I recently got to watch what happens when you jailbreak some of the world’s most powerful artificial intelligence models.
Don’t worry—this AI manipulation wasn’t used to hack anyone or build a nuclear bomb. I simply got to see firsthand how vulnerable some frontier models are to ditching their safety guardrails.
FAR.AI, an AI safety nonprofit based in California, built a tool that takes a range of problematic prompts and generates more than a thousand different versions in an attempt to identify functioning jailbreaks. I saw some models generate a detailed plan for launching a cyberattack on an imaginary hydroelectric dam, among other things. Often, it involved trying dozens of prompts, with models rejecting many of them out of hand.
I chatted with FAR.AI in advance of a new report, which saw the group test the safety guardrails of models from four popular US companies: Anthropic’s Claude Opus 4.8 and Fable 5; OpenAI’s GPT 5.5 and 5.6; Google’s Gemini 3.1 Pro; and Grok 4.3 and 4.5, from Elon Musk’s newly combined SpaceXAI. It auto-generated prompts designed to trick the models into doing potentially harmful things, like generating software exploits and providing details for developing chemical or biological weapons.
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The report found that Grok was most vulnerable to jailbreaks, with 448 jailbreaks found, followed by Gemini, with 249 found, while Claude, Fable, and GPT were impervious to the attacks. However, that doesn’t mean those models are immune to more sophisticated jailbreaks, which may involve interacting with a model in more complex ways, according to FAR.AI and other experts.
The report also calculated the cost of getting models to misbehave by using another AI model to automatically generate different jailbreaks. The results are dirt cheap, all things considered—$58 to jailbreak Grok and $278 to jailbreak Gemini.
“AI models right now are less regulated than restaurants,” says Adam Gleave, the CEO of FAR.AI and an expert on AI safety and alignment.
Gleave says that the findings demonstrate the need for externally imposed standards and regulations. “Talk of relying on voluntary commitments, that AI companies are going to be able to self-regulate, is nonsense,” he says.
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But Gleave also believes that the findings show that models can be systematically tested for safety. “There’s an optimistic angle here,” he says. “Defense and safety really are possible.”
Rohin Shah, the director of AGI safety and alignment at Google DeepMind, says the results of the report “should not be interpreted as a comprehensive assessment of Gemini’s safety and security,” because not all jailbreaks are equally severe.
“We are constantly working to improve our safeguards,” Shah says. “We conduct extensive red teaming and evaluations across severe misuse risks and apply multiple layers of protection throughout development and deployment.”
“These findings reflect the sustained investment we’ve made in our safeguards,” Anthropic spokesperson Michael Aciman tells WIRED. “We continue to evolve our safety systems as these attacks become more sophisticated.”
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“Jailbreaks are an ongoing challenge across the industry, and we continuously strengthen our safeguards as attack techniques evolve. We rigorously test our models against new threats and use those findings to improve our protections,” OpenAI spokesperson Gaby Raila said in a statement to WIRED.
SpaceXAI did not respond to WIRED’s request for comment.
Recently passed state laws in California and New York require frontier AI developers to publish safety reports, and soon, an Illinois law will require those companies to have their safety practices evaluated by third-party auditors. But the federal government hasn’t yet passed any specific safety requirements, and chaos has ensued as the industry—and officials—try to figure it out.
Apple wants to use China-sourced chips for products sold in China during the AI-driven memory shortage, but a letter from US senators hopes to persuade Apple otherwise.
The hype cycle around what is basically a natural evolution of an advanced autocomplete engine has destabilized the global economy and supply chain. The ever-increasing demand for more components to build data centers has led to a global chip and component shortage.
Apple has looked to blacklisted Chinese companies to bolster its supply chain, but, according to a letter viewed byBloomberg, US senators want to urge Apple away from this solution. They worry about various potential calamities like other companies following suit, potential national security issues, and yet another industrial exodus from the United States.
Apple has officially requested to buy from ChangXin Memory Technologies Inc. and has purchased chips, but not used them in products, from Yangtze Memory Technologies Co. The US senators have asked Apple to reconsider using chips from either company and commit to not using them by August 21.
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The letter arrived only four days after Micron asked the White House to reject Apple’s plans.
Apple’s latest China problem
While Apple isn’t banned from buying chips from either company, it could face a few repercussions. First, the US Department of Defense could stop buying Apple products, even if the chips are only used in China-sold products, due to the Chinese Military Company Blacklist.
That’s only a drop in the bucket for Apple, but an important relationship that could be burned.
Apple could also face regulatory issues and increased pressure from the Trump administration. The company has already had to walk on eggshells to avoid the worst of the random and illegal global tariffs, and such a move could undo all of that overnight.
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A possible Trump card
Alternatively, Apple could be attempting to play right into a developing situation where President Trump hopes to ease trade tensions with China. He is expected to meet with Xi Jinping in September, and offering Apple the blessing to build and sell using Chinese components could be quite the bargaining chip.
