- 11/07/2025
Testing every new Samsung product just announced at Galaxy Unpacked 2025 - including Z Flip7 FE, Z Flip7, Z Fold7, Galaxy Watch 8, Galaxy Watch Ultra! Go to https://surfshark.com/boss or use code BOSS at checkout to get 4 extra months of Surfshark VPN!
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TechTranscript
00:00This is every new product that Samsung has just announced.
00:03There's new watches, the Galaxy Watch 8, the 8 Classic and the 8 Ultra.
00:06There's new software, One UI 8, which you can expect to come to all Samsung phones.
00:11And then the main event, these new foldables.
00:13There's the Galaxy Fold 7, which is not at all what I expected it to be,
00:17a Flip 7, and even for the very first time, a cheaper option, the Flip 7 FE.
00:22So let's start with the Galaxy Watch 8.
00:25Samsung turned it into a squircle.
00:27They call these new square edges the cushion design.
00:30The only similarity I can see between this and a cushion is it deserves to be sat on.
00:36It just doesn't make any sense to me.
00:37Circular smartwatches, I think, look a lot more sophisticated.
00:41Squarer smartwatches, like the Apple Watch, are more functional
00:44because you have less information cut off from each of the corners.
00:47But then to have a circular screened watch and then try to make it look like a square
00:51by adding this uneven wonky bezel all around feels a lot like buying a Ferrari
00:57and then bolting a caravan to the back of it.
01:00That said, using the thing, I have actually never been as impressed by a Galaxy Watch.
01:04In one generation, while they have bumped the price up by about £30 or $50,
01:08you get an 8% bigger battery.
01:10It's 11% thinner.
01:12It has a 50% brighter display.
01:14You get dual GPS, so location tracking is more accurate.
01:17And it's got this slightly different backing that makes it feel a lot more planted on your wrist.
01:21Plus, some of the software features are actually sick.
01:24Like Running Coach, which asks you to do a 12 minute run so that it can analyse you.
01:28Then, based on how unfit it decides you are,
01:32it'll make you a plan so that one run at a time,
01:34you can work your way towards whatever you've set as your desired goal.
01:37And then while running, it will actually tell you when you're doing well
01:40or when you're behind and you need to catch up.
01:42But also, there's a bunch of new things that the watch can measure while you're sleeping,
01:46like the load on your heart from stress,
01:49alongside things like skin temperature and room temperature.
01:51But the really important thing about this that I like is that it's not just,
01:56here's another random extra thing for you to keep track of.
01:58We have enough of those in our lives.
02:00This watch does most of that tracking in the background
02:02and then just factors in this extra information
02:05when making actually useful recommendations.
02:08Like, tonight, you should probably get to bed at 11pm.
02:11And it's all topped off with a newer, slightly slicker operating system
02:14that now has the NowBar baked in 2 and Gemini on your watch,
02:19which is a little bit slow to use since it's kind of like two layers of communication.
02:23Your watch has to go to your phone and then back to your watch again, but better than nothing.
02:28And then the Watch 8 Classic is basically the exact same story,
02:32same squircles, same features, but just with this classier, much heavier metal casing.
02:37The only extra functionality you get is the rotating bezel,
02:40which to be fair is actually a big deal.
02:42I'd say if you haven't tried it yet, I think you should before buying a base Galaxy Watch,
02:46because it is addictively satisfying to use.
02:50And then finally, the new Galaxy Watch Ultra,
02:52which is actually like an ultra minor update.
02:55I would barely even call this a new watch.
02:57It's just a little bit of extra storage starting at 64 gigs now,
03:01and this new titanium blue color.
03:03But since the other two watches have now suddenly had such a substantial upgrade,
03:07the appeal of the Watch Ultra, to me at least, has kind of vanished.
03:11It feels like it doesn't really make sense unless you absolutely need this
03:14military-grade protected body.
03:16But overall then, it's a pretty good year for Samsung watches.
03:19So, what about the phones?
03:21Well, the first one that I went hands-on with is the Z Fold 7.
