Samsung unveiled lots of exciting stuff at its Galaxy Unpacked event on Wednesday, July 9.
The tech giant updated the Galaxy Z Fold smartphone, and at just 4.2mm unfolded and 8.9mm closed, the new handset is the thinnest Z Fold yet. The display size has also been increased, with the outer display now 6.5-inches (up from 6.3 inches) and the inside display 8 inches (up from 7.6 inches).
Samsung’s unboxing video for the Galaxy Z Fold 7 is as slick as you’d expect it to be, showing off the new phone in all its shiny glory. And just look at that slim profile! (Try, ahem, to avert your gaze from the rather prominent camera bump).
The more affordable Galaxy Z Flip 7 is here, too (as well as the new Flip 7 FE, which is more compact, slightly less powerful, and has an even lower price tag), and also comes with bigger displays over the previous version.
But it has fewer color options now, leaving you to choose from Blue Shadow, Jet Black, and a new Coralred. Mint is also available, but only via Samsung’s website. Take a closer look at the color options in the Z Flip 7’s unboxing video:
At 8.6mm, the Watch 8 is the slimmest Galaxy Watch to date, while the Classic edition brings back the iconic rotating bezel.
Also notable is the new “cushion” design for both watches, featuring a square base and rounded edges for greater comfort. It debuted with the Galaxy Watch Ultra last year.
The Watch 8 comes in stylish graphite and silver finishes, while the Classic edition offers black and white options.
Samsung’s unboxing video shows off both the Watch 8 and Watch 8 Classic:
We’re here with Prime Day 2025 and it feels like a new era. The event is longer, which can make it feel a bit like Black Friday. Another thing making it look like Black Friday? Our top pick among the best fitness trackers — the Fitbit Charge 6 — is back to its rarely-seen Black Friday pricing. Usually $160, you can now get a Fitbit Charge 6 for just $100 if you’re an Amazon Prime member. (If you’re not, and still want to save the $60, you can easily sign up with an Amazon Prime free trial.) Just tap the button below to see the offer for yourself, making sure to make your purchase before Prime Day ends this Friday.
The Fitbit Charge 6 is one of the best Fitbits around and it’s pretty easy to see why. For starters, it has nearly a week of battery life (something even most of the best smartwatches can’t offer you) despite its slender, almost bracelet-like presentation. Its AMOLED screen is bright and colorful, though highly readable. And that’s before we even get to its health-tracking tools and upgraded heart rate sensor, more accurate than those on any other Fitbit made before it. As our Fitbit Charge 6 review highlights, this device is comfortable and powerful, and perhaps far more so than its price tag suggests. Our reviewer said “I often forgot I was wearing the Fitbit Charge 6.” in large part due to comfort, but there’s also the fact that some fitness modes are automatically switched to, such as running and walking, so you don’t have to constantly think about your fitness tracker.
If you want this great deal that cuts $60 off of the Fitbit Charge 6’s price, dropping it to just $100 from $160, be sure to tap the button below and order yours now. It’s a rare deal, only ever coming out around Black Friday previously, so if you ignore this deal now it could be months and months before you see a price like this on the Charge 6 again.
In case you haven’t figured out, we’re in the middle of summer Prime Day 2025, and that means good deals all around. One such deal is for the OnePlus 13R, now reaching an all time low price. Usually $600, the phone is now down to $500, a savings of $100. Tap the button below to get directly into the deal or keep reading to see what we thought about the phone, a quick refresher on how it compares to the OnePlus 13, and the quirky budget phone it beats hands down.
Even at the standard $600 price, we felt that the OnePlus 13R was incredible value. At least, that’s the central thesis of our OnePlus 13R review, that the phone is a best-in-slot for ~$600 price range. It has two (or even more) days of battery life, a 2780 x 1264 and 6.78-inch AMOLED screen with up to a 120Hz refresh rate, Gorilla Glass tough protection, a Snapdragon processor… the works! …all at a bargain price. When we compared the OnePlus 13 and OnePlus 13R against each other, you might think the plain 13 would beat the 13R all around, considering it has better hardware, but it didn’t pan out that way. The OnePlus 13R really holds its own and demonstrates a ton of value for the price.