Apple has worked hard to keep Trump out of its business
However, the senators aren’t sure this would be a good idea:
“The limitation that CXMT memory would, for the moment, be confined to devices sold in China cannot be expected to hold, because once a part clears qualification for Apple production, extending it worldwide is a single procurement decision away,” they wrote in the letter to Apple. “The precedent Apple would set by addressing the memory shortage this way would shape the memory market and this country’s security for years after supply has returned to normal, and we urge you to weigh that carefully.”
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Perhaps the senators could regulate the industry and attempt to stem the flood created by the far-fetched promises made by grifting billionaires. The memory shortage is tied to a bubble that is sure to deflate or pop at any time, which could be disastrous for the global economy.
When the AI boom ends, Apple sourcing chips for devices sold in China will be the least of our worries. We can only hope Senators Banks, Schumer, and the others will stop chasing distractions and target the root of the problem.
On a February evening in 1990, two presenters sat down with a stack of old reports and asked a simple question. What became of the cameras that were supposed to change photography forever? Peter Macann and Kate Bellingham pulled clips from the Tomorrow’s World archive and walked viewers through four ideas that had once looked like the next big thing. Some had already faded. One had quietly taken over. Another was still waiting for the rest of the technology to catch up.
Peter returns to work on a device he showed off to the world four years ago. When 1986 arrived, the still video camera appeared to be rather ordinary, until you discovered that it saved images on a floppy disk rather than film. Can you imagine? Anyway, you merely pointed the contraption at what you wanted to photograph, and the pictures appeared on the TV straight away; no need to rush off to the chemist to have them developed, and no waiting for hours. By 1990, amateur versions were available in stores, but they were still quite expensive at around £500, and the prints they created appeared soft and expensive when compared to a regular color print. The prototype on the desk that night was a bit weird. It had a cumbersome adapter that fastened onto the rear of a standard camera body, allowing photographers to select between film and electronic storage, as if they could have it both ways. The problem was that the supporting ideas weren’t nearly ready yet.
Next followed the Nimslo, a four-lens camera that debuted in 1981. Each of the lenses was capturing the same sight from a slightly different perspective. Special processing then merged all of the individual frames together to create a print with true depth, if viewed correctly. The American creators dubbed this the photography of the future, and British stores charged two hundred pounds for it. However, processing the film incurred an additional expense of three times the typical cost of film.
By the end of the year, the Nimslo had disappeared from store shelves. However, that innovative system of four lenses was eventually transferred to Japan to a business called Nishika. They were more practical in their approach, and the revised version they released later that year cut things down significantly. There was no more painfully difficult autofocus or automatic exposure; instead, you had fixed focus, manual film winding, and everything else. A far simpler, less expensive tool geared specifically at folks looking for that depth effect without spending a fortune.
Autofocus, on the other hand, was the complete polar opposite of an exciting story. In 1981, Michael Rodd invented one of the first interchangeable lenses capable of focusing on its own. Nine years later, that capability has simply become a normal feature of most cameras sold to the general public. You’d be hard pushed to detect a distinction between the actual process of shooting a photograph. The camera simply made it faster and more reliable, and that quiet, steady utility lasted far longer than many of the more absurd claims.
Then, returning on television, is Maggie Philbin from 1986, holding up a little plastic box containing a film cartridge, a rudimentary lens, a shutter, and a single hole that acts as a viewfinder. The concept back then was that the entire thing should be used once and then discarded. That initially seems dubious, if not wasteful. Four years later, however, disposable cameras flooded the market. People bought them for vacations, parties, and any other occasion when they didn’t want to risk throwing away a good camera. Soon, there were variants that worked underwater, captured panoramic images, and so on. Some manufacturers even anticipated the scenario by intending to collect plastic cases during processing and then return them to production. In the end, the old, old formulae won out: simplicity, low cost, and easy replacement; all of these proved to be considerably more powerful than all of the futuristic nonsense.
The pilot programme will bring together graduates, employers and industry professionals to build skills for a future-focused workforce.
Tech Industry Alliance and RDI Hub have announced the launch of the Graduate AI Launchpad pilot, which is a new programme designed to prepare graduates, employers and industry professionals in the South-West, for an AI enabled workplace.
The inaugural programme, which aims to further expand across Cork and Kerry in the future, welcomed the first cohort this week to the RDI Hub in Killorglin. The four-week model will give graduates the opportunity to work on real industry challenges, learn from experienced professionals and build the confidence to apply AI in practical workplace settings.
Participants will work alongside industry mentors, collaborate on practical projects and hear from experienced speakers before presenting their own work at a showcase event upon the conclusion of the programme. Graduate AI Launchpad is built around practical learning, giving participants the opportunity to develop skills that will likely apply to future careers.
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The first group of graduates involved were nominated by Astellas, Aspengrove, Fexco, Stingray Labs, TLI Group, ViClarity and MTU and are representative of a range of disciplines, such as engineering, quantity surveying, business, psychology and technology.
Commenting on the launch Juliette Crowley, the COO of the Tech Industry Alliance, said, “One of the Tech Industry Alliance’s core objectives is to strengthen the technology ecosystem across Cork and Kerry by creating meaningful collaboration between industry, education and the wider community.
“Graduate AI Launchpad is a wonderful example of that in action. By working alongside the RDI Hub and employers from across the South-West, we are creating opportunities that help graduates develop practical AI skills while giving businesses the talent they will need for the future.
