Galaxy Z Fold 7 Battery and Charging: What to expect
The Galaxy Z Fold 7 is expected to debut in summer 2025 alongside the Z Flip 7, continuing Samsung's tradition of unveiling its latest foldables mid-year.
While the Fold series is known for offering unmatched multitasking in a smartphone form factor, battery life and charging speeds have never been its strongest suit. So what does the upcoming Z Fold 7 bring to the table in this area?
The Galaxy Z Fold 6 offered solid, but not class-leading battery life in our tests. It scored an estimate battery life of 5 hours and 33 minutes, with individual scores:
12h 42m in web browsing (vs. 9h 22m on the Z Fold 5)
7h 1m in video streaming (vs. 6h 30m on the Z Fold 5 )
) 10h 30m in 3D gaming (vs. 9h 27m on the Z Fold 5 )
The overall battery life score of the current generation did increase to 5h 33m, up from 4h 41m on the Z Fold 5 — an 18% improvement. These gains were attributed to the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3's better efficiency and improved thermal management.With the Z Fold 7 expected to use the new Snapdragon 8 Elite, battery efficiency could improve slightly once again. Qualcomm's new chipsets are known to deliver better performance-per-watt ratios, so paired with Samsung's display and software optimizations, users could see an improvement of up to an hour in mixed usage.However, don't expect a massive leap unless Samsung surprises us with stacked battery tech or other unexpected enhancements.
Samsung has consistently stuck with a 4,400 mAh battery for its last few Fold models. While sufficient for most daily needs, it lags behind some rivals like the OPPO Find N5 and Huawei Mate XT Ultimate Design, vivo X Fold 3 Pro, which use larger batteries. Unfortunately, there are no credible leaks suggesting that Samsung will increase the Z Fold 7 's charging speed. That likely means it will stick with:
25W wired charging
15W wireless charging
4.5W reverse wireless charging
This is unchanged from the Galaxy Z Fold 6 and lags behind other foldable phones offering that offer 66W, 80W, or even 100W charging from companies like Vivo, Huawei, Oppo and more. With Samsung's 25W Super Fast Charging, you can expect the Z Fold 7 to reach almost 50% in 30 minutes and 100% in about 75–85 minutes. At least those were the speeds that we got during our Galaxy Z Fold 6 review, which ranked 94th among recent phones for wired charging speed.
Wireless charging isn't much better: the Z Fold 6 reached only 13% in 30 minutes and took 3 hours and 19 minutes to fully charge at 15W, placing it 30th for wireless charging performance.
While this is good enough for overnight top-ups or a quick splash of juice during the day, it's not ideal for users who expect fast and sufficient top ups via a wireless charger. Yes. The Galaxy Z Fold 7 is expected to support 15W wireless charging.It will likely be compatible with Samsung's own wireless chargers as well as third-party options that support the Qi standard. However, you won't get the full 15W unless you use Samsung's official Wireless Charger Duo or Wireless Charger Stand.
Expect slower speeds (around 10W or less) with generic Qi-certified chargers.
Yes. Reverse wireless charging, or Wireless PowerShare as Samsung calls it, will likely return.
It can be used to charge smaller accessories like Galaxy Buds or a Galaxy Watch by placing them on the back of the Z Fold 7 . The power output is expected to remain capped at 4.5W. The Galaxy Z Fold 7 will likely use a standard USB Power Delivery (PD) PPS charger with a USB-C to USB-C cable. Samsung does not typically include a charger in the box, so you'll need to purchase one separately if you don't already own a compatible unit.Samsung, like Apple and Google, sticks closely to the USB PD standard. This means you can safely use high-quality third-party chargers from Anker, Ugreen, or Baseus and still get near-max charging speeds.That's unlike other brands such as Motorola and Xiaomi, which have a custom implementation of USB PD + PPS that can request non-standard current levels. However, without the original charger, these phones fall back to lower charging speeds.Honor, Huawei, Oppo, Vivo, and OnePlus all use their own charging protocols too. Without the brand-specific charger and 6A cable, charging speeds fall back to 18–45W.
With Samsung, you don't need to worry about any of that. Any good USB PD PPS charger should work fine.
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