Another way to look at this is when we compared the OnePlus 13R and Nothing Phone 3a Pro, another budget phone. The result was a blowout victory for the OnePlus 13R, which is slightly more expensive during normal times but has the right level of “additional performance” and camera power to make it all worthwhile.
A final thing to remember about our OnePlus 13R review is that a stated negative was that, at $600, it cost $100 more than last year’s OnePlus 12R. However, with this excellent deal, that’s no longer true. Right now, if you tap the button below, you can get the 13R at the 12R price. But this deal won’t last forever, as Prime Day ends this Friday and most deals with it.
Are you planning to buy a new phone from this year’s Prime Day? The good news is that there’s no shortage of phone deals to choose from, but this is the one that we recommend — the OnePlus 13 with 512GB of storage for only $880. Just launched in January, that’s the device’s lowest-ever price, following a 12% discount on its original price of $1,000. You’re going to want to proceed with the transaction as soon as you can though, as there’s a chance that the savings of $120 on this Android smartphone will disappear before the shopping event ends.
The OnePlus 13, with an impressive score of 4.5 stars out of 5 stars in our review, headlines our roundup of the best Android phones as our overall top pick. It’s powered by the Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Elite processor and 16GB of RAM for fantastic speed and efficiency, whether you’ll be using it as a gaming device, a productivity tool, or a multimedia creator. The cameras of the OnePlus 13 are excellent — a 50MP main camera, a 50MP periscope telephoto camera with 3x optical zoom, and a 50MP wide-angle camera at the back, plus a 32MP selfie camera at the front.
The screen of the OnePlus 13 is simply gorgeous — a 6.82-inch AMOLED display with a 1Hz to 120Hz dynamic refresh rate, 1440p resolution, and maximum brightness of 4,500 nits. The smartphone also provides seriously long battery life, durability with Crystal Shield Ultra Ceramic Glass protection and IP68 and IP69 dust and water resistance, and the slick and feature-packed OxygenOS 15, which is based on Android 15.
The OnePlus 13 is an excellent smartphone, and Amazon is giving you the chance to get its 512GB version at its lowest-ever price for Prime Day. From $1,000, it’s down to $880 for a $120 discount, but we highly recommend that you hurry. You wouldn’t want to wait until the final minutes of the shopping event before you proceed with the transaction as offer may have already expired by then. Secure your own OnePlus 13 at 12% off by finalizing the purchase right now.
Smart rings are a new type of wearable device that’s gaining popularity, and if you’re interested in owning one, Amazon’s Prime Day is the perfect opportunity to get the Oura Ring 4 with a discount. The Brushed Silver variant is on sale for the first time at 15% off, bringing its price down from $399 to $339. This is a limited-time offer that may not make it to the end of the shopping event, so if you want to take advantage of the $60 in savings, we highly recommend completing your purchase immediately.
We’ve put together a roundup of the best smart rings for those who are interested in learning more about the wearable devices, and the Oura Ring 4 sits on top of it after receiving an outstanding score of 4.5 stars out of 5 stars in our review. Like the latest generation of smartwatches, the Oura Ring 4 is a sophisticated health tracker that monitors your body by using an array of sensors to capture all sorts of data. Your heart rate, temperature, sleep, and movement are just a few of the information that the smart ring collects, and they’re translated to personalized insights that will let you learn more about your physical wellbeing through an Oura membership that costs just $6 per month or $70 per year.
The Oura Ring 4 is more comfortable to wear and more durable than its predecessors, as we mentioned in our Oura Ring 4 versus Oura Ring 3 comparison. The overall user experience remains absolutely pleasant, with its compatibility with both iOS and Android devices allowing you to use the features of the smart ring no matter what phone you own.
The Oura Ring 4 is an excellent fitness tracker, and Amazon is offering you the chance to get its Brushed Silver variant with a discount for the first time. From its original price of $399, it’s down to $339 for Prime Day savings of $60, but possibly for not much longer. If you want to get the Oura Ring 4 at 15% off, you should add it to your cart and finish the checkout process as fast as you can. If you also want to take a look at other offers for wearable devices, you can check out the smartwatch deals that we’ve gathered.
The Samsung Galaxy Fold 7 is one of the most stylish foldable smartphones on the market, but despite also being one of the most expensive, one question popped up: where has the S Pen gone?