“We hope this pilot will become the foundation for a programme that will support many more graduates across Cork and Kerry in the years ahead.”
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Maeve Lyons, the programme manager at RDI Hub added, “AI is one of the RDI Hub’s key focus areas and for years we have been helping organisations understand, adopt and apply AI to solve real business challenges.
“Graduate AI Launchpad is a natural extension of that work, giving graduates the opportunity to learn directly from industry, work on practical projects and build confidence using AI in real-world settings.”
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The Galaxy Z Fold 8 feels like a turning point for Samsung’s foldables, trading pure productivity for a lighter, more practical design that’s genuinely enjoyable day to day. It has compromises, especially around cameras, sustained performance and battery life, but it’s still the Samsung foldable I’d choose.
Fantastic passport-style design
Excellent inner display
Useful wide cover screen
Smooth everyday performance
Underwhelming dual cameras
Can stutter with more demanding tasks
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Key Features
Review Price:
£1699
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Content-first foldable design
A shorter, wider build makes the Z Fold 8 easier to use one-handed and better for videos, games and everyday apps.
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Less visible crease
Samsung’s Flex Titanium tech helps reduce the crease while making the inner screen feel sturdier.
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Flagship Snapdragon power
The Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 and 12GB- or 16GB of RAM keep things feeling fast and fluid.
Introduction
The Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 8 is here, and it’s a completely different beast to last year’s Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 7.
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Samsung has ditched the long-and-tall cover screen and boxy, productivity-focused inner panel for something more geared toward watching movies, gaming, messaging, and, y’know, most of the things we tend to do on our phones in day-to-day life. The productivity form factor remains, but that’s now under the upgraded (and more expensive) Fold 8 Ultra umbrella.
Honestly, I think Samsung might be onto something here. After a week of everyday use, the wider, squatter Z Fold 8 has changed how I think a book-style foldable should feel, with a far more approachable design that’s easier to use one-handed, better suited to apps and social media and surprisingly hard to put down.
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Design
Shorter, squatter passport-style design
Easy to use one-handed
Very light at 201g
Despite the familiar naming convention, the Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 8 doesn’t look or feel like any other foldable we’ve seen so far. And that’s kind of the point.
Image Credit (Trusted Reviews)
It’s the first Samsung foldable to sport an entirely new book-style form factor, moving away from the long, tall cover screen and boxy inner panel that have become the norm over the past few years.
Instead, it’s pitched as a much more content-friendly foldable, with a smaller, squatter 5.5-inch 16:10 screen – similar in size and shape to a passport – on the outside, and a larger 7.8-inch panel on the inside with a more tablet-esque 3:4 aspect ratio.
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Picking it up for the first time, I could already tell this thing was going to be popular – and that opinion hasn’t changed after a week or so of use. Even as someone who has used book-style foldables like the Z Fold 7 and Oppo Find N6 long-term, I don’t think I can go back to the boxier format after using the Fold 8.
The squatter cover screen makes it much easier to use one-handed, while still offering a proper smartphone experience. Apps like TikTok, YouTube and games all run perfectly well on that outer display, with more horizontal space to work with than Samsung’s previous Fold cover screens.
Image Credit (Trusted Reviews)
Then, when you want more room for browsing the web, scrolling through Instagram or watching something, you can unfold it into a larger 7.8-inch tablet-shaped display. It feels almost like a hybrid between a regular book-style foldable and the ultra-compact nature of flip-style foldables. It just makes sense.
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It’s noticeably light too. At 201g, it’s the lightest book-style foldable by quite a margin, and also lighter than regular phones including Samsung’s own Galaxy S26 Ultra. For a device focused on social media, movies and gaming – something you’ll likely hold for extended periods – that matters.
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That smaller footprint also means it slips nicely into pockets without the tall form factor or extra heft of previous book-style foldables.
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The hinge isn’t as malleable as the Fold 8 Ultra’s, so it won’t easily sit open mid-way in a laptop-style position without a bit of fiddling. The flip side is that it’s much easier to open the foldable screen with one hand, popping open with very little effort. According to Samsung, that was a conscious decision based on how it expects people to use the phone.
You can still get it to stay open mid-way with some effort, whether that’s for watching YouTube on the cover screen in tent mode or using the internal screen in laptop mode without propping it up. That said, with the 3:4 aspect ratio, I can’t see many people using laptop mode all that often. If that’s your use case, the Z Fold 8 Ultra is the better choice.
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As has been the case for a few years now, Samsung’s latest foldable also comes in some lovely finishes, including Graphite, Cream, Lavender and Pistachio, though the latter is a Samsung Store exclusive. That’s a shame – it’s definitely my favourite of the bunch – but the Lavender hue provided for review is a close second.
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If there’s one area that hasn’t really changed, it’s dust and water resistance. The IP48-rated foldable remains water-resistant and can survive 1.5m dunks for up to 30 minutes, but there are no improvements to dust ingress; anything smaller than 1mm can still potentially cause an issue.
That said, it seems only Google has solved the ever-challenging issue of full dust and water resistance in foldables, so the Fold 8 isn’t much of an outlier – for now.
