I’ve been buying Samsung foldables for years now, but the Galaxy Z Fold 7 is the first one that, as a reviewer, I’ve actually managed to keep in my pocket all year long. And, after all of that time, I’ve got a lot of thoughts on where Samsung fell short, what it got right, and what I’m worried about on the Galaxy Z Fold 8.

The whole appeal of the Galaxy Z Fold 7, quite frankly, was the hardware. Samsung finally caught up with the rest of the market, offering a much thinner foldable that delivered the experience we were looking for from the beginning – a pretty-normal phone that opens up to reveal a bigger canvas.

I’ve tried just about every other foldable released over the past year – Oppo Find N6, Honor Magic V6, Motorola Razr Fold, etc – and the Fold 7 is overall my favorite hardware of the bunch. On top of the ineffable charm of Samsung’s industrial design, it just feels the best in my hand. That’s a personal take, though, and everyone will have slightly different opinions here. I can fully acknowledge the shortcomings, like the lack of grip in opening the display, or that godawful camera bump that makes it impossible to use this thing on a table without sending out alerts in Morse code. But I think it’s hard to ignore just how good Samsung did here.

It aged well, too. I’ve been using Galaxy Z Fold 7 for a year, never applying a case that whole time, just a skin on the rear and a screen protector on the front display. There are a couple of scuffs on the chassis – which happened to a lot of people even without drops from the looks of it – but it’s been mostly scot-free over the past year. The inner display is also in good shape, no bubbles on the screen protector or anything.

Heat is a tricky thing in foldables. No matter what, physics just disagree with this form factor, especially as thin as they’ve been getting. Samsung isn’t alone here, but oh man does the Galaxy Z Fold 7 run warm.

Even with light use, the Galaxy Z Fold 7 heats up quite a bit. Most of the time, it doesn’t overheat, but it’s pretty jarring to pick up. That’s been all the more true this Summer, as temperatures in North Carolina have been pretty consistently in the high 90s, approaching or passing 100 degrees (F) pretty often. Through that, the Fold 7 has been running incredibly hot, especially on the days I try to use it outside during a disc golf round in that heat.

Again, it’s not alone. Razr Fold, Honor Magic V6, Oppo Find N6, they all also run warm. But the Fold tends to warm up faster in day-to-day use, regardless of the ambient temperature. It’s something I’d love to see Samsung work on, even if it means adding a millimeter somewhere.

As far as the design goes, I think this is roughly as good as we can expect a “tallboy” foldable to get. It’s thin enough to double as a normal phone, the outer screen’s aspect ratio is completely usable in apps and typing, and the inner display is solid too.

You simply can’t ask for any better here, and that’s why it feels like wide foldables are the logical “what’s next.” This form factor is fantastic for web browsing and opening a bigger canvas for apps, but split-screen multitasking often feels a bit cramped, and media doesn’t benefit from any of this larger size either. Wider devices will open – sure, why not, pun intended – up foldables to a new audience and new use cases. That’s why I’m glad Samsung is opting for a split setup where you get one of each form factor.

Let’s be real here. The cameras on the Galaxy Z Fold 7 are not very good, especially for a $2,000 smartphone. The 200MP main sensor is perfectly acceptable, but it doesn’t have much depth to shots, and often feels lacking life. Admittedly, I’ve been spoiled by phones like the Oppo Find X9 Ultra, which run laps around basically everything else, but Samsung’s cameras here don’t even hold up that well in the foldable market. Pixel 10 Pro Fold has Google’s usual consistency, Oppo Find N6 and Honor Magic V6 pack impressive hardware into thin designs, and even the Motorola Razr Fold is much better than the Fold 7 in basically every way.

I’ve gotten good shots out of the Fold 7 in a pinch – see below for a gallery of shots I’ve taken over the past year – but it’s never the first device I’m grabbing to capture a scene.

I’m fortunate enough in this job to be dual-wielding multiple phones at any given time, offering me the chance to carry a better camera alongside the Fold 7. If I weren’t in that position, I’d have a harder time living with what Samsung is offering here.