The answer: it’s no longer supported, thanks to the need to make the device thinner and more attractive to hold.
Of course, the Z Fold 6 didn’t have a slot for the S Pen on the device either, but was offered with a case that had a place to hold the S Pen (although you had to buy it separately. With the Fold 7, there’s no compatibility with the S Pen as the digitiser has been removed to help make it thinner as well.
“There’s no compatibility with the S Pen as the digitiser has been removed to help make it thinner,” Kadesh Beckford, Samsung’s smartphone specialist product manager, told us. He cited analysis of usage patterns to show that the S Pen wasn’t really as much of a consideration for Z Fold customers compared to a sleeker design.
“We’ve looked at what customers have asked for… and the reality is that the S Pen didn’t come with the previous foldable devices, it’s not built in like the S25 Ultra so it’s an additional purchase for our customers.
“The [customer] insights were overwhelming: they wanted a thinner and lighter device.”
This is an interesting move for Samsung, given the Z Fold essentially replaced the Galaxy Note, which first launched the S Pen back in 2011. The Note was always the more expensive Galaxy smartphone in the year, and launched in the summer, usually to provide more competition to the iPhone in September.
While the Galaxy S25 Ultra has assumed all the features of the Galaxy Note – a larger display to write on, with a dedicated slot for the S Pen – to not even embed the functionality is a surprising departure from Samsung.
Opinion: a welcome move
Digital Trends
In my view, removing the S Pen will do far more for the desirability of the Samsung Z Fold 7 than to keep it thicker with S Pen support.
I’ve covered the launch of Samsung phones since the first Android phone appeared, and I remember vividly when the Samsung Galaxy Note was first unveiled at IFA in 2011.
The S Pen was more of a quirk than an amazing feature – it was basically a simple plastic stylus that allowed you to interact with the smartphone without using your finger.
So to see Samsung add a stylus to its most expensive smartphone (or phablet, as it came to be known) brought a lot of questions.
But the brand has done a grand job of differentiating between ‘productivity’ phones (i.e. the Galaxy Note, Z Fold) and more mainstream, consumer-facing phones.
The S Pen has been pretty polarizing over the years – fans of the technology adore it, but it requires larger handsets (that are less wieldy to hold) to allow for the slot to house it.
Keeping the stylus outside the phone means it’s easy to lose – so for me, it’s either ‘house it in the handset, or drop it’… so well done to Samsung for making that choice.
I’ve never been a fan of the functionality, as no matter hope much the materials have been optimized, writing on the screen just feels too slippery.
It’s become a lot better in the years since, with far more useful functionality, but the sheer design leap that the new Galaxy Z Fold 7 has taken is more than worth losing the S Pen.
Sure, it’s one of the most expensive smartphones on the market, and removing functionality seems a little bit odd in light of that, but this feels like the right compromise.
Trying out the Samsung Galaxy Watch 8 and Watch 8 Classic is a tough gig – not in terms of it being a hardship to try out two high-end models, but that it’s impossible to assess them with only 30 minutes’ use.
I can easily talk about the improved design and the fit of the straps etc, but the real changes are within the health ecosystem, and they’ll need sustained testing to really understand if they’re any good.
Because that’s Samsung’s ‘thing’ for these watches: these are meant to be holistic companions to your day to day life, giving you the kind of insights that could have a big effect (and understanding) on your health.
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The Watch 8 duo are the first to run the latest Wear OS 6 software, sitting underneath Samsung’s One UI 8 Watch.
With this, you’re getting a slick user experience in a nicely-made design – you’ll instantly feel that this is a well-made package.
Let’s talk about that design: the Watch 8 (coming in 40mm and 44mm sizes) is the basic, sportier model, with the rubberised strap (with the quick release ‘Dynamic Lugs’ system) to make it easier to try new bands with a snap.
It uses a ‘digital bezel’ to spin through the screens, which means you slide your finger along the bottom of the screen to scroll through displays or lists at speed, with two physical buttons on the right-hand side.
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The Watch 8 Classic (only landing in 46mm size) was the device that everyone was more focused on in my briefing – interesting, as to my eye it wasn’t as sleekly understated as the cheaper model.
The 8 Classic comes with a (pleasingly soft) leather strap, and has a physical rotating bezel to allow you to move through the interface, rather than sliding your finger.
