Samsung Galaxy Z Flip 7 FE: One-minute review

Samsung's budget flip phone is basically a repackaged Samsung Galaxy Z Flip 6, which, on the face of it, isn't necessarily a bad thing. After all, in the smartphone world, the specs of last year's flagship often become those of this year's midrange phone. But the key issue is that Samsung didn't learn anything from the Z Flip 6’s shortcomings, and has failed to advance the Z Flip 7 FE in several areas, which sours the experience somewhat.

The cameras are the same as the cameras on the Galaxy Z Flip 7, which is a bonus. Camera performance is quite good for an FE phone, although at night, the cameras can struggle to keep moving subjects sharp, and can overexpose bright light sources. Overall, though, this is a pretty capable shooter, especially when you use the main camera for your selfies.

Performance and battery life both fall into the okay-but-not-great category — again, consistent with the FE experience. With light to medium usage, you can get through a full day on a charge, though again, the software affects your ability to use the cover screen to its fullest, and thus conserve battery.

The bottom line here is that if you can score a good deal on this phone, it's worth picking up — the starting price is just a bit too high to be comfortable with. Samsung has a good history of support for its foldables, so that's a big plus here, and if you're looking for a pocketable phone with a sturdy build, decent battery life, and a good set of cameras, this one should be on your radar.

Samsung Galaxy Z Flip 7 FE review: Price and availability

• Starts at $899 / £849 / AU$1,499
• Available in black or white

Samsung is trying to make its foldable lineup more accessible to more people, which is a laudable goal, but it's priced the Galaxy Z Flip 7 FE too high, both for what it offers and compared to its competition. $899 / £849 / AU$1,499 is cheaper than the flagship Z Flip 7, but it feels like this price is designed to allow Samsung to advertise "Look! We have a foldable phone for this low price!" without expecting anyone to actually buy it.

$899 / £849 / AU$1,499 is an unusual price for a phone these days, slotting right in between the starting price of the Google Pixel 10, iPhone 17, and Samsung's own Galaxy S25, and the higher starting price of the Pro models of the same phones.

The Z Flip 7 FE’s closest competitor is the Moto Razr 2025 (or Razr 60 as it's known outside the US). This phone undercuts the Z Flip 7 FE by $200 in the US, and by AU$300 in Australia, but it's only £10 less expensive in the UK. Overall, then, the price of the Z Flip 7 FE only feels close to correct in the UK, while it leaves something to be desired elsewhere.

The Z Flip 7 FE is available in either black or white. For my money, I prefer the black colorway, which is the more understated of the two; if you like to stand out more, white is the way to go.

• Value score: 3 / 5

Samsung Galaxy Z Flip 7 FE review: Specs

The overall specs of this phone are in line with its theoretical value proposition — it’s cheaper than the flagship, so therefore "midrange." In practice, though, 128GB is no longer enough for someone spending almost three figures on a smartphone, regardless of its market position. And foldables, in general, are still seen as premium products, even if this is the lesser of Samsung’s foldable lineup; mid-range specs may not cut it for many buyers.

Most of the specs on offer here are what you might expect from a lesser phone, which is understandable, although you do get the same cameras as on the flagship Galaxy Z Flip 7, which is great. The Exynos 2400 in particular stands out as a 2024-era processor — there’s no ‘for Galaxy’ version of a Snapdragon chipset to speak of here, in any region. That's fair enough, since this is an FE unit, but it still rankles a bit.

Meanwhile, 8GB of RAM is far from future-proof. Again, though, since this is an FE model, some compromises can be expected, and in terms of day-to-day performance, you'd be hard-pressed to notice a difference between this phone and the Galaxy Z Flip 7, which has 12GB.

Samsung Galaxy Z Flip 7 FE review: Design

• Solid build quality
• Looks almost exactly like the Galaxy Z Flip 6

The Samsung Galaxy Z Flip 7 FE has more in common with the Z Flip 6 than with the Z Flip 7. Most notably, the phone has the same chassis, smaller cover screen, and battery as 2024’s flagship. I only mention that because it enables a lot of supply line efficiency, allowing for the phone to be less expensive. The design is superb; the Z Flip 7 FE feels solid, with little flex in the hinge. I personally like Samsung's industrial, squared-edge design language, though that is certainly subjective, and others may prefer the softer curves of the Motorola Razr family.

The cover screen is plenty big, but it's hampered by Samsung's software design, which puts a roadblock in the way of using any app on it; we'll discuss that more in a bit. Plus, the reverse-notch design isn't ideal for app usage — unless it's a Samsung-approved app, in which case the app is optimized for the notch. Motorola's rectangular design is a lot friendlier to external screen usage.

