Color me shocked — The Galaxy Z Fold 7 is an absolute beast for gaming

One of the reasons why I love foldable phones is that there's another level of flexibility when it comes to gaming. With previous iterations, the cover screen was relegated to more basic games, as it was just too narrow to really enjoy much of anything else. But, unfolded? Well, then you have a tablet for a more immersive and pleasant experience.

In my time with the Galaxy Z Fold 7, this has largely continued to be the case. Playing games like Threes (yes, I still play it), Balatro, and Letterlike is quick and easy to fire up and play one-handed. I even dabbled a bit with trying to use it as an awkwardly tall Game Boy for some Pokémon Pinball, but that wasn't really my cup of tea.

Big and beautiful

Obviously, the star of the show is the inner display, which Samsung has made better than ever. There are practically no awkward crease distortions to speak of, which is nice for a change. Plus, the 8-inch OLED panel simply looks incredible, especially when playing modern games or retro games that are upscaled.

Before getting into the gameplay itself, let's talk about controls. I absolutely despise trying to play platforming games with just a touchscreen, so I have quite a collection of different phone controllers. I recently picked up the Backbone Pro controller, so I connected the Fold 7 and was off to the races.

However, I quickly noticed that, unlike the Fold 6 and traditional phones, the Fold 7 is so thin that there was a gap between the phone and the back of the controller. Backbone includes a few adapters in the box to help mitigate this, but really, Bluetooth controllers like the GameSir G8 Plus or 8BitDo Ultimate Mobile Controller will give the phone a bit more support on the back.

When it comes to actually playing those games, the Fold 7 is a beast, and there's really no way around it. It chews through even the most demanding games found on the Play Store, but that's to be expected. Where the real strength comes through is with emulation, and for the most part, the Fold 7 doesn't disappoint here either.

Windows and PlayStation on the Galaxy Z Fold 7

I didn't sit back and play through games for hours on end, but I did try out Fallout 4 and Hades 2 via GameHub (Winlator), Tears of the Kingdom via Citron, and Burnout Paradise via RPCSX. For whatever reason, I couldn't get either Fallout or Hades to launch using the standard build of Winlator.

But after importing them via the GameHub app, both games fired right up, which I was thankful to see. The only real problem I experienced was frame drops in certain scenes at the beginning of Fallout 4. Even then, it never dropped below 23-25fps, reaching a peak of around 58fps. There's a decent chance this could be a caching issue, so I'll be taking another look to see if that's the case.

As for PS3 emulation with RPCSX, once I got everything set up properly, I was able to get Burnout Paradise loaded, and things were looking pretty good with around a 30fps during the opening cut scene. And then it rapidly dropped to around 10 fps before bottoming out at 0fps.

What's weird about this is that the background music was still playing, and there weren't even any audio crackles or anything to make it seem like the game was frozen. Perhaps there's some tinkering to be done, but I can only assume that it's more to do with the emulator itself, as other games I tried wouldn't even load.

Switching it up

Lastly, it's always fun to see how well Switch games will run on new hardware. Currently, I have at least five different Switch emulators installed, but with the Snapdragon 8 Elite, Citron seems to be one of the most popular of the bunch. So, what better way to test Switch emulation than with Tears of the Kingdom?

This was a patented case of "they had me in the first half," because the gameplay was pretty smooth, hovering around 30fps. Things slowed down a bit after the encounter with Ganondorf, dropping to between 20-25fps, but still totally playable.

Unfortunately, once I grabbed Link's tunic from the first chest of the game and started to head out of the cave, it just stopped. Unlike Burnout on RPCSX, the screen froze for a moment or two before the game crashed entirely, taking me back to the main Citron screen.

It's a monster

It's worth pointing out that while all three of the aforementioned emulators include custom GPU support, I stuck with the stock configuration. This is mostly because Turnip drivers still aren't tuned for the Snapdragon 8 Elite, and it provided more of an "out-of-the-box" test bed.

That being said, I look forward to testing out more games on the Galaxy Z Fold 7, seeing what is and isn't possible. This is really a "do-it-all" phone, as it can help pass the time while you're waiting in line at the store, get work done from wherever, and double as a gaming handheld when it's time to unwind. Just make sure you have enough storage if you plan on emulating newer consoles.