This felt more cumbersome than the excellent digital version on the Watch 8, but equally having a physical method of interaction means you don’t need to worry about wet fingers as much.
Both of the Watch 8 models have this ‘squircle’ design (known as ‘cushioned’ according to Samsung), with a round display flanked by a square base with rounded edges.
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The effect feels premium and they sit nicely on the wrist.Each model is comfortable to wear – the Watch 8 Classic is heavier, but still doesn’t feel like it’s weighing the arm down (that said, I’ve used a Garmin Fenix 7X for a long while, and that’s hardly lightweight…).
Samsung has made a big deal about how it’s ‘re-engineered’ the Watch to allow it to be 11% tinner, but also spreading out the components to make it feel more balanced on the wrist, and I’d have to say this feels like a decent effort at achieving that goal.
The screen on the Watch 8 duo has been pumped up by almost 50% for peak brightness, hitting 3000 nits at maximum. That’s pretty bright.
It helps in use as well. When viewing the Watch duo, they were always legible in bright light, and even the glare from the overhead spotlights wasn’t too heavily in the way when trying to photograph the devices.
A focus on health
There’s only so much I could learn from trying the watches in this test environment, as they need long-term use to test out the more advanced health features.
What I’ve been looking for, for years, is a watch / phone combination that can actually take all the data points on me – sleep, stress, nutrition etc – and combine them into a genuinely useful view of what I need to do.
Samsung is promising to do just that with these models. Sleep tracking has been enhanced and embedded more deeply within the system, meaning that when you wake up you should get a better insight into how you’re doing, as well as using AI to help learn your sleep patterns and guide you into more productive slumber.
That data can be combined with things like vascular load, which checks how hard your heart is working, and also the antioxidant index, where you place your thumb on the back of the watch to see how high your intake and retention of these are.
Things like the Antioxidant Index weren’t available to test without a smartphone nearbyDigital Trends
The thing is, we’ve seen things like this before: data points that are interesting, but in isolation feel pretty useless. Only being able to combine them with things like the enhanced running coach will we see whether Samsung has achieved the ultimate goal of creating a wearable that can react daily to give you a decent training regime.
Currently, on most smartwatches, if you set a goal of running a marathon with the coach, it just works out the sessions you should be doing to improve fitness, with a nod to things like sleep patterns or underlying body stress… but it’s rudimentary at best.
What it should do is work out the sessions you need, but also make sure that as you progress, your form, health, energy and sleep are all checked regularly and the plan adapted to ensure you’re training correctly for you.
The Watch 8 Classic comes with the side button, which isn’t available on the Watch 8. It feels like it should be on the other side, to be honest.Digital Trends
While all these features were unavailable to test when I got to try the Watch 8 and Watch 8 Classic out, they’re the things that matter the most.
Having Gemini on your wrist is fine, but until AI becomes a true (and trustworthy) companion, it’s not an exciting addition.
The Watch 8 and Watch 8 Classic feel central to Samsung’s plan to really lean into health, showing you the insights that day to day living can’t give you.
Whether these work well enough to instantly make the Watch 8 an indispensable part of your life remains to be seen – but these new smartwatches feel like a good start.
We’ve waited several years for Samsung to join the party, but it’s finally here: Samsung has followed rivals like Oppo, OnePlus, and Honor in building a thinner, lighter, and sleeker Galaxy Z Fold 7. It’s an impressive feat of engineering and a major upgrade over previous years.
It’s easy to consider the Fold 7 nothing more than an update to the Galaxy Z Fold 6, but in many ways, it feels like a huge step forward, not just for Samsung but for all folding phones. I spent a few hours with the Galaxy Z Fold 7 in an exclusive preview, and here’s why I absolutely love what Samsung has done this year.
Thinner and lighter make for a stunning phone
Nirave Gondhia / Digital Trends
Like the Oppo Find N5 and Honor Magic V5, the Z Fold 7 is impressively thin. It measures 4.2 mm when unfolded and 8.9 mm when folded. The latter makes it virtually the same thickness as the Galaxy S25 Ultra, which delivers on Samsung’s goal of offering a flagship Ultra bar phone that unfolds.
