I got the Fold 7 on 16 August 2025 from my parents as a birthday gift that year. To reduce the cost, I traded in my S23 Ultra (had it from 2023). The retail price of the Fold 7 at the time was RM7,799 for the 512MB variant. I received RM2k for the S23 Ultra and that lowered the price significantly.
I was really excited to try out the 7th generation folding phone from Samsung. It was also my first time trying out a folding phone after hearing so much hype about it.
After settling the bill and the data transfer at Samsung KLCC, I immediately played around with it. It was amazing how thin and yet solid it felt in my hand.
The bigger screen definitely made it easy for me to look at work documents and emails. It was also nice to watch videos and photos on the larger screen. I was impressed by how you can view 3 apps (2 side by side and 1 overlay) a the same time.
However, a few weeks passed and it didn’t take me long to realise the drawbacks of the Fold series. I am also surprised that not many people (actually almost none) talk about the issues I face below!
The number 1 disappointment for me is the quality of the camera. The Fold 7 camera was inferior to my old S23 Ultra. The photos are not as bright and not as sharp compared to a model from 2 years ago. After some research, I found out the camera on the Fold series is intentionally designed to be inferior to the flagship S series.
The 12MP camera is not even worth using. The 200MP camera is decent but it blows up the photo size and is not practical for daily use. On a daily basis I used the 50MP (from the camera settings). Despite being 50MP, it still doesn’t produce the same clarity and brightness as the S23 Ultra. The selfie camera is the worse. It’s almost always blur for indoor photos. Overall, for a phone that is insanely expensive, I thought the camera would be the same quality as the Galaxy S series.
The issue with the camera led me to purchase an actual compact camera to compensate for the horrible quality. After much research, I settled with the Canon Powershot V1. I later found out it’s not always convenient to bring 2 devices, especially on holidays. I will write about this in a separate post.
The problems with the Fold 7 doesn’t end there. Obviously, for a very expensive phone, you would put a casing. Turns out the casing would make it difficult to charge (the hole becomes tighter) and made it difficult to touch the edges of the front screen.
There is also the issue with certain apps not adjusting between folded (normal view) and unfolded view. Some apps are just not designed for this resolution.
I also find the missing S Pen to be inconvenient. There are times, especially at work, when I wish I could use the S Pen to write notes on the Fold.
I guess other folding phones (such as Huawei Mate x7 or Vivo Fold) might have better cameras, but I am not keen to depart from Samsung due to the ecosystem. I plan to use my Fold 7 up to 2 years before changing. Most likely I will consider the S27 Ultra (in 2027) as I believe the camera in the S series is better suited to my expectations. I can re-learn to live without the convenient bigger screen.
Imran Jaafar 