Screens
5.5-inch cover screen is genuinely useful
Larger 7.8-inch inner display is great for apps and video
Much less noticeable crease
While cover screens have long felt like an afterthought beside the big, shiny foldable displays, the Z Fold 8’s compact 5.5-inch screen is every bit as important as its foldable sibling.
The 16:10 aspect ratio works really well, offering a shorter but wider experience that doesn’t make replying to messages, scrolling through apps or doing everyday phone things feel awkward – something that hasn’t always been true of Samsung’s foldable cover screens.
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The wider panel means bigger images on social media, more room to read messages, and easier Google Maps navigation without needing to unfold the phone. It’s also particularly well suited to gaming and watching 16:9 movies on Netflix, with only minor black bars above and below.
Despite its relatively dinky size, it doesn’t feel cramped or compromised, and there aren’t many foldable cover screens you can say that about – especially from Samsung’s own collection.
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Specs-wise, it also closely matches, if not exactly matches, the inner panel, making it feel like a proper flagship screen in its own right.
But, of course, the inner display is still the main event – and what a display it is. The 7.8-inch foldable panel is bright, vivid and detailed, with Dynamic AMOLED 2X tech, an LTPO-enabled 120Hz refresh rate and a peak brightness of 3000 nits. Really, though, it’s all about two things: the aspect ratio and the lack of a noticeable crease.
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It’s hard to convey just how much of an improvement the 4:3 aspect ratio makes to the foldable experience. Using a familiar tablet-style shape, practically every app I tried on the inner display ran without complaint in landscape mode, from WhatsApp and Slack to YouTube and Instagram.
For the first time, I didn’t have to ask myself whether an app I was using on the cover screen would work properly on a boxy foldable panel. I just opened it, and it worked. It sounds small, but it’s surprisingly freeing.
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Video benefits too. The shorter, wider display better matches the aspect ratio of movies, so while there are still black bars, the video takes up more of the screen than it does on boxier foldables like the Z Fold 8 Ultra.
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That said, I actually tended to use the inner screen in portrait orientation most of the time, essentially giving me a large smartphone display that’s perfect for scrolling through apps, playing portrait-oriented games and watching vertical video on TikTok in particular.
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The trade-off is that it’s not quite as well-suited to intensive split-screen use, though I still found it perfectly capable of running two apps side by side for casual browsing or messaging. You don’t get as much space as you would on the Ultra, but it’s still far better than trying to do the same on a regular smartphone – so don’t let Samsung’s categorisation put you off entirely.
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The other big leap comes from Samsung’s new Flex Titanium tech. It’s essentially two layers embedded in the inner folding panel, designed not only to reduce the crease but also to make the panel feel more solid under the finger – another long-running complaint about foldables and their plastic screens.
It works. The inner display is noticeably sturdier, and when paired with the same anti-reflective coating as the Galaxy S26 Ultra, it has less of that plastic sheen that can distort reflections. That alone is a big upgrade.
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And then there’s the crease – or should I say, lack thereof. Put the phone down flat and, head-on at least, you can barely see a dip in the middle of the display. It’s still visible from an angle, and you can feel it if you run your finger across it, but I doubt it’ll bother many people.
I think Oppo’s Find N6 still has a slight edge when it comes to crease-less screen tech, but this is a big step forward from what Samsung offered just a year ago.
Performance
Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 for Galaxy power
Snappy in everyday use
Can struggle with sustained demanding tasks
Despite sitting behind the all-singing, all-dancing Galaxy Z Fold 8 Ultra, the regular Z Fold 8 still gets the top-end Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 for Galaxy, also found in the Galaxy S26 Ultra. That’s paired with 12GB of RAM and either 256GB, 512GB or 1TB of storage.
As we’ve already seen from the S26 Ultra and a host of other 8 Elite Gen 5 phones, it’s a very capable chipset, and that has largely reflected my day-to-day experience over the past week. Still, there are a few caveats.
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I noticed the occasional stutter during particularly demanding tasks, like editing multi-track 4K video in CapCut Pad, and the phone doesn’t seem to love running massively demanding games like Wuthering Waves with top-end graphics enabled. It gets warm after only a few minutes.
The chipset is clearly capable on paper, then, but the Fold 8’s thinner body and smaller overall footprint compared to the Fold 8 Ultra seem to limit how well it can sustain that performance over longer periods.
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Interestingly, Samsung appears to know this, as it has blocked the usual benchmarking apps – Geekbench 6, 3DMark and the like – that we use to test performance. That’s fairly common on pre-release phones from brands like Xiaomi and Honor, but it’s the first time I’ve seen Samsung do it. More tellingly, the Z Fold 8 Ultra doesn’t have the same blocks.
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Luckily, Geekbench 7 launched during my testing period, and because it wasn’t on Samsung’s block list, I could get some numbers to back up the experience. They were pretty much as expected: despite the 8 Elite Gen 5 for Galaxy power, the Z Fold 8 can’t quite match the larger Fold 8 Ultra or other book-style foldables in CPU or GPU performance.
