To help us provide you with free impartial advice, we may earn a commission if you buy through links on our site. Learn more
- Decent performance
- Solid cameras
- Seven years of software support
- Bland design and colour options
- Expensive
- Too similar to the Z Flip 6
The Samsung Galaxy Z Flip 7 FE has been a long time coming. Where other brands have tried to bring folding phones down to more affordable prices for a few years now, Samsung has kept its focus firmly in the four-figure range. Now, at long last, the value-focused Galaxy Z Flip 7 FE has been added to the family. But was it worth the wait?
Not especially, no. It’s a fine enough performer, with decent results in my testing but, aside from some tiny changes, it’s basically just last year’s Galaxy Z Flip 6 with a fresh lick of paint. Considering you can buy the latter for hundreds less (for now, at least), I can’t recommend that you give the Galaxy Z Flip 7 FE the time of day.
Samsung Galaxy Z Flip 7 FE: What you need to know
After years of watching Motorola offer a more affordable flip phone option, Samsung has finally delivered its own “Lite” version to compete. The Galaxy Z Flip 7 FE is, for the most part, a retooled Galaxy Z Flip 6, with the same dimensions, weight, 6.7in main display and 3.4in cover screen.
The cameras are also dead ringers for last year’s model, with a 50-megapixel (f/1.8) main camera and 12-megapixel (f/2.2) ultrawide on the rear, plus a 10-megapixel (f/2.2) selfie shooter at the top of the main display.
Of the key specifications, the internal components are the biggest difference from the Z Flip 6. The processor is now an Exynos 2400 chipset, clocked at frequencies up to 3.2GHz and backed by 8GB of RAM, and either 128GB or 256GB of storage, compared to the Z Flip 6’s 12GB of RAM and 256GB/512GB storage options. The battery is still a 4,000mAh cell, however, and charging remains at 25W wired and 15W wireless.
Price and competition
The Galaxy Z Flip 7 FE starts at £849 for the 128GB model, with the 256GB version only a little more, at £909. At the time of writing, however, you can get the 256GB for the price of the 128GB on Samsung’s website.
By comparison, the Galaxy Z Flip 6 is regularly much cheaper than this. The best deal I’ve found is via EE, where you can nab the 256GB model for just £569 or the 512GB version for £631. This is a limited time deal running at the time of writing, so it may well be up by the time you’re reading this, but the point still stands – time it right and you can get a Z Flip 6 for much less than the Z Flip 7 FE costs.
The other major competition comes from Motorola. I’ve not fully reviewed the Razr 60 yet, so can’t speak to how it compares overall but, as with the Razr 60 Ultra, the big advantage is its cover screen. The Razr 60 has a full-size external display that is compatible with the vast majority of apps, offering more versatility than the Z Flip 7 FE’s widget-based display. It’s also a little cheaper, the sole 256GB model costing £799.
Design and key features
As mentioned, the design of the Z Flip 7 FE can be summarised as simply a Galaxy Z Flip 6 wearing a fake moustache. That means it measures the exact same 72 x 15 x 85mm when folded and 72 x 6.9 x 165mm unfolded, and weighs an identical 187g.
The frame is once again Armor Aluminium, with Gorilla Glass Victus 2 over the front and back (when folded) for scratch protection and an IP48 dust and water resistance rating. The hinge is decently smooth – achieving a greater range of angled holds than the standard Galaxy Z Flip 7 – but the display crease is a tad more noticeable.
Also less impressive than the Z Flip 7 is the choice of colours. Where its big sibling gets a decent swatch of eye-catching styles, the Z Flip 7 FE is committed to minimalism, with only black and white to choose from.
Both variants look quite bland (especially compared to the vibrant styles of Motorola’s Razr 60) and the glossy rear feels less premium than the frosted finish on the Z Flip 6. It’s also an absolute fingerprint magnet.
Just like the Flip 7 and the Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 7, the Z Flip 7 FE launches with Samsung’s latest OneUI 8.0 OS (based on Android 16) and is set for seven years of software support. This is the biggest advantage that Samsung has over the Razr line, with Motorola only committing to three years of OS updates and four years of security patches for the Razr 60 series.
