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 — have just been announced at Samsung’s summer Unpacked! And our hopes for a major redesign were not in vain, as the Galaxy Z Fold 7 is now much thinner, ready to meet the challenges of today’s foldable market.

We also get the very same 200 MP main camera that’s on the Galaxy S25 Ultra, marking a time when the Galaxy Z Fold 7 will feel like less of a compromise and more of an “all out Samsung” flagship.

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. But the Z Fold 7? That looks like the refinement that fans of high-tech have been craving.

Pre-order the Galaxy Z Fold 7 for up to $1,120 off

$999
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$2119
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$1120 off (53%)

Pre-order the Galaxy Z Fold 7 at Samsung and grab a free storage upgrade on the 512GB model. On top of that, you can save an extra up to $1,000 with eligible device trade-ins.

Pre-order at Samsung

Galaxy Z Fold 6, 512GB: Save up to $1,000 with trade-ins

$899
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$1899
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$1000 off (53%)

Get your Z Fold 6 with 512GB of storage from Samsung, and you can save up to $1,000. To take advantage of that huge price cut, you must provide an eligible trade-in in good condition. Atlernatively, you can save $545 with Samsung Instant Savings.

Buy at Samsung

Galaxy Z Fold 6 (256GB): Save $545 at Amazon

$545 off (29%)

The Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 6 with 256GB of storage in Silver Shadow is $545 off at Amazon right now. No other colors arrive at the same price.

Buy at Amazon

Galaxy Z Fold 7 vs Galaxy Z Fold 6 differences:

Table of Contents:

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 that wowed us recently, and only marginally thicker than the latest Honor Magic V5.

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… that.

Both displays on the Galaxy Z Fold 7 are growing, but the real win is in the proportions. The outer screen’s width bump will drastically improve usability, 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 — expect 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. We won’t complain much here — the Z Fold 6 displays are pretty great!

The Galaxy Z Fold 7 is coming with 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, Samsung packages those with 16 GB RAM now. By comparison, the Z Fold 6 gives you 12 GB RAM across all storage tiers.

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. Hold on until we have more fun with it.

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.

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 under-screen camera to a 10 MP sensor. We still don’t know if the quality will be much improved, as under-display cameras have an issue with light collecting, but we are hopeful.

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!

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. The Fold 7’s efficiency gains might stretch that out a bit, thanks to the newer chip, but don’t expect miracles.