To achieve this goal, Samsung abandoned the tall and narrow Galaxy Z Fold design in favor of a wider front screen that resembles a regular phone. It’s now 5mm wider at 64.9mm, but still narrower than its chief rivals. That’s not the only change: the Fold 7 unfolds to an 8-inch main display that’s gorgeous and bright and one of the biggest among the best folding phones.
Samsung deserves particular credit for being able almost to remove the crease. It’s still visible — and I’m not sure if we’ll ever have a creaseless folding phone — but they’ve completely removed the divot that existed in previous generations. This means when you run your finger over the screen, it no longer feels like you’re traversing a ditch.
The Galaxy Z Fold 7 is 24 grams lighter than the Z Fold 6, and 26% thinner, bringing it in line with its chief rivals. It’s so light that it’s 3 grams lighter than the Galaxy S25 Ultra, and despite being 0.8mm thicker, it feels thinner as well. This is partially thanks to the Armor FlexHinge, featuring a water droplet design and multi-rail structure that has been re-engineered to disperse stress and protect display integrity. The only part that’s thicker? The ultra-thin glass layer on the main display is now 50% thicker.
A Galaxy S25 Edge… that unfolds
Nirave Gondhia / Digital Trends
In many ways, the Galaxy Z Fold 7 is more like a Galaxy S25 Edge that unfolds. It’s supremely thin and, by far, the sleekest phone that Samsung has ever made, especially in the outstanding Blue Shadow colorway.
It also features the same 200MP main camera as the Galaxy S25 Edge, and both are 18% smaller than the same sensor in the S25 Ultra. There’s also the same 12MP ultra-wide sensor we’ve seen on many Samsung phones, although this one finally has autofocus and supports macro photography.
There’s a 10MP telephoto lens with 3x optical zoom, which was also used in the Z Fold 6. While the 200MP main camera is a welcome improvement, I would have preferred that Samsung opted for higher resolutions across the other lenses, like Honor has done with the Magic V5. That said, I look forward to testing this camera over the coming weeks.
Flagship specs, but a smaller battery
Nirave Gondhia / Digital Trends
Like every Samsung flagship this year, the Galaxy Z Fold 7 is powered by the Snapdragon 8 Elite for Galaxy processor. It’s a customized version of the Snapdragon 8 Elite used by other phones, but it features a higher clock speed and has supposedly been optimized for Galaxy experiences. This is paired with 12GB or 16GB of RAM, depending on which storage option you pick.
The Snapdragon 8 Elite is a powerhouse flagship processor that offers incredible performance, but consumes more battery. Despite the thin body and its rivals using Silicon Carbon battery technology, Samsung has stuck with Lithium-Ion, and the Z Fold 7 has a 4,400 mAh battery that’s 250 mAh smaller than the Z Fold 6. This is paired with the same 25W charging found on the S25 Edge, and although it has wireless charging, you need the official case to get the Qi 2.1 fastest charging speeds.
Like every Samsung phone, you can also expect excellent hardware internals, including Wi-Fi 7, Bluetooth 6.0, multi-band GPS, and more.
Android 16… out of the box
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Software is where Samsung phones have seen significant improvement over the past few years, and One UI 8 is Samsung’s best software yet. The Galaxy Z Fold 7 runs Android 16 out of the box, and it will feature seven years of software and security updates. This means it’ll get an update to at least Android 23.
One UI 8 comes with all the usual Galaxy AI and Gemini features that we’ve come to expect from Samsung phones, but also adds Gemini Live and the ability to move the AI results window to different parts of the screen. You can also drag and drop AI-generated content between different apps in multi-window. For gamers, Circle to Search now works in mid-game, enabling you to utilize it for character builds, map walkthroughs, game tips and tricks, and more.
Nirave Gondhia / Digital Trends
There are also some features designed to improve your photos and videos. Photo Assist shows the original alongside your edit on the big screen. The generative edit features have been improved to suggest people or objects to erase with just a single tap. Then there’s Audio Eraser, which lets you detect and remove unwanted background noise with just a single tap.
Samsung’s multi-window multitasking remains as good as it has been in previous years, but it doesn’t utilize a larger screen like the OnePlus Open and Oppo Find N5 do. However, One UI 8 does remove something: the S-Pen. While previous Folds supported the S-Pen on the main screen, the Oppo Find N5 has pen support on both screens. In contrast, the Z Fold 7 has no stylus support on either screen. There are probably only a few people who will be upset by this, and I’m not even one of them, but it’s worth keeping this in mind if you use the S-Pen.