03:25And I want to preface this by saying this had to be something special,
03:28because cards on the table, Samsung foldables have been losing their lead over the last few years,
03:34with me even having to take the best foldable phone award away from Samsung last year and give it to Honor.
03:39Because frankly, Honor's phone was so much thinner, had a bigger battery,
03:43bigger screen, less noticeable crease.
03:44The list goes on for a long time.
03:46So, if Samsung was going to come here today and give us another year of
03:50here's a 5% better camera and a 5% better hinge, I was ready to riot.
03:55Especially considering that this new Z Fold 7 is now $2,000.
03:59So, a further $100 more than even last year.
04:02Thankfully, Samsung kind of cooked here.
04:05So, the most obvious thing you're going to notice when you first pick it up is the Z Fold 7 is
04:0926% thinner than last year.
04:11Can you remember the last time that a phone just randomly got 26% thinner than its predecessor?
04:17I don't.
04:17And it feels like an even bigger change than it sounds like.
04:20So much so that this one phone takes Samsung from having basically the chunkiest foldable on the market
04:26to having basically the slimmest.
04:28And it's thin enough that this folding phone at 8.9mm when folded is almost exactly the same thickness
04:35as most bar phones.
04:36And the same weight too.
04:38It's actually lighter than my iPhone 16 Pro Max at 215 grams compared to 227.
04:44Now, the second thing that you'll notice straight after that is it's also a tiny bit taller and
04:49quite a lot wider than last year's Fold 6.
04:51Which is great because it actually fixes quite a few different problems all in one go.
04:56Firstly, it improves the aspect ratio on the front.
04:58It moves the phone even further away from that TV remote like narrow experience and
05:03even closer to just normal phone territory.
05:05With a wide enough keyboard that I'm not making any spelling mistakes on this thing now.
05:09Second, it makes the inner screen now 8 inches compared to 7.6 on the Fold 6.
05:14And the way I see it, the bigger your inner screen is, the easier it is to justify carrying a foldable
05:21versus a normal bar phone.
05:22Because it's like one of the only things it has going for it.
05:25And you have to put up with so many other compromises if you're going to do so.
05:29And then finally, the extra footprint is the only reason that Samsung can
05:32still keep the same sized battery as they had last gen.
05:35Even with the substantial cut to thickness.
05:38Although, I'm going to come back to the battery because
05:40I'm not done yet talking about the design improvements.
05:42So, the ultra thin glass that you have over the inner screen is now 50% thicker.
05:47So, does that make it just glass?
05:52But this has resulted in, finally, a much less noticeable crease.
05:55It's still not quite as clean as some of the other foldables out there.
05:58But hey, at least now you don't look like you have a rip going down the middle of your phone.
06:02The Z Fold 7 is made of stronger materials from practically every angle.
06:06It's got a stronger chassis.
06:07It's got a stronger hinge.
06:08It's got a stronger backing behind the screen.
06:10And there is this new blue color, which I would not normally talk about.
06:14But this feels like the first time in recent memory that a company has actually been just
06:18a tiny bit brave.
06:20And I am all for it.
06:21The only slightly unfortunate design flaw is that this is almost definitely the single
06:27wobbliest phone I have ever tried to rest on a surface.
06:31So, you pretty much need a case to balance that out.
06:34Aside from that, I am pretty relieved to see that Samsung has finally ditched the
06:37under-display selfie camera that we had on previous Z Folds.
06:40I mean, it's almost awkward at this point.
06:41After four years of this company insisting that under-display tech was the way forward.
06:45But ultimately, this means you get a significantly higher quality selfie camera on the Z Fold 7 for
06:50it.
06:51That's also a lot wider with a 100 degree field of view instead of 85.
06:56And they've also buffed the rear cameras a lot more than they usually do.
06:59Which means, finally, the Z Fold 7 does get the same main camera as the Galaxy S25 Ultra.
07:05And there are improvements to the ultra-wide camera too.
07:08But also, just want to make this super clear.