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That has rarely been an issue in real-world use, however. The phone feels snappy and responsive when swiping through One UI, apps open instantly, and there’s no general stutter or lag when browsing. But if you’re a true power user, you might find the Z Fold 8 can’t always keep up.
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Software
One UI 9 based on Android 17
A handful of new AI features
Seven years of OS upgrades
The Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 8, along with the Fold 8 Ultra and Flip 8, are the first phones to run Android 17 out of the box, beating Google’s upcoming Pixel 11 range to the punch by a few weeks.
Of course, this isn’t stock Android. It runs Samsung’s latest custom skin, One UI 9, and among Android skins from the likes of Honor, Xiaomi, Oppo and RedMagic, One UI remains one of the better options. It balances ease of use with genuinely useful extra features – most of the time, anyway.
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It’s a pleasure to use day-to-day, with plenty of foldable-focused features to make the most of the larger internal display. The foldable taskbar, app tray, split-screen multitasking and floating window support are all present and accounted for, even if Samsung claims the regular Z Fold 8 isn’t its productivity-focused foldable.
Really, though, as with recent versions of One UI, the focus is AI. The usual suite of Galaxy AI features is here, including recent additions like Photo Assist from the S26 series, along with a few new tricks.
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Content creators will appreciate the new MyFanCam shooting mode, which lets you crop in on and track a specific subject in a video you’ve already shot, adjusting things like the aspect ratio in the process. It works pretty well too, with smooth tracking that stayed locked onto the subject in my testing.
There are also a few Gemini-powered features previously exclusive to Pixel devices, including the upgraded Gemini advanced automation tech that rolled out in the US a couple of months ago.
It essentially allows Gemini to perform tasks in apps on your behalf, such as booking a stay in Expedia, though I couldn’t get it working during testing. Samsung has reassured me it is coming to UK users, but it likely won’t arrive until the phone’s official launch.
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Now Brief has had some TLC too, pulling in more information from more sources to make it, y’know, actually helpful. It still works best with a Samsung wearable, where you’ll get health insights each morning, but the mix of weather, news, YouTube videos, Spotify playlists and weekly recaps of places I’ve been and photos I’ve taken feels much more personal than before.
You can even create your own custom Now Brief cards, again powered by Gemini, with over 100 combinations available. For now, though, it only covers weather, Samsung Health and YouTube videos. A wider selection would be nice.
One UI 9 also slips in a few, let’s say, iOS-inspired features, including AI-prioritised notifications that appear at the top of your lock screen and notification summaries for chat apps. The former is actually quite accurate, but given how meme-worthy Apple’s implementation of the latter was, it’s a bold move for Samsung to copy it. It’s there if you want it. I certainly don’t.
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Like Samsung’s other flagship foldables, the Fold 8 also gets seven years of OS upgrades and security patches, so it should continue to improve for years to come.
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Cameras
Dual 50MP rear camera setup
No dedicated zoom lens
Solid main and ultrawide performance
As irresistible as the new form factor is, Samsung’s decision to pair it with a fairly middling dual-camera setup will give some people pause for thought.
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Yes, the Z Fold 8 is technically not Samsung’s top-end Fold this year, but it still costs comfortably more than phones like the iPhone 17 Pro Max and Oppo Find X9 Ultra, and the camera hardware should reflect that.
It’s a harder pill to swallow because last year’s Z Fold 7 offered a better camera setup for around the same price, with a 200MP main camera, an ultrawide and a dedicated zoom lens. This year, that trio is exclusive to the much pricier Z Fold 8 Ultra.
As it stands, the Z Fold 8 offers a dual 50MP setup made up of a main and ultrawide lens, with no dedicated zoom lens to help you get closer to the action. Samsung could have softened the blow by using the Ultra’s higher-res 200MP main sensor for better in-sensor zoom, but alas, that’s not the case. As such, zoom performance is pretty lacklustre.
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It does a solid enough job at 2x, tightening the shot without a noticeable drop in quality, but that doesn’t last long. Push it far beyond the 2-3x mark, and you’ll start to see telltale signs of processing, from softer details to a flatter overall image. It’s just not a very versatile setup, even compared to similarly priced foldables.
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Zoom aside, though, the two lenses fare pretty well in general use. Samsung’s signature vibrance is here, giving images a pop of colour that looks great on social media, while built-in filters – including one that lets you choose a colour profile from an existing image – mean you can tweak things to your liking.
Images are generally detailed, as you’d expect, and the main camera’s f/1.8 aperture pulls double duty, adding a nice natural bokeh to close-up shots while boosting light intake in darker scenes. It won’t work wonders with its smaller 1/1.57-inch sensor compared to most top-end camera phones, but it does a good job balancing lighter and darker areas in low-light scenes.
The ultrawide is pleasingly similar in most regards. Colours remain consistent across the two lenses for the most part, and there’s plenty of detail for scenic shots. It’s only when things get darker that you can tell the difference, with ultrawide shots looking a little dimmer and softer than those from the main lens.
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They’re perfectly serviceable cameras, but if you want the best foldable camera experience Samsung has to offer, you’ll need to pony up for the 8 Ultra. It’s not the ideal solution – there are plenty of people, myself included, who prefer a content-focused foldable but still like taking great photos – but it’s the compromise you’ll have to make if you want this form factor.