The nicest Samsung folding phone ever made
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The Galaxy Z Fold 7 is undoubtedly the nicest folding phone that Samsung has ever made. It’s outstanding in the hand, and like the Galaxy S25 Edge, you need to hold it to truly appreciate its beauty.
It comes in three colors — Jet Black, Silver Shadow, and this gorgeous Blue Shadow that will be widely available. Like previous years, there’s also exclusive color,s but this year there’s just one: Mint. By far, my favorite is the blue shadow color!
The Galaxy Z Fold 7 brings Samsung into the modern era of folding phones, representing a challenge for all its competitors. However, this doesn’t come cheap: at a starting price of $2000, it’s the most expensive Galaxy Fold yet. This is definitely worth the $100 premium over the Fold 6, but it’s still an expensive device, although you can save up to $1,100 with some of the best deals in the US.
I never really thought that I’d want to go down the route of owning a flip phone, ever since I swore off my Nokia in the early 2000s (you know, the one with the weird felt covering and tiny notification window).
Fast forward two decades, and I’m considering rejoining the race, thanks to the Samsung Galaxy Z Flip 7. Coming in at $1,100, it’s not cheap, but it’s definitely something different compared to the world of black rectangles, and it it feels like Samsung’s Flip family has finally come of age.
Let’s not forget that Samsung has started to get overtaken in the foldable phone world. The new Motorola Razr Plus is a similar design to this phone, with the full-front cover window, so Samsung needed to improve the style and performance of it’s smaller foldable device to keep up.
A new world
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First thing: I need to be honest, I’ve not had much hands-on experience of the folding flip phones since they appeared on the scene a few years ago.
I’ve watched their appearance on the tech scene and taken note of how they look, what they do and how they’re received, of course, but I’ve never been the one to review them.
As it turns out, I’m glad that the Z Flip 7 is my first experience. The new front cover window, which stretches out to 4.1-inches across the front half of the phone, feels right.
To compare it to the cramped, weirdly-designed window on the Z Flip 6, with its 3.4-inch screen… well, that would have annoyed me.
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While the Z Flip 7 is still a little thicker in the pocket, when folded down, it still doesn’t feel weighty and it slips much further down inside the trouser leg, which is a plus.
The front display, with the two cameras able to be used in selfie mode when combined with the cover window, is great for both video and photography capture, providing a ‘proper’ viewing experience to check your framing if you’re ever trying to shoot your own footage.
The camera quality, using the 12MP ultra-wide or the 50MP wide-angle lens, looked great, especially on the smaller screen.
Samsung made a big deal about being able to use one finger to zoom in and out, like we were used to on old JVC camcorders, but this wasn’t the simplest action to use, with a few taps needed – I’d have to like to see that be a little more intuitive.
The cameras don’t protrude too far from the rear of the deviceDigital Trends
I hugely enjoyed the novelty of propping up the phone to use as a screen to take a selfie, and when viewed from the other side, a small touchpad with mouse control for the ‘top’ screen popped up.
I’m not sure what this is for, other than being able to select items on the screen and have the mouse function in place of a finger… it felt fiddly and, well, pointless, so I’m looking forward to trying to figure out what that’s for.
The one thing that I was a bit worried about when trying a foldable flip phone for the first time was the length – it’s a loooonger phone than you might be used to when it’s fully extended.
But in under a minute I was used to it, and I didn’t mind the fact that watching YouTube or other 16:9 content didn’t quite extend to the ends of the device.
It also gives more real estate for scrolling, which is nice, and makes it easier to read articles on the go – especially combined with the fluid 120Hz display, which means content slides across the screen with ease.
The crease is visible, but definitely less so than previouslyDigital Trends
The screen size has been increased from a 6.7-inch display to a 6.9-inch one, with a 21:9 aspect ratio, which isn’t that uncommon in smartphones these days, and the overall shape just fits the device well.
The brightness of the screen, both front and back, is something that really helps – both in terms of being able to see what’s on there from far away but also helping minimise the visibility of the crease down the middle of the phone.
