen and multitasking, you take a hit on the latest camera specs and go for the Z Fold. But that's changing with the Z Fold 7, which now rocks a new 200MP main sensor. Well, not new — it's the Galaxy S25 Ultra camera!

The rest of the setup? Business as usual: 12MP ultrawide, 10MP 3X telephoto, and a pair of inner and cover selfie cameras that get the job done without fanfare.

PhoneArena Camera Score:

Our standardized camera test shows that the camera performance is about the same. Yes, that main sensor does score a couple of points more with slightly better dynamics, exposure predictability, and details. But slightly is the key word here. Check out the samples below for yourself!

Compare that to the Fold 6, which kept the same 50MP main camera we’ve seen since the Fold 4. A solid sensor, but hardly exciting in 2025.

Also note that the Galaxy Z Fold 7 upgrades the internal camera to a 10 MP sensor. It's no longer under the screen, does that matter? At least we get a video call camera that doesn't look like a 480p from 2008.

Main Camera

The biggest difference you'll find here is in the main camera. That's because the Z Fold 7 gets the 200 MP sensor from the Galaxy S25 Ultra — no joke there. When we compare them side by side... and squint a bit — yeah, it's a bit better. Truth be told, the 50 MP snapper on the Z Fold 6 is already doing pretty well. But the new camera does have a pinch of a wider dynamic range, and just a bit less artificial oversharpening, thus more realistic looking fine detail.



The differences are further underlined at night time. Again, subtle, but visible. There's a bit more dramatic contrast from the Z Fold 7 that gives you a better perception of how light sources affect the scene, while the Z Fold 6 tends to flatten out the dynamics a bit.

Zoom Quality

These are not marketed as zoom phones, but they do have 3x telephoto lenses as a jump off point. In these 10x samples, it's clear that the Galaxy Z Fold 7 is capable of preserving more detail, better dynamics and colors, and better contrast when zooming in.

Ultra-wide Camera

The ultra-wide cameras are the same on spec, but we can see slight differences in processing. Mainly with color cast — the Z Fold 6 leans towards the warmer yellow-ish hues. But dynamics and details appear pretty similar.

Selfies

Again, same spec, but different results. Dynamics and colors appear mostly the same, but the Z Fold 7 is far less aggressive with oversharpening. As a result, fine details appear less jagged and more realistic — "soft detail".

More Camera Samples

Video Quality

While the Samsung post-processing is excellent on both, we can spot the 200 MP main sensor of the Z Fold 7 giving us a slightly clearer image. Pixel-peeping shows a bit better detail, and contrast treatment is slightly more pleasing. Though, the footage from the Z Fold 6 is still nothing to snark at.

Samsung isn’t rocking the boat here. The Fold 7 has a similar 4,400mAh battery to the Fold 6, with no sign of those fancy new silicon-carbon cells that push the 6,000 mAh limit.

Charging speeds? Also unchanged. The Fold 6 tops out at 25W wired and 15W wireless, and the Fold 7 sticks to those numbers. Again, Samsung has been incredibly conservative with its battery upgrades ever since the big Galaxy Note 7 debacle years ago. Better to be safe than sorry!

PhoneArena Battery and Charging Test Results:

Battery life on the Fold 6 was okay — roughly a day of moderate use, especially if you can't get enough of that internal screen. We were hoping that the Fold 7’s efficiency gains might stretch the playtime out a bit, but quite the opposite. For casual tasks, the use time between both phones is more or less the same. For 3D gaming and — by extension — heavy processing apps, the Z Fold 7 drains its battery a step faster.

Here are the cliff notes, but you can check out our full page on Galaxy Z Fold 7 vs Galaxy Z Fold 6 specs:

The Galaxy Z Fold 7 finally took a leap and brought upgrades that fans have been craving. Mostly about the design — the industry is moving in the direction of super-thin foldables, because that's what users seem to respond to.

Now, something to consider — the thinner Z Fold 7 comes at a price. No, not the $200 price increase. It will literally cost you the S Pen support. No room for a Wacom digitizer when your phone is only 4.2 mm thick! If you recall, some months ago, Samsung launched a Galaxy Z Fold Special Edition in Korea — it was thinner, lighter, and didn't support the S Pen. Back then, I hypothesized that the company is probably testing the waters, to see if users will prefer a thinner, S Pen-less foldable.

For the time being, the Z Fold 7 looks like the superior phone. Slightly better camera, much better design, size, and weight. The Z Fold 6 is your option if you are not ready to say "goodbye" to the S Pen case. Other than that and price, I don't see many reasons to pick the old Z Fold 6 over the new Z Fold 7!