Battery life
4800mAh battery gets through a full day
Around six hours of mixed screen time
45W charging with 20W wireless support
Considering the Z Fold 8 has a smaller overall footprint than the Z Fold 8 Ultra, the fact it has only a 200mAh smaller battery – 4800mAh compared to 5000mAh – is pretty impressive. For Samsung, anyway.
Yes, there are foldables with much bigger batteries out there – the 6600mAh Honor Magic V6, I’m looking at you – but for most people, what the Z Fold 8 offers will be absolutely fine.
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I’ve been using the Z Fold 8 a lot over the past week, arguably more than I usually would because I’ve enjoyed the new form factor so much. That has meant an average of around six hours of screen time per day, yet I still managed to get to bed after 16- 18-hour days with battery left.
Granted, there wasn’t much left in the tank, usually around 5-10%, and there was one busier day when I had to top it up to get through the evening. But for more casual users, this shouldn’t be much of an issue.
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45W charging isn’t the fastest we’ve seen on a foldable, but with the 4800mAh capacity, it doesn’t take too long to recharge. In my testing, a 15-minute charge got me to 35%, 30 minutes reached 67%, and a full charge took 68 minutes.
There’s also 20W wireless charging for added convenience, though there’s no MagSafe-like built-in magnet support, unlike the competing Pixel 10 Pro Fold. Given the Fold 8’s content-first focus, an easy way to mount it would have been a nice touch. There’s always next year, I suppose.
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Final Thoughts
The Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 8 is a turning point for Samsung’s foldable line. By moving away from the productivity-first formula of previous Fold models, Samsung has made a book-style foldable that’s lighter, easier to handle, and far more enjoyable to use day-to-day.
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There are compromises. The dual-camera setup feels underwhelming at this price, sustained performance can’t quite match the larger Fold 8 Ultra, and battery life will only just see heavier users through a long day. But none of that stops the Z Fold 8 from being one of the most refreshing foldables Samsung has made in years.
After a week of use, it has completely changed what I want from a book-style foldable. It still gives you that expansive inner display when you want it, but the wider, squatter design makes it feel far more natural as an everyday phone.
If you want Samsung’s most powerful, productivity-focused foldable, buy the Z Fold 8 Ultra. But if you want the foldable that’s the most fun, practical and genuinely easy to live with, the Galaxy Z Fold 8 is the one I’d choose.
We test every mobile phone we review thoroughly. We use industry-standard tests to compare features properly and we use the phone as our main device over the review period. We’ll always tell you what we find and we never, ever, accept money to review a product.
Used as a main phone for over a week
Thorough camera testing in a variety of conditions
Tested and benchmarked using respected industry tests and real-world data
FAQs
What’s the difference between the Galaxy Z Fold 8 and Z Fold 8 Ultra?
The Galaxy Z Fold 8 is the more content-focused foldable, with a shorter, wider design that’s easier to use one-handed and better suited to videos, games and everyday apps. The Z Fold 8 Ultra keeps the more productivity-focused form factor, with a boxier inner screen that’s better for split-screen multitasking.
Does the Galaxy Z Fold 8 have the best Samsung foldable camera?
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Not quite. The Galaxy Z Fold 8 has a dual 50MP camera setup that seems capable from early testing, but it misses out on the Ultra’s higher-end camera hardware and dedicated zoom flexibility. If camera performance is your top priority, the Z Fold 8 Ultra is the better option.
How can one of the world’s largest smartphone companies lose money by selling more smartphones than ever? I think we all know the answer: soaring memory prices caused by the AI boom. Samsung just announced that despite “solid” smartphone sales and growing revenue, its DX division (which includes mobile) posted its first-ever loss of 800 billion won ($544 million) in the company’s second fiscal quarter.
“Although MX (Mobile eXperience) saw revenue growth year-over-year driven by solid sales of flagship products centered on the Galaxy S26 series and strong sales of the A series, operating profit decreased due to increased cost burdens across the industry, such as rising component costs,” the company said. (The DX division also includes TVs and appliances, but the loss was primarily in the mobile MX category.)
Samsung emphasized that flagship-level products like the Galaxy S26 Ultra and Galaxy Z Fold 8 series performed well, profit-wise. However, budget phones struggled to show a profit due to higher component costs and already-thin margins (Samsung foreshadowed this possibility back in April). As a result, the company plans to focus on “high-value-added products” in order to drive growth in future quarters.
With all that, consumers can expect higher smartphone prices across all categories from Samsung and other brands. This inflation will hit low-income buyers the hardest, as prices for smartphones in the $200-500 category will likely rise the most, percentage-wise.
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Samsung, of course, has a huge advantage over most manufacturers, as it also manufactures the memory and storage components used in smartphones. In that area, the company absolutely smashed it this quarter.
“The Device Solutions (DS) Division posted a [quarter-on-quarter] sales increase of 56 percent, with the Memory Business setting an all-time high for quarterly revenue and operating profit,” Samsung wrote.