It’s far from a problem, and a long way from the heavy divot in the middle of foldable devices from years gone by.
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It is still there, and the big question will be if it’s more noticeable or visible after a few months’ use, which will hopefully be less of a problem given the crease hasn’t started out as deep as with other foldable phones on the market.
The phone didn’t feel fully straight at some times though, with the hinge feeling like it was flexing a touch inward on occasion.
I couldn’t tell in my limited hands on time with the phone whether this was just the way I was holding it, or if there was something I was missing, but it did make me feel a little more tentative using it.
The Galaxy Z Flip 7 does have the new Flex Hinge, which means the design can be thinner but with a strong opening and closing mechanism, something Samsung has been tested to last for 200,000 flips open and shut.
It certainly feels robust enough in the hand, and that’s partly to do with the fact Samsung has made the circuitry waterproof, rather than needing to seal the phone around the bezel, which allows it to be a little thinner.
The phone packs Gemini Live onboard as well, so you can chat with Google’s AI chatbot, but I didn’t have enough time to dig into that properly.
In my limited tests, where I pressed the side button and asked it questions about what I was seeing on screen, it was working more as an ‘AI intercom’ to chat with Gemini, when I wanted to ask it more contextual questions about what I was seeing on the screen.
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The One UI 8 onboard felt more complete and comprehensive than on any Samsung phone I’ve used (and finally supports DeX on the smaller foldable phone from Samsung), and the Now Briefing bar on the front of the phone sounds like it’ll be useful to show you things like health, boarding information or updates on your latest Uber ride.
Again, these don’t feel like earth-shattering changes, more Samsung finally catching this range up with the likes of other high-end flagships, like Apple has been using on the newer iPhones with the Dynamic Island.
It’s arguably more important here, given the Z Flip is the kind of phone that’s going to be used more when shut, so these notifications become more pivotal.
The Samsung Galaxy Z Flip 7 comes in three colors: the coral red, black and a rather attractive blue (called ‘Blue Shadow’, whatever that means).
The colored options in particular do look good in the hand, and I’d be hard-pressed to choose between the two.
The Samsung Galaxy Z Flip 7, much like the Galaxy Z Fold 7, is a huge step forward for the South Korean brand – its devices have been stagnating in the foldable world, but these feel like a real effort to try and catch up.
The Flip 7 is compact with a lot of power under the hood – if the battery life promises hold up (Samsung believes it’s improved battery life with the 4300mAh power unit inside, able to last 31 hours in video playback) then this could be a serious contender for those that want high end power in a compact design, without having the same flat candy bar design as we see on most other phones.
Samsung’s next Galaxy Unpacked event is almost here, and Digital Trends will be there to take a closer look at all the new gear that it unveils.
The Korean tech giant is also livestreaming the occasion, which takes place in Brooklyn, New York City, on Wednesday morning ET. Read on to find out how you can watch.
What to expect
Samsung’s January Unpacked event focused on its flagship S lineup, while Wednesday’s event is expected to showcase updates to its foldable lineup.
That means we should get our first look at the Galaxy Z Fold 7 — the pricier of its two foldable handsets. Some reports have suggested the new Z Fold 7 will come with a larger 8-inch inside display when fully open, and a 6.5-inch cover screen. Also on the cards is a Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Elite chip, a 200-megapixel main camera, and an updated S Pen with better latency and new features.
We should also be getting the Galaxy Z Flip 7 with a larger display size, and an all-new Z Flip 7 FE, rumored to be a more affordable, slightly pared-down version of the Flip 7.
Samsung could also give us our first tantalizing glimpse of the Galaxy G Fold trifold phone. Whether it’s ready to hit the shelves, well, that’s another matter entirely.
We can also expect to see updates to Samsung’s Galaxy smartwatches, hopefully with new health features, and more.
Finally, expect Samsung to share fresh updates for Galaxy AI, its advanced suite of artificial intelligence features integrated into Galaxy devices.
How to watch
Samsung is hosting its Unpacked event in Brooklyn, New York City, on Wednesday July 9 at 10 a.m. ET (7 a.m. PT).
You can watch a livestream of the event via the player embedded at the top of this page. Alternatively, head to Samsung’s YouTube page, which will show the same stream.
