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Samsung today unveiled the Galaxy Z Fold7, the foldable pioneer’s latest smartphone with a flexible, tablet-sized display tucked inside. That’s an impressive feat of engineering, to be sure. But Samsung has accomplished it many times before. And so have its competitors.

Indeed, what sets the Fold7 apart isn’t what’s on the inside. For the first time ever in the family’s six-and-a-half-year history, you can actually judge this book-style foldable by its cover.

The Fold7 is as thin and as light as an honest-to-goodness candy bar-style premium smartphone. The outer display is as ample as those built into top-of-the-line devices. As well, the Fold7 is also the first Samsung foldable to include the company’s high-end 200MP camera lens.

It sports the same-sized battery as the Fold6. And thanks to the higher-performing, exclusive-to-Samsung variant of Qualcomm’s flagship smartphone chipset, the Snapdragon 8 Elite for Galaxy, it can do more on a single charge, like play video for up to 31 hours. If that’s something you’d like to do.

Remember, Samsung achieved all this in a sleek smartphone shape with a foldable tablet screen tucked inside.

That’s huge. I’ve been a big fan of book-style foldables from the start. But as much as I appreciate having a tablet inside my phone – always at the ready to watch videos, read the news or doomscroll social media – the size and weight of earlier Folds kept me from bringing the devices everywhere. I had to be sure my belt was cinched tight, for example. And forget about slipping one into a pair of gym shorts.

The real kicker for me, though, was the camera. No one paying $2,000 (yes, $2,000) for a smartphone should have to compromise on photo and video quality. Or much of anything, for that matter.

No real compromise

If you’re keeping score at home, here’s how the Fold7 stacks up against conventional smartphones – and competitive foldable devices as well:

The Fold 7’s outer display is 6.5 inches, sandwiched between the Apple iPhone 16 Pro (6.3 inches) and the 6.9-inch displays on Apple and Samsung’s top-of-the-line models, the iPhone 16 Pro Max and the Galaxy S25 Ultra. The smartphone display on last year’s Fold6 – as well as competitive foldables – all maxed out with 6.3-inch screens.

Folded, the Fold7 is just a few hairs thicker than both top-of-the-line phones (8.9mm, versus 8.3 for the 16 Pro Max and 8.2 for the S25 Ultra). It’s also much thinner than available foldables. The Fold6 is 12.1mm thick. Google’s Pixel 9 Pro and the OnePlus Open, the Fold7’s two primary competitors here in the US, span a hefty 10.5mm and 11.7mm, respectively.

The Fold7 is not only much lighter than competitive foldables, it also weighs less than top-of-the-line smartphones. At just 215g, the Fold7 is lighter than both the 16 Pro Max (227g) and the S25 Ultra (218g). It’s also much lighter than last year’s Fold6 (239g), the Pixel 9 Pro (257g) and the OnePlus Open (239).

The Fold7 also features an 8-inch internal tablet display. That’s the largest tablet display built into competitive foldables as well as earlier Fold models.

A big leap

A year ago, Samsung had started to draw some criticism with the Fold6. Detractors said that the pioneer had been too conservative in the Fold series’ evolution. Other smartphone makers were starting to experiment with new designs, bringing shapes to market that started to approach traditional candy-bar phones.

The Fold7 should quiet critics. It leapfrogs the competitive landscape. In fact, the pace of advancement in the Fold7 over the year-old Fold6 rivals what the company accomplished in all the iterations from the circa-2019 Fold to the Fold6 combined.

The Fold6, for example, is 13.4 percent lighter than the original Fold. The Fold7, meanwhile, is 10 percent lighter than last year’s Fold6.

As well, the Fold7 is 26.4 percent thinner than the Fold6 – more than the 21.9 percent different between the thickness of the Fold6 and the original Fold.

This is no Toblerone phone

The tablets inside Samsung’s Fold-series phones have always been impressive. Unfortunately, the devices’ exterior – which have been bulky, with too-skinny screens and too-anemic cameras – have stunted their appeal. It’s a shape more reminiscent of a Toblerone than your traditional Hershey-bar smartphone.

The Fold7 specs suggest that this time could be different. Impressive as they are on paper, though, I wasn’t truly convinced of the Fold7’s potential as a no-compromise, spec-for-spec premium smartphone – the kind with a tablet inside – until I had the opportunity to hold the device in my hands and compare it to conventional premium smartphones.

Yes, $2,000 is a lot of money for the Fold7. But don’t dismiss it out of hand. Because if what you’re really looking for is a premium thin and light smartphone with a tablet tucked inside, there’s finally something available for you to consider.

Mike Feibus is president and principal analyst of FeibusTech, a Scottsdale, Arizona, market research and consulting firm. Reach him at mikef@feibustech.com. Follow him on X at @MikeFeibus.