I rarely use cases with foldables, and after about two weeks of use and some ill-advised (and accidental) placing of two phones in the same pocket on a number of occasions, the back Gorilla Glass Victus in particular has noticeable scuffs. That’s not great, but it was more down to carelessness on my part than a design issue.

Speaking of the rear glass, early on in my review period, when I wasn't paying too close attention to it, I would press the power button and be surprised when the back of the phone didn't turn on. The front of the phone and the back look nearly identical when the screen is off, except for the two camera modules. Yes, that should be obvious, but something I like about Motorola’s flip phones is the materials and colorways they use; it’s very obvious when you’re not looking at the screen. Presumably, the white colorway would assuage this issue a bit, but I much prefer vibrant colors as opposed to black and white, even for ‘midrange’ phones.

• Design score: 4 / 5

Samsung Galaxy Z Flip 7 FE review: Display

• Very bright external and internal displays
• Beware the low refresh rate on the cover display

Let's get the elephant in the room out of the way first — the Z Flip 7 FE’s cover screen only refreshes at 60Hz. Now, put your torches and pitchforks away — the inner screen gets the full 120Hz treatment. Personally, I’ve never been able to see the difference between the two refresh rates, while others will swear that this is an absolute deal-breaker; if that's you, get the Z Flip 7 and enjoy it!

As mentioned, the inner display is the same as the one on the Z Flip 6, and it's beautiful, with brilliant depth and color reproduction, and a crease that’s barely noticeable. Samsung's hinge mechanism is incredibly refined by this point, so the only time you'll see the crease is when you’re looking at it from an off-axis, and even then it's not a big deal.

Both screens can hit up to 2,600 nits of brightness, which is more than enough to see in bright sunlight. The screen can also go very dim when you're in a dark room, but if you tweak the phone's brightness up even a hair above minimum, it gets brighter in a hurry; a little more nuance in that respect would be appreciated.

But overall, both of these displays are excellent — Samsung is good at making displays after all.

• Display score: 4 / 5

Samsung Galaxy Z Flip 7 FE review: Software

• No DeX Mode
• AI features are impressive for the most part

Samsung's OneUI has been getting progressively better over the years, and One UI 8.0 finally gives you the option to get rid of Samsung's side-scrolling app launcher, and the settings menus are also more refined than in previous versions.

One feature that’s missing is Samsung's DeX mode, which gives you a desktop-like interface when you connect an external screen. Samsung says the Z Flip 7’s Exynos 2500 chipset is powerful enough to work with Dex, which implies that the Z Flip 7 FE’s previous-gen chipset isn’t. But as we pointed out in our Z Flip 7 review, the Samsung Galaxy S24 FE with the Exynos 2400e chipset (which has less power than the 2400) can run DeX, so the feature’s absence here is perplexing.

The Z Flip 7 FE has all the same AI features as the rest of Samsung's lineup. My personal favorite is ‘Sketch to image’, which can produce AI images that are remarkably realistic from the most terrible sketches I can scrawl. Another notable addition is the ability to interact with Google Gemini via the cover screen, which is handy for quick questions on the go or even full conversations with Gemini Live.

Speaking of the cover screen, you can run apps on it, and Samsung made doing so slightly easier than before. In the past, you had to download Good Lock and then activate Multistar — neither of which sounds like an app you would use to do anything related to a lock screen. Now, Samsung puts a Multistar button in settings, which cuts down on a couple of steps. It's better, but only just. You can add the apps you want to the cover screen, which is nice, but the process is still too laborious for any but the nerdiest nerds.

Plus, Samsung limits what can happen on that cover screen. It's quite common for the Z Flip 7 FE to prompt you to open the phone to continue with what you’re trying to do, which defeats the purpose of using the cover screen at all. It can be quite maddening.

• Software score: 3 / 5

Samsung Galaxy Z Flip 7 FE review: Cameras

• Cameras are pretty good for the price
• However, photos look a lot better on the phone screen than on a computer monitor

Overall, the camera on the Samsung Galaxy Z Flip 7 FE is very good, as long as you're not planning on blowing up any photos beyond social media size. This is another one of those cases where photos look great on a phone screen, but when you zoom in, they get blocky. As with any phone camera, performance will be determined largely by how good the lighting is. If you're outside on a sunny day, photos will look great; if you're in a dark theatre watching a comedy performance, which was one of the environments in which I tested the cameras, very much less so.

Notably, in that scenario, the camera tended to overexpose performers who were under a spotlight. I also tested the iPhone 17 Pro and the OnePlus 15 in the same conditions, and they both performed much better, adjusting the exposure on the fly and producing less noisy photos; but of course, neither of those other phones folds in half.

