I used the Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 7 for a year and its biggest superpower surprised me

Most of the time, I use it as an ordinary smartphone, and at no point does the folded state feel like a compromise against what a regular flagship would give me. The phone is compact and slimmer than most foldables before it, yet I also appreciate its slight heft, which makes it reassuring to hold.

Over the past year, I have realised the front screen is so good that I rarely need to unfold the Fold 7 for the larger display. This may not be how its makers intended it to be used, but it’s precisely what makes the phone so usable. If you had to unfold the device every time to use it properly, the whole concept would fall apart.

The Galaxy Z Fold 7 is at its best when it feels like a regular phone that just happens to unfold. (Image: Nandagopal Rajan/The Indian Express)

Of course, I do open it up when I want the big-screen experience — most often when I’m working on large spreadsheets. It’s very hard to see the full picture on a regular smartphone screen, and the Fold’s squarer orientation makes it far easier to make sense of the numbers. On flights, too, the unfolded Fold 7 is my go-to screen for YouTube, Netflix and Amazon Prime Video.

Interestingly, I’ve come to treat the Fold 7 as an office phone of sorts: it carries no personal logins or social media apps. It’s also my AI experimentation phone, running everything from NotebookLM to Kimi. It never complains and is always the powerhouse I need to get things done; I’ll often have scheduled tasks running on Claude even as I go about my regular work.

This is exactly the kind of phone that suits AI work, because you can run these apps in dedicated windows without constantly cycling between screens. The large display becomes less about sheer screen real estate and more about keeping multiple AI tools and workflows running at once.

This year promises to be a big one for foldables. We’re likely to see at least one new form factor gain traction as companies test whether wider phones can accelerate adoption; a wider foldable would bring a tablet-sized experience within easier reach of a smartphone.

But I think the success of any such device will ultimately come down to how good a phone it is when folded. That’s my biggest takeaway from a year with the Fold 7.