Pre-order pricing is now live for Samsung’s latest crop of folding smartphones, but something’s changed – namely, the numbers.
The Galaxy Z Fold 7, Flip 7, and Flip 7 FE have quietly become more expensive since they were unveiled at Samsung’s local launch event two weeks ago.
Stuff reached out to Samsung SA for comment but hadn’t heard back by time of publishing.
Samsung’s foldable prices climb
Of the three new devices, the Galaxy Z Fold 7 was hit with the biggest increase. Its starting price of R43,000 for the 256GB model doesn’t appear on the company’s website yet, likely because of Samsung’s ongoing pre-order deals.
Those offer users “double the storage” if they pre-order the 256GB or 512GB models before 7 August 2025. So, the current point of entry for the Galaxy Z Fold 7 512GB is R49,600, rather close to what the company initially said the 1TB model would cost. If you need that much storage in your Fold 7, you’ll now have to cough up R52,700. It’s unclear how Samsung will ‘upgrade’ those pre-orderers.
The Galaxy Flip 7 has also had its prices increased. The smallest 256GB storage option is still listed as ‘coming soon’, but the 512GB model is now listed for R28,000, although that’s ‘only’ a R500 increase.
For some reason, the price increases of the newest entry to Samsung’s foldable stable, the Galaxy Z Flip 7 FE, hurt the most. What initially seemed like a great deal, the starting price of R18,500 for the 128GB model isn’t listed on Samsung’s website. But the 256GB model’s price of R22,800 is a good R1,300 higher than it was just two weeks ago. That might be enough to dissuade folks thinking about seeing what all the foldable fuss was about.
We reached out to Samsung SA to find out the reasoning behind the short-notice local price increases, but hadn’t heard back by time of publishing. We’ll update this article when we do.
UPDATE 23/07: Samsung SA issued the following statement regarding the Galaxy Z Fold 7 and Flip 7 price changes:
“A few of our media community noticed an offer change on samsung.com South Africa’s platform post Unpacked. This was an effort in reframing of the online channel’s Galaxy Z Fold 7 and Z Flip 7 value proposition with differentiated offers exclusively for samsung.com and Samsung Shop App shoppers.
These online and in-app deals ensure the checkout prices are competitive with current market rates.
We wish to assure Samsung customers and media partners, that the recently introduced Foldable handsets are still available at the originally communicated recommended marketplace pricing through our approved stockists and channels, many of whom have developed additional unique and differentiated launch offers of their own.
Samsung is excited to see the positive results to the Z Series pre-orders so far, we attribute part of this to the associated channel offers that cater for varying consumer needs.”