07:11This is still not an ultra-level camera setup.
07:14If you're the kind of person who is looking for the best, then you need to know here that
07:18everything is still a tiny bit compromised.
07:20Like, you're not going to get any laser autofocus.
07:23You're not going to get close to the zoom capabilities of the ultra phone.
07:26And because they've also had to compress the camera module so it's not bulging out as much,
07:31you get smaller lenses here that are a bit less sharp around the edges.
07:35It's good to see, and also very unsurprising to see, that Samsung's fitted this with the latest
07:39top-end Snapdragon 8 Elite chip.
07:41And there's a couple of new software features, but they are, I would say, extremely minor.
07:46Like, you know the Now Bar that you get on your lock screen?
07:49Well, that now works with a few more apps.
07:51So, it can now tell you, for example, how long your Uber's going to be.
07:55Audio Eraser has an automatic option, which lets the phone decide which background noises to remove
08:00or reduce for you. And there's some improvements to multitasking, being able to drag things between
08:05apps better and so on.
08:06It's actually such a minor software update that probably the best new software feature
08:11is one that you'll be able to get on pretty much every phone anyway.
08:14The ability to share your screen with the Gemini AI.
08:17So, it can talk to you while having the full context of what you're looking at.
08:21Okay, I see the object.
08:23It looks like a brown leather chair with black metal legs.
08:26Not unique to this phone, but very, very cool to use.
08:30Anyways, hopefully you've watched enough of our videos at this point to know that this is coming,
08:34but I do have some bones to pick with this phone.
08:37While I'm glad to see that at least the battery size has been maintained at 4,400 mAh,
08:42it does also feel like about time we saw an increase,
08:45given that most competing phones are now using more efficient silicon carbon batteries,
08:49and some of them have even hit 6,000 mAh plus.
08:52Oh yeah, and also, S Pen support is completely gone.
08:56So, while Samsung's foldables have never had an S Pen built inside of them,
08:59you have at least been able to use a case to hold one in place on the back,
09:03and the inner screens used to have a digitizer that gives them compatibility with it.
09:07But that, in the process of thinning, has been chopped.
09:10Which hurts.
09:12A lot.
09:12For me, it just feels like Samsung's fold and the S Pen are two products that were
09:17destined to merge with each other.
09:19I mean, this thing has the most real estate to be able to write stuff on.
09:22The phone is made for people who are trying to get lots of stuff done.
09:25The phone is literally designed to look and function like a real-life notebook,
09:30for goodness sake.
09:30But, alas, that's the Fold 7, so let's talk Flip.
09:34Which, unlike the Fold, whose price seems to be really ballooning year on year,
09:39is actually becoming more affordable this time.
09:41Because this, the Galaxy Flip 7 FE, is $899,
09:46which is a $200 saving compared to the $1,099 that you would have to pay for the flagship Galaxy Flip 7.
09:52And it just takes one look at this thing to see. This is tech company 101.
09:57You want to make a more affordable version of something,
09:59so you pull together a bunch of older components that you already have lying around,
10:04and you put them inside the body of your previous generation flagship product.
10:08And that's what the Z Flip 7 FE is.
10:11It's essentially identical to last year's Z Flip 6, but with a slightly slower,
10:15slightly less efficient Samsung-made Exynos chip,
10:188GB of RAM instead of the 12 we had there,
10:20and 128GB of storage compared to the 256 that the Z Flip 6 started with.
10:25In concept, this is a bit of a win-win for Samsung.
10:28They've already got the factories ready and set up to manufacture more of this design.
10:32There's basically zero R&D required, so it's way cheaper for them to do so.
10:37And that means that you, as a buyer, can get a flagship-quality folding phone
10:41for a little bit less money than you used to be able to.
10:44Emphasis on little bit, though.
10:47This is the problem. I just, I don't think the $200 discount is
10:51nearly enough of a price saving to justify this thing.
10:54It's very easy to find the actual Z Flip 6 brand new for $899 now, and
10:59that is just straight up the superior phone.