Overall, Samsung posted a record 171.5 trillion ($119 billion) won in consolidated revenue (up 28 percent from last year), an all-time quarterly high. Operating profit also hit an all time high of 89.5 trillion ($62.2 billion). “Earnings per share for both common and preferred shares increased by 52 percent to… among the highest levels for global tech companies,” Samsung added. With all that money rolling in and shareholders happy, that puts less pressure on its mobile division — unless the AI bubble bursts, of course.
Meta founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg is trying to sell investors on his prediction for the future — one where billions of people will have their own personal AI agents in the next five years. (Let’s hope that future also comes with data centers efficient enough to power all those agents — without triggering a fresh wave of climate disasters.)
“I think that it’s extremely unlikely if you look out five years from now, for example — whatever period of time you want — that you don’t have billions of people with a personal agent that understands your goals and that is just working on your behalf 24/7 to achieve your goals in whatever the domain is that you care about,” Zuckerberg said on Wednesday’s quarterly earnings call with investors.
He added that he could see people using these agents to help them with their finances, health, interpersonal relationships, and household management.
“As we move toward a future where we’re all interacting with multiple agents, I think that WhatsApp and our other messaging surfaces are going to become increasingly important,” he said, noting that WhatsApp is already the leading platform where users interact with Meta AI.
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Meta is not alone in setting high expectations for AI systems that can act on a person’s behalf rather than just answer questions. Google emphasized custom AI agents as a key new feature in its Search overhaul, which sparked outcry from users who felt bogged down by the constant onslaught of AI results on Google. Meanwhile, subscriptions to Anthropic’s Claude have skyrocketed as engineers fawn over the agentic coding assistant Claude Code.
Compared to its competitors, however, Meta may not enjoy as much confidence from investors as it continues dumping cash into innovative projects that may or may not pan out — Meta’s stock dropped almost 10% after posting this quarter’s earnings. Meta’s Reality Labs, the organization responsible for its AR glasses, VR headsets, and related software, lost around $4.6 billion this quarter, roughly in line with the losses the division has posted each quarter since 2021. That’s a running total now of around $88 billion.
Meta’s AI spending is likely to climb even higher, which is more of a concern at this juncture. The company reported free cash flow of $784 million this quarter, down from $8.55 billion the same quarter last year. That’s a 91% drop year over year, exacerbated by the company’s investments in AI infrastructure. This week, Meta and BlackRock announced a partnership to build a $14 billion data center in El Paso, Texas.
“We believe that there will continue to be a significantly higher margin on selling intelligence rather than selling compute directly, but we think that there’s a big opportunity, obviously, to sell compute as well,” Zuckerberg said.
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Ultimately, he believes that the personal agents that Meta is developing will be “the foundation for our next wave of products and revenue lines in the months and years ahead.”
So far, Meta’s business agents, rolled out globally on WhatsApp and Messenger this quarter, have been adopted by more than one million businesses. It may be harder to get people to adopt consumer AI agents, but the road to “billions” has to start somewhere — the company can’t get there on enterprise agents alone.
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Thousands of ads for “nudify” apps on Meta-owned Facebook and Instagram have been traced back to GatherOne, one of Meta’s 11 Chinese advertising partners, according to a report published on Sunday by the Tech Transparency Project.
Nudify apps give users the AI tools to digitally remove clothing from photos of people, typically women and children, placing their faces in nonconsensual, pornographic images and videos. One of the advertised apps had Google Play reviews alerting others to what one reviewer called “illegal child porn.”
The ads themselves featured women simulating sex acts.
Meta’s community standards state that it doesn’t allow the promotion of nudify apps. Its advertising standards say that objectionable content includes ads that contain nudity, sexually suggestive activities or depictions of people in explicit or sexually suggestive positions.
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TTP’s research also found that many of these ads appeared to come from fake accounts. This further violates Meta’s ad standards, which prohibit advertisers from using “inauthentic assets” to deceive Meta or its users about their identity.
Meta and GatherOne’s responses
Because Facebook and Instagram are banned in China, the Chinese government and Meta reached a compromise: Chinese advertisers must use a handpicked third-party agency, such as GatherOne, to run ads on these social media platforms.
While TTP was investigating the ads and the accounts behind them, it noticed that Meta had removed many of them.
“We do not allow non-consensual intimate imagery or nudify apps on our platform and we take aggressive steps to combat them: blocking links to sites that host this content, restricting related search terms, removing over 340,000 violating ads late last year alone and, when appropriate, taking legal action,” Cindy Southworth, Meta’s head of women’s safety policy, said in a statement provided to CNET. “Because confronting these persistent bad actors is an industry-wide challenge, we also proactively share information through Lantern so other platforms can act.”
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Lantern is a Tech Coalition program that allows tech companies to share signals about child sexual abuse material, grooming manuals and other illegal content.
However, TTP said GatherOne’s accounts are still advertising, acknowledging that because the marketing agency generates so many ads — over 30,000 per month — Meta may be struggling to remove them all. While Meta’s ad review process includes multiple layers of analysis and detection, some of these occur only after an ad goes live.
