Apple holds its iPhone event every September, as the perfect run-up period for the holiday, and because every other phone manufacturer has the same supply constraints and sales demands, they then announce most of their big models around it too.

However, with manufacturers releasing so many different skews, across so many price points, several are now eschewing this window for their more budget or alternative products. And so, at the beginning of the month, Nothing released their new Phone (3); and at the end of the month, Samsung’s new folding phones will go on sale. Though the new Fold is the phone that has grabbed the most attention — because of its new impressive thinness and new outrageous price — the Flip line has always been the better seller for Samsung.

The Flip format doesn’t provide the tablet-in-a-pocket experience of the Fold, but, instead, it gives the same features and size of a regular phone, for roughly the same price as a standard phone, but without taking up as much pocket space, which is particularly important for women buyers. There’s also something immensely satisfying about hanging up on someone by closing a phone shut. The Z Flip 7 doesn’t provide many significant changes over its predecessor, but every tweak makes it a more competent and compelling package than ever before.

To start, much like it’s Fold sibling, the Galaxy Z Flip 7 is the thinnest Flip ever, if only by a single millimetre, but has a slightly bigger folding screen — up from 6.7″ to 6.9″ — and comes with their improved “Armor FlexHinge,” and new screen layers, meaning it should also be more durable than previous generations. I’ve seen more broken Flips than any other phone model, so hopefully this makes them a bit tougher; though it’s uncertain whether these changes will affect the repair prices. The phones have the same IP48 water and dust resistance as the last generation Flip.

Though the inside display is improved, it’s the cover screen that sees the biggest update, now going edge-to-edge, wrapping around the main cameras, like the newest Motorola Razer. With a total dimension of 4.1″, it’s a genuinely useful screen, with tiny bezels and a 120Hz refresh rate. You can use this outside screen as a full-blooded phone display, but they also benefit from the software management of their previous, smaller screens, with various app controls always available through a pill-shaped widget in the gap beside the cameras. They’ve also optimised Samsung UI for better cover screen customisation, allowing your wallpaper and clock to adjust to the cover and main screen sizes dynamically.

The software is exactly what you’d expect on a new Samsung release — their latest One UI 8, running on Android 16, and packed with Google-supplied, Gemini-powered AI features. It has seven years of software support, six months free of Google’s AI subscription, and all of this now runs on Samsung’s in-house Exynos 2500 chipset, instead of a Snapdragon unit. Exynos chips used to be underpowered and unreliable but those days are long gone, and the average customer won’t be able to tell the difference between this and a Snapdragon-powered version. The charging speeds remain at 25W wired, as does the camera hardware — with a 50-megapixel main camera and a 12-megapixel ultra-wide — but it now comes with a slightly larger battery, going from 4,000mAh to 4,300mAh.

Most importantly, the price remains unchanged, starting at $1,099. If you’re interested in buying one though, I would advise waiting — they often get heavily discounted — or just shopping around for a good carrier deal. There’s also a new Z Flip 7 FE, which is basically just the Flip 6, and starts at $899. I’m not giving this much attention, as neither is Samsung — no American carrier is selling it — and interested customers should buy a discounted Flip 6 instead. The Z Flip 7 and Z Flip 7 FE are available for pre-order and release on July 25th.