11:01But also, now that the Z Flip 7 is out, and it has massive improvements to the cover screen,
11:07I just feel like this older design is suddenly looking extremely outdated by comparison.
11:12So, that feels like a pretty good segue to talk about that flagship Flip 7.
11:17It's not very often these days where you get such a transformative jump between the screens on
11:21two generations of phones, but this is it.
11:25With the old 3.4-inch massively-bezzled cover screen on the Flip 6,
11:29suddenly becoming this almost edge-to-edge 4.1-incher, which is now also significantly brighter,
11:35and has a 120Hz refresh rate compared to 60. And it's pretty sexy.
11:39Don't get me wrong, at this point Samsung needed to do this to catch up to Motorola's Razer phones,
11:44but that doesn't actually take away from how big of a step it feels to use.
11:48And the screen's also become somewhat more useful in the process,
11:51with you now having access to much more of the camera user interface than before.
11:55You can change filters, you've got a zoom slider,
11:57Samsung's even created a recording indicator-type zone in between the cameras,
12:01which I have no idea how that's better than just a dot, but it's always nice when you feel like
12:06you're using software that is specifically designed around your hardware.
12:10And then the rest of the phone is basically a toned-down version of
12:14the massive jumps that the Fold 7 has gotten.
12:16So, for example, the inner screen is slightly larger.
12:19It's a 6.9-inch compared to the 6.7-inch before.
12:22The Flip 7 is not completely surrounded with stronger materials like the Fold is,
12:25but it does have the stronger hinge and the thicker display,
12:28which does also now lead to very minimal creasage.
12:31The new Flip is also thinner.
12:33Not a crazy amount thinner, but still, you can absolutely tell.
12:36It's 6.5mm when unfolded compared to 6.9.
12:39And the thing I thought was really interesting is that
12:41a big part of this thinness improvement comes from a very unexpected place.
12:46Waterproofing.
12:47There used to be a water-sealant layer that went all around the screen's edges,
12:51but this time around, by actually making sure the circuit board on the inside itself
12:55is water-resistant, they can just cut that layer.
12:57This phone also has the new Gemini live screen sharing features,
13:01and I gotta say, Samsung has done a pretty good job making them fit nicely
13:05and work smoothly on the cover screen.
13:07And then there's basically just a couple of nice-to-have extra sprinkles,
13:11like a 4,300mAh battery versus 4,000 last year.
13:15But you will probably burn through that extra with the larger front screen that you now have to power.
13:20This is the first Flip phone to support Samsung DeX,
13:22so you can plug it into a monitor and use it as a desktop.
13:25And as usual with the Flip, there's also a couple of extra customization bits,
13:29like a new stretched font and interactive emojis that you can now choose yourself
13:34to embed onto your lock screen.
13:36Yeah, it's getting pretty strange.
13:38And that is the Flip 7.
13:40I'd say a good but not spectacular update, considering that it's staying the same price.
13:44So, while we have a quick test of our Z Fold 7's new 200mV camera, here's something about me.
13:51There are only three TV shows I've ever seen that I would genuinely myself consider a 10.
13:56There's you, there's Game of Thrones, and White Boaches.
13:58So, you can probably imagine my pain after a very long day of travel to another country,
14:02where you're so jet-lagged and all you want to do is to crumple into a bed to watch one of these,
14:07getting the error message that I got from NowTV.
14:09This service is unavailable in your location.
14:12Thankfully, this is one of like a hundred moments by this point,
14:15where I've been just about to kick off about something,
14:18until realizing that I already have the solution to fix all of these annoying internet issues.
14:22So, I swiped up, I opened Surfshark VPN our sponsor,
14:25I changed my virtual location to the UK, where I know NowTV does work,
14:29and like magic, I go back onto the NowTV app, everything loads,
14:33and we watch the full episode just fine.
14:35And if you go to surfshark.com slash boss and use the code boss,
14:38you can have Surfshark for literally $2 a month for an unlimited number of people.
14:43So, buy it once and just share it with every single person you know.
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