Displays
The 3.4in AMOLED cover screen is exactly as good as it was on the Z Flip 6, which is to say that it’s fine but falls well short of the quality offered by Motorola’s Razr line. You only get a limited amount of widgets to work with and most notifications that pop up will inevitably prompt you to open the phone to continue. It’s a fine enough screen but it’s no more functional than a smart watch, which shouldn’t be the case for flip phones.
When you flip the phone open to continue, you’re at least working with a decent display. The 6.7in AMOLED display again has a resolution of 1,080 x 2,640 and an LTPO dynamic refresh rate that can adjust between 1Hz and 120Hz. It gets nice and bright, too, hitting 696cd/m2 on manual brightness (with the extra brightness toggle activated in the settings) and 1,122cd/m2 on adaptive brightness with a torch shining on the light sensor.
Samsung’s default Vivid colour profile is punchy without drifting into obnoxious oversaturation, keeping your movies and games looking nicely vibrant. For a more authentic representation, you can switch over to the Natural profile. Here, I recorded an sRGB gamut coverage of 97.1% and a total volume of 100%, with the average Delta E colour variance score coming back at 1.53. That’s a little way off our target of 1 or under but it’s better than the Z Flip 6 (1.91) and exactly the same as the standard Z Flip 7.
Performance and battery life
Samsung gives the impression of an upgrade compared to the Galaxy Z Flip 6, choosing to fit the Z Flip 7 FE with the new 3.2GHz Exynos 2400 chipset instead of recycling last year’s silicon, but it doesn’t make much of a difference to raw performance.
In the Geekbench 6 test, the Z Flip 7 FE scored almost identically to the Z Flip 6 in the single-core benchmarks and only eked out a 5% performance bump in the multi-core. It’s a decent enough performer but, when deciding whether to pick this model up or go for last year’s model, CPU speed will not be the deciding factor.
And in the GFXBench GPU tests, the Z Flip 7 FE falls further behind with a disparity of more than 30fps in the offscreen (1080p) part of the test. The Z Flip 6 is a notably better gamer.
Of course, if your gaming steers in a more casual direction, this is all moot. The Z Flip 7 FE handles simple games easily and even something intensive like Genshin: Impact runs smoothly on the default graphics settings.
Battery life is a little better than last year, lasting 25hrs 49mins in our video playback test – just over an hour longer than the Z Flip 6. It’s also better than last year’s efforts from Motorola, although both the Razr 60 Ultra and the Galaxy Z Flip 7 have better battery life still.
However, charging speeds remain at 25W wired and 15W wireless, neither of which is a disaster but still very conservative in today’s mobile phone market. In my tests, the phone took 33 minutes plugged in to reach 50%, while a full charge took around 1hr 40mins.
Cameras
The camera suite is identical to the Galaxy Z Flip 7 and, by extension, the Galaxy Z Flip 6. This recycling of lenses was a little disappointing on the Flip 7 but it’s more tolerable on the cheaper Galaxy Z Flip 7 FE.
As a result, the 50-megapixel (f/1.8) main lens performs as well here as it does on the Z Flip 6 and 7, producing nicely detailed images with punchy colours and broad dynamic range.
Optical image stabilisation (OIS), meanwhile, helps to keep night photography looking crisp, with solid detail retention in the more shadowy areas and mostly natural-looking colours. There’s a little more lens flare than I’d like but otherwise, this is decent enough.
The 12-megapixel (f/2.2) ultrawide camera is nice to have, but it isn’t exceptional in any way. The colour tone is close enough to the main camera, and images produced are generally nice and bright, but the detail capture is mediocre, especially in the corners.
Video capture is identical to the Galaxy Z Flip 6, too, shooting 4K at 60fps and you get the LOG video mode that Samsung recently rolled out to all its flagships. There’s no 10-bit HDR recording here, like on the Galaxy Z Flip 7, but otherwise the two are on par.
Samsung Galaxy Z Flip 7 FE: Verdict
Samsung’s first attempt at a more affordable flip phone isn’t bad. Performance is solid, as are battery life and camera quality, but it’s far too similar to last year’s Galaxy Z Flip 6 for my liking, especially considering that phone is so much cheaper – at the time of writing.
And with the Motorola Razr 60 on the other side, with its superior cover display and cheaper retail price, there’s very little room for the Galaxy Z Flip 7 FE to squeeze into the conversation. It’s fine for what it is, but it doesn’t offer nearly enough to justify its existence, and even if it did, it’s still too expensive.