Galaxy Z Fold 8, the wide one, will have a worse main camera and no 3x telephoto. Meanwhile, Samsung is throwing this exact same camera setup in the “Galaxy Z Fold 8 Ultra” – though with a better ultrawide shooter – and that’s just utterly ridiculous, at least assuming the leaks turn out true.

On the software side, Samsung’s One UI is in a pretty good place.

Samsung’s skin on top of Android 16 is still pretty heavy, but it’s packed with features and feels better thought-out than it has in prior years. And while Samsung is slowly pushing its way into Liquid Glass territory (boo), it’s also being good about supporting the Fold’s inner display. In One UI 8.5, for example, Samsung tweaked the notification tray so it swipes down according to where your finger was on the display. It’s something Google did in older versions of Android for tablets, and that Samsung reintroduced on its latest crop of Galaxy tablets last year. It has its quirks on the Fold 7, but I’m glad to see it.

Easily the worst thing about the Galaxy Z Fold 7 is the battery life.

Everything else I’ve talked about here is not a huge problem in day-to-day use, but the battery life on the Galaxy Z Fold 7 is simply miserable. Even during times where it’s being used as a second phone just for the sake of Android Auto, my smartwatch, and the occasional message or phone call, it still drains most of its battery in a day. When it’s my primary device, I’m lucky to go to sleep with more than 10% left on this battery. I’m carrying battery banks with this thing constantly because it brings more battery anxiety than any other smartphone I’ve used in the past few years.

And it’s only gotten worse with One UI 8.5, too.

This is the single biggest thing I’m worried about on the Galaxy Z Fold 8 series. Samsung is finally delivering bigger batteries at 4,800 mAh (wide) and 5,000 mAh (Ultra), but that just does not feel like enough. Not when even the Motorola Razr Fold is packing a 6,000 mAh battery that runs laps around my Fold 7. It’s also a problem considering it sounds like the chipset in Fold 8 will be a full-power version, rather than the slightly toned-down one in Fold 7. That’s a recipe for mediocre battery life at best, and no improvement at all at worst.

As a final note, I think the biggest problem I’m seeing with Samsung’s Galaxy Z Fold 8, at least in terms of my own personal use, is the continued ignorance around built-in Qi2 magnets.

I get it, thin phones make it tough to include these. But the biggest modification I made on Fold 7 was slapping on a cheap little magnet ring, and it was a huge quality-of-life upgrade. Yes, you’ll be able to do this with a case, but I’m actually a bit less inclined to use a case with foldables. It just doesn’t feel right and, as mentioned, I’ll never tell anyone to own one of these devices without having insurance on it. If you’re already paying for insurance and not particularly accident-prone, I’m all for going case-less.

Either way, I really hope to see this happen next time around. It’s ridiculous to me that Samsung has continued to ignore Qi2 magnets thus far, and Fold 8 will be the last time I buy a new Samsung device without Qi2 built-in – if this goes on another year, it’s simply unacceptable.

A year with the Galaxy Z Fold 7 has really just cemented my feelings on foldables. I’ll always have one of these in my pocket, and they just continue to get better. But for as much of a leap forward as Fold 7 was over prior generations, all of this time has really shown me just how much room there is left for improvement, especially compared to the likes of what Oppo, Honor, and Motorola are putting out.

Samsung is set to launch its new Galaxy Z Fold 8 series this week, consisting of the “Fold 8 Ultra” as a direct replacement to the Galaxy Z Fold 7, and the Fold 8, which adopts a new wider form factor that’s readying itself to put up a battle with the first foldable iPhone. I’m still very much on the fence between these two, but I’m certainly leaning towards the new shape both just to try something new, and because I think the Galaxy Z Fold 8 Ultra might be a bit of a cruel joke.

But, with both, I’m just worried Samsung hasn’t addressed any of the “bad” I’ve talked about here. The battery life is still going to be awful, the cameras don’t look any better, and I’m not sure we’ll see any overheating improvements with the processor tweaks coming.

I guess we’ll find out soon enough. Stay tuned for hands-on coverage this week! Samsung’s event takes place on July 22.

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