Generally, in low-light outside environments, the phone performs better than most. Moving subjects can look a little soft, but not as bad as in images from some other flagships I have tested. Video stability when using the main camera at night was also better than expected in my testing.

The Z Flip 7 FE’s Portrait mode is also very good, with the software doing a decent job of picking out stray hairs on my head and separating them from the blurred background. Macro shots also look decent, although the depth of field is a little too shallow for my taste.

One of the key benefits of a foldable phone is the ability to use the main camera for your selfies, with the phone acting as its own tripod. With the Z Flip 7 FE, you can use a simple hand gesture to start a 3-second countdown to grab selfies, and in my experience, this worked every time.

I'd be pretty comfortable using the Galaxy Z Flip 7 FE as my one and only camera phone. There are certainly better camera phones out there, especially from Chinese manufacturers, but I can't say I have any really obvious concerns or disqualifiers about the Z Flip 7 FE’s photographic capabilities. All in all, this is a pretty good camera for Instagram-worthy shots.

• Camera score: 4 / 5

Samsung Galaxy Z Flip 7 FE review: Camera samples

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Samsung Galaxy Z Flip 7 FE review: Performance

• The Exynos 2400 chipset handles everyday tasks well
• But don't expect Snapdragon 8 Elite-level power

Overall, I'm a Snapdragon fan, so I wasn't super thrilled to learn that the Galaxy Z Flip 7 FE runs on an Exynos 2400 processor — historically, Exynos chipsets have struggled to keep up with Qualcomm's equivalent Snapdragon chipsets. However, the Z Flip 7 FE performed admirably during almost all tasks I put it through.

I'm not a heavy gamer, but I tested the phone’s performance chops by playing Asphalt: Legends, checking for heat issues or even dropped frames, and I didn't experience either. I also ran two apps simultaneously in split-screen mode, and again, there was no performance lag.

On Geekbench, the Z Flip 7 FE returned single-core and multi-core scores of 1,554 and 6,128, respectively, putting it on par with the Samsung Galaxy S23 and S24. However, while both of those are still respectable phones, the Exynos 2400 won't stand up against the chips found in the latest flagships.

The Z Flip 7 FE is an FE model, after all, and given its price point and market position, its performance is perfectly acceptable. But don't buy this phone thinking it'll be able to handle high-res video editing or extended (i.e., multi-hour) gaming sessions. For that, you’ll want one of the best phones or best gaming phones.

• Performance score: 4 / 5

Samsung Galaxy Z Flip 7 FE review: Battery

• Battery life is just ok
• Charging speed is just acceptable — charge it overnight when possible

The battery life on the Galaxy Z Flip 7 FE isn't bad given the phone’s positioning as a midrange device, but that's only really true if you commit to using the cover screen as much as possible. Unfortunately, as discussed, that isn't possible a lot of the time.

On most days, working from home and connected to Wi-Fi, I could comfortably get through the day on a full charge. On some days with particularly light use, I even hit the sack with around 30% left in the tank. However, on occasions when I went out and used the camera heavily, it was a different story. On those days, I often had to plug in the Z Flip 7 FE and top it up at least once to keep me going until bedtime.

The Galaxy Z Flip 7 FE is limited to 25W charging. That's not terribly slow in itself, but compared to phones made by Chinese manufacturers, it’s downright glacial. Plus, unlike those Chinese manufacturers, Samsung doesn’t include a charger in the box.

• Battery score: 3 / 5

Should you buy the Samsung Galaxy Z Flip 7 FE?

Buy it if...

Don't buy it if...

Samsung Galaxy Z Flip 7 FE review: Also consider

To test this phone, I used an unlocked review sample provided by AT&T on T-Mobile's network using my personal eSIM for around two weeks. During that time, I used the phone as I normally would, largely for communications and web surfing. Communications includes five email accounts, three Slack accounts, numerous Telegram messages, plus LinkedIn, Threads, Instagram, and other social media accounts.

I tested the phone's cameras predominantly at night, shooting challenging scenes like walking while shooting video, in theaters, restaurants, bars, and other low-light areas where people frequently take selfies and shoot photos and videos. I also used the phone to shoot and lightly edit some short videos for Instagram.

During a typical day, I'll check my phone hundreds of times — it's a problem; I get it. I had the phone paired with my Google Pixel 4 smartwatch and used it while connected to Wi-Fi when I was home. I played games frequently throughout the day and watched social media videos on the device.

The Z Flip 7 FE also accompanied me on a trip to New York City for an overnight visit, which was a challenging day for the phone's battery as I took a lot of photos, shot video, and used the device as a Wi-Fi hotspot on several occasions.

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