This year, Samsung's foldable strategy has changed. For the first time ever, the South Korean company’s two best foldable phones are taking significantly different paths when it comes to performance.
As expected, the Galaxy Z Fold 7 is still the ultimate productivity and gaming beast, packing the same top-of-the-line Snapdragon 8 Elite chip that's in this year's Galaxy S25 lineup. However, the Galaxy Z Flip 7 didn’t follow suit this time around, as Samsung has made a bold (and some might say controversial) move to its own Exynos 2500 processor.
Those who follow Samsung's phone releases will know that international Samsung handsets equipped with in-house Exynos chips have historically delivered poorer performance, particularly in gaming, compared to their Snapdragon counterparts.
However, the Exynos 2500 chip promises to change things thanks to an improved 3nm process node with a Gate-All-Around (GAA) transistor architecture for increased efficiency.
After weeks with the Exynos-powered Z Flip 7, I'll dive into how this big change affects its benchmark scores and whether you'll actually notice a difference in daily use. Plus, I'll explain how it stacks up against last year's Snapdragon 8 Gen 3-powered Z Flip 6.
Benchmarks
When comparing the performance of the Galaxy Z Flip 7 (powered by the Exynos 2500 chip) and the Galaxy Z Fold 7 (powered by the Snapdragon 8 Elite chip), the latter significantly outperforms the former.
In Geekbench 6 benchmark tests, the Galaxy Z Fold 7 achieved a single-core score of 3,052 and a multi-core score of 9,735. In contrast, the Galaxy Z Flip 7 recorded a single-core score of 2,286 and a multi-core score of 8,079.
In practice, the Snapdragon 8 Elite’s GPU and driver stack are typically more efficient than the Exynos 2500, giving a bit more thermal headroom, meaning games can run at higher and more stable frame rates.
Of course, there are other factors that influence these results. At like-for-like performance, the Snapdragon 8 Elite in the Fold 7 is generally more power-efficient than the Exynos 2500 in the Flip 7, so it produces less waste heat. The Fold 7’s larger design also gives it more surface area to shed heat than the smaller Flip 7.
Together, these factors let the Fold 7 sustain higher performance for longer with a lower likelihood of throttling, even if both phones were using the same chipset.
A more fitting comparison would be against the Motorola Razr Ultra (2025) — like the Z Fold 7, it features a Snapdragon 8 Elite chipset, but in a more compact clamshell design, similar to the Galaxy Z Flip 7.
When testing the Razr Ultra (2025) in Geekbench 6, my colleague John Velasco recorded a single-core score of 2,719 — an 18.9% increase over the Galaxy Z Flip 7 — and a multi-core score of 8,342 in Geekbench 6 — a much smaller 3.25% increase. For gaming, the Razr Ultra managed 145.32 fps in 3DMark Wild Life Unlimited, while the Flip 7 scored 114.64 fps in the same test — 21% lower.
In real-world use, that means that single-core tasks like launching apps or opening a photo will feel slightly less responsive on the Galaxy Z Flip 7. However, there’s very little difference between the two phones when it comes to more demanding multi-core tasks, such as video editing (like exporting a big Instagram Reel) or photo processing. Gaming will tend to be a little slower on the Flip 7, but only on the more demanding titles.
But how does the Galaxy Z Flip 7 fare against its predecessor, the Galaxy Z Flip 6, which came equipped with the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 chipset? Although the Exynos 2500 in the Z Flip 7 trailed this year's Snapdragon 8 Elite in Geekbench 6 tests, it delivered a significant performance uplift compared to the Z Flip 6's chipset, which achieved a single-core score of 2,091 and a multi-core score of 7,022. This translates to a 9.3% boost in single-core performance and a 15% increase in multi-core performance for the Exynos 2500.
In terms of everyday usage, that single-core boost helps the Galaxy Z Flip 7 feel more responsive than its predecessor. For instance, daily tasks like opening and closing apps, typing emails and scrolling through social media feel snappier. Meanwhile, the higher multi-core performance uptick delivers a noticeable upgrade for demanding activities such as gaming, video editing and photo processing.
You can also expect quicker responses to your Galaxy AI commands — if set to run on-device, tasks like Live Translate and Chat Assist will be a little faster than before thanks to the faster NPU. That said, you may not notice much of a speed difference when it comes to cloud-based AI tasks, such as Generative Edit in photos and Circle to Search, since most of that processing happens on Samsung or Google servers.
Galaxy Z Flip 7 performance outlook
I immediately feared the worst when Samsung announced that the Galaxy Z Flip 7 would abandon Qualcomm's Snapdragon chipsets. I was reminded of a time when even a flagship handset like the Galaxy S21 Ultra came equipped with an Exynos 2100 chipset in many territories (such as here in Australia), rather than the superior Snapdragon 888 offered to users in the US and most of Asia.
Having now used the Galaxy Z Flip 7 extensively, I can see that my fears were (mostly) unfounded. Sure, it's never going to be one of the best gaming phones, but I don't think the Z Flip 7's target audience is looking for that. And if we move away from that kind of expectation with an AI-focused phone like the Pixel 10 Pro XL, I don't see why the Galaxy Z Flip 7 should be any different.
What really matters is how the Exynos 2500 handles daily usage — based on my own experience, the Galaxy Z Flip 7's chipset offers snappy performance in both simple and complex tasks, with excellent power efficiency. It's also noticeably snappier than last year's Galaxy Z Flip 6, which is ultimately what most users will want from the phone. In other words, if your main concern about the Galaxy Z Flip 7 was about day-to-day performance, you should put those fears to bed.
More From Tom's Guide
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