Exactly How Big is the Galaxy Z Fold 7 Screen?
You'd think that since we've had renders of the Galaxy Z Fold 7 since way back in February, we'd have a pretty good idea of exactly how big this inner display was going to be. But strangely enough, all the way now into June, probably less than a month or right around a month away from this device's launch, we still don't seem to have consensus on this inner screen size.
Let me be the first to tell you that the gap between the high-end and the low end in these rumors is about 0.2 of an inch. In the grand scheme of things, that really isn't going to matter a whole heck of a lot. But I suspect that if you're here reading this you might just be nerdy enough to care about 0.2 of an inch. One reason is because if it's 8 inches, that puts it right in the same range as a lot of folding phones like the Pixel 9 Pro Fold. But if it's 8.2 inches, well now it's actually bigger than things like the Oppo Find N5, and that might kind of take it an extra couple of steps towards this device being the ultra device that Samsung seemed to tease that they wanted it to be.
Remember that in their recent blog post Samsung said that users are asking for bigger screens in addition to some other things. So one way to really be able to say this Z Fold 7 is the most ultra Z Fold we made is if they can say it's got the biggest inner screen of any of these folding phones.
Disagreement on Screen Size
So, who is saying what? Luckily, all of this is kind of condensed down into one quick thread on Twitter, which is what you're seeing right now. SamMobile tweeted this: "Samsung confirms the Galaxy Z Fold 7 will bring bigger cover and foldable displays." And Ross Young went ahead and responded to this. Ross is someone who is an insider in the display world, so they tend to know these things. He says "Confirmed at 8 inches and then 6.49 inches for the cover display, same as the Z Fold 6SE."
I actually have a problem with this prediction because I don't see how that could possibly be the case. With the embedded 3d representations of the Z Fold SE (Green) and Z Fold 7 (red) you can see that they are essentially identically sized.
You might say "Well Shane doesn't that of course then indicate that the screen sizes would be the same?" Well no, because they're not exactly identical. The Z Fold 7 is going to be just a little bit taller. We're talking about like you know, fractions of millimeters, but it is taller and it is also just a little bit wider.
Ice Universe and Bezel Size
But it's not just that. There have also been reports from Ice Universe. We scroll down here, he says "The Galaxy Z Fold 7's inner screen bezel is narrow. The width of the bezel on the Z Fold 6 is 1.9 mm. On the Fold 7, it is closer to 1 millimeter." So we have shaved off almost a full millimeter from the bezel. So it's wider, it's taller, and the bezel is smaller. So how could the inner screen size remain the same? This does not make any logical sense.
You would think that you could just take the rumored dimensions of the Fold 7 and use the Fold 6 as a reference to do some quick math and come up with an answer, but the problem is the bezel is not really 1.9 mm. The black part is about 1.9 mm, but the actual space between the edge of the screen and the edge of the device is larger than that and I don't really think we have good information on exactly what that distance is going to be truly on the Galaxy Z Fold 7. When you're talking about fractions of millimeters versus fractions of inches, these numbers do add up and you end up not really having a great answer on the size of this screen.
OnLeaks and Panda Flash Pro
But I said that there was disagreement. We've only looked at one person's opinion. Let's look at more. HaskellJ asked "I wonder why OnLeaks said it's more than 8 inches." OnLeaks, who actually supplied those initial renders, grabbed their renders and used this measuring tool, and they came up with 8.18 inches. That's obviously quite a bit larger than what Ross Young was saying.
But we do have a caveat here. OnLeaks replied to himself and said "These are freehand measurements and therefore they are always rough figures." But still, it's a diagonal measurement where the diagonal should be the longest measurement that you can get on this device. If you measure from diagonal to slightly off from diagonal, wouldn't that make it shorter? At any rate, this does point towards it possibly being larger than the 8-inches cited by Young.
In this same thread, someone tagged Panda Flash Pro, and they kind of quote tweeted themselves there. "Finally it's confirmed now Galaxy Z Fold 7 display is the same size as the Z Fold 6 special edition at 8 inches with slightly less bezels resulting in nearly 8.2 inch display." So that kind of also is agreeing with what OnLeaks' measurement is saying, and I think kind of agreeing more closely to just logically what it would have to be given the size of the device and the size of the bezels.
My Conclusion
I wish that this situation was like the video I posted a while back where I feel like we pretty definitively put to bed the disagreement between Ice Universe and OnLeaks regarding the thickness of the Fold 7. I measured how much that bezel protrudes and then concluded that the measurements are both indeed correct. It just depends on what you're measuring, are you measuring with the bezel or not with the bezel as every OEM actually does do in their official measurements. This is not unfortunately like that.
The conclusion that I am coming to is that even though Ross Young is a guy that is usually very very highly reputable and easy to believe based on their track record, I just don't see how 8 inches could possibly be true.
Good news is, I think that we can just assume broadly that the Z Fold 7 screens are going to be larger than the screens of the Z Fold 6. Both screens are getting larger, and I think that that's probably a good thing considering everyone else is bigger than them at this point. If you want to talk about throwing around the word ultra, you have to do that. My guess, somewhere between 8.1 and 8.2 inches is where we're going to be and either one of those should put it right there in the range of any of the biggest inner screen folding phones on the market.