Samsung Galaxy Z Flip 7 vs Vivo X300 Ultra

Samsung Galaxy Z Flip 7

Samsung shoehorned a 4,300 mAh cell into a slimmer body (up from 4,000 mAh on the Flip 6) and the more efficient Exynos 2500 turns that into a real endurance gain — Engadget's video rundown jumped from 13 to 18.5 hours. Most reviewers easily get a full day, with light users pushing into a second. Charging is where Samsung has not moved at all: 25W wired (same as Flip 6, ~89 minutes to full), 15W wireless. On a $1,099 phone in 2025 with rivals doing 45–80W, every reviewer flags this as the biggest miss.

• The 4,300 mAh battery gives 'battery performance a little worse than your average slab-style phone, but not by much' — moderate use ended most days with 40–50% remaining.
• Engadget's standard video rundown jumped from 13 hours on the Flip 6 to 18.5 hours on the Flip 7 — a result so unexpectedly good they ran the test two more times to confirm.
• Light usage days easily push into a second day — about 3 hours of mixed use (social, messaging, video, gaming) ended the day at 11pm with over 40% left.
• Wired charging tops out at 25W — the same as the Flip 6 and the base S25 — and Samsung still has the gall to call it 'Super Fast Charging' when rivals are at 45W or higher.
• 0–50% takes 28 minutes, 0–100% takes 89 minutes on the included 25W charger — well off the half-hour full charges Xiaomi, Honor and Oppo are doing on similar-sized batteries.
• The Flip's battery is relatively small compared to rivals like the Xiaomi Mix Flip 2, and the slow charging compounds that — a clear gap on Notebookcheck's verdict-page cons list.
• Samsung is leaving capacity on the table by sticking with conventional lithium-ion when silicon-carbon batteries (like the 5,820 mAh cell in the Honor Magic V5 in the same form factor) clearly exist.

Vivo X300 Ultra

Vivo grew the silicon-carbon cell 10% to 6,600mAh while keeping the body the same size. Real-world endurance is strong — ~16h active-use score, ~7h heavy screen-on, 13–14 hour days with charge to spare — and 100W wired refills it in under an hour, with 40W wireless.

• Vivo increased the battery by 10% to 6,600mAh despite the phone being practically the same size on paper.
• In our battery test it earned an active-use score of almost 16 hours; 100W charging took it 0–66% in 30 minutes and a full charge in 46 minutes, plus 40W wireless. A charger is in the box except in Europe.
• On the China version I'm finishing entire 13–14 hour days with 25–30% left; the global version keeps the 6,600mAh cell so battery life should comfortably last 12–13 hours of heavy use.
• Getting nearly 7 hours of screen-on time with very heavy usage from the 6,600mAh silicon-carbon unit, with 100W wired and 40W wireless charging support.
• After a 4-hour heavy-usage simulation the phone still had ~45% battery left, which is solid by today's standards, and 100W wired charging takes about 45 minutes to full.

Samsung Galaxy Z Flip 7

At $1,099 the Flip 7 sits between traditional flagships and the $1,999 Z Fold 7 — and Samsung now sells a cheaper Z Flip 7 FE at $899 for buyers who don't need the new edge-to-edge cover screen. Reviewer consensus across The Verge, Engadget, GSMArena and Trusted Reviews is that this is the best Flip yet and the strongest clamshell foldable Samsung has made. The qualifier from Wired, Notebookcheck, Digital Trends and Reddit is that the same money buys you a vastly more capable traditional flagship — the S25 Ultra is $1,299 and the Motorola Razr Ultra runs the cover screen better. The Flip 7 is for buyers who want the form factor, not the spec sheet.

• The Galaxy Z Flip 7 is the best version of Samsung's flip phone to date — the cover screen is more useful than ever, it's guaranteed seven years of software updates, and it offers a reliable camera system.
• By refreshing the design and slimming the Flip, Samsung has made its smaller foldable easier to handle — but the dated cameras and limited Flex Window utility mean the Flip 7 doesn't push its category forward by much.
• The Flip 7 is undoubtedly the best Flip to date — for most people, it's all the foldable they need.
• It wasn't long ago that Samsung's Flip series was unrivalled — with the Flip 7 that is no longer the case, and the Xiaomi Mix Flip 2 manages to do several things better.
• Samsung now sells three Flip variants: the standard Z Flip 7 at $1,099, a cheaper Z Flip 7 FE (Exynos 2400, 3.4" cover screen, Flip 6-style design) at $899, and the new Z Fold 7 at $1,999 — broadening the lineup but not lowering the flagship's price.
• Bigger displays and more battery in a slimmer body — Samsung's better clamshell for 2025 is another refresh that won't shake up the industry but is guaranteed to keep sales high.
• An r/Android owner reports the Flip 7 is a good phone but 'the battery is atrocious' — a reminder that real-world endurance on heavier days falls well short of the standardized video-rundown results.
• iPhone mini users with no successor option are quietly looking at the Flip as one of the few remaining ways to get a small-footprint pocketable phone — a niche Samsung is now uniquely positioned to capture.

Vivo X300 Ultra

This is a deliberately niche, camera-first flagship: roughly €1,175 in China for 512GB, around £1,399 globally for the phone, and close to €2,600 for the full kit. For the people it's aimed at it draws some of the strongest praise of any 2026 phone; for everyone else, a cheaper X300 Pro or the Oppo Find X9 Ultra may make more sense.

• Last year's X200 Ultra was, in my opinion, one of the best smartphones of 2025 — and this is the best smartphone I've ever used, with the best camera application I've ever used, provided with zero script from Vivo.
• The cameras are nothing short of amazing — this is the best Android camera phone, with image quality better than anything from Samsung.
• The versatility here is just ridiculous — more like a phone in a camera than the other way around, a camera system built from the sum of its many parts.
• If you accept the 35mm main, are willing to tolerate AI processing in some scenes, and don't mind the front-camera stabilisation limits, this Vivo is an excellent choice.