Following publication of the report, GatherOne told TTP that it “suspended new ad account applications related to AI nudify, face swap and girlfriend services,” and told Bloomberg that it’s “undertaking a comprehensive compliance upgrade to address the technical evolution of synthetic [AI] media.”
In 2024, Meta reported that it generated $18.35 billion in China revenue, which accounted for 11% of its global revenue. Referencing Meta’s internal documents, Reuters said in December 2025 that more than $3 billion, or about 19%, of that 2024 China revenue came from ads for pornography, illegal gambling and other banned content.
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What Meta is doing to address nudify apps
In a news release published by Meta in June 2025, the company said it’s taking action against nudify apps, stating that it filed a lawsuit in Hong Kong against Joy Timeline HK Limited, the company behind CrushAI, to prevent it from advertising on Meta’s platforms. Joy Timeline HK Limited isn’t one of Meta’s Chinese advertising partners.
Along with stating that it’s building new technology that can detect nudify app ads, Meta said in its release that it will “continue to take the necessary steps — which could include legal action — against those who abuse our platforms like this.”
In a March 2026 integrity report, Meta said that it removed 344,000 ads promoting nudify apps on Instagram and Facebook between November 2025 and January 2026. Cease-and-desist letters were sent to 46 companies that advertised these apps, but the company names aren’t listed.
“GatherOne works with companies across the internet, including Google, TikTok and X,” Ryan Daniels, Meta spokesperson, said in a statement sent to CNET. “All advertisers have to comply with our advertising standards, and failure to comply with our policies and standards can lead to the cancellation of ads placed, financial penalties and termination of ad accounts.”
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Yet, while many of GatherOne’s ads were taken down, no action has been taken against GatherOne to prevent it from posting explicit or nudify app ads. A GatherOne representative didn’t respond to a request for comment.
Anna Gragert
Senior Editor, Health and Home
Anna Gragert (she/her/hers) was previously the lifestyle editor at HelloGiggles, the deputy editor at So Yummy and the senior lifestyle editor at Hunker. Over the past 12 years, Anna has also written for the LA Times, Elle, Bust Magazine, Dazed, Apartment Therapy, Well+Good and more. At CNET, she’s a senior editor on the Healthy Home team, and her coverage includes health, wellness tech, meal kits and home and kitchen tech with a focus on the technology that aims to help us live our healthiest, happiest lives.
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When I decided to take a last-minute ski trip, despite never having skied before, I went straight to Columbia. Was I shredding the slopes? Absolutely not, but at least I was warm, thanks to my Snowy Summit Insulated Jacket and Bugaboo II Pants. Here at WIRED, we’re fans of Columbia. The brand makes reliable, well-priced outdoor gear for skiing, hiking, hunting, or just a day at the beach. Plus, there’s almost always a deal to be found.
WIRED reviewer Chris Haslam loves the Columbia Konos Trillium ATR as a value all-around trail-running shoe for faster hikes, day trips, and mixed terrain excursions. The plush cushioning and 8-millimeter drop are ideal on packed dirt, gravel, and woodland paths. For hiking boots, he recommends the Tellurix Titanium OutDry, which are waterproof, offer serious traction on wet rock and mud, and are surprisingly lightweight at 1.6 pounds per pair.
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Join Columbia’s Greater Rewards program—it’s free to sign up and you won’t need a Columbia promo code—to get 15% off your first online order. Note, this particular coupon can’t be combined with any other Columbia discount code or deal and expires if not redeemed within 30 days of the date of issuance. Plus, as a member, you’ll earn points on purchases, get free standard shipping, and receive a 20 percent discount on your birthday.
Unlock Columbia Discount Codes and Get $20 off
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A new NYT Connections puzzle appears at midnight each day for your time zone – which means that some people are always playing ‘today’s game’ while others are playing ‘yesterday’s’. If you’re looking for Wednesday’s puzzle instead then click here: NYT Connections hints and answers for Wednesday, July 29 (game #1144).
Good morning! Let’s play Connections, the NYT’s clever word game that challenges you to group answers in various categories. It can be tough, so read on if you need Connections hints.
What should you do once you’ve finished? Why, play some more word games of course. I’ve also got daily Strands hints and answers and Quordle hints and answers articles if you need help for those too, while Marc’s Wordle today page covers the original viral word game.
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SPOILER WARNING: Information about NYT Connections today is below, so don’t read on if you don’t want to know the answers.
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NYT Connections today (game #1145) – today’s words
(Image credit: New York Times)
Today’s NYT Connections words are…
JUGGLING
CARNIVAL
DOT
FAIR
BINGO
RIGHT
POOL
NOSE
MONEY
GOOD
BEER PONG
CELEBRITY
VIKING
MARK
PRINCESS
JUST
NYT Connections today (game #1145) – hint #1 – group hints
What are some clues for today’s NYT Connections groups?
YELLOW: Doing the correct thing
GREEN: Many spherical objects are involved
BLUE: Big ship fleets
PURPLE: Expressions meaning exact
Need more clues?
We’re firmly in spoiler territory now, but read on if you want to know what the four theme answers are for today’s NYT Connections puzzles…
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NYT Connections today (game #1145) – hint #2 – group answers
What are the answers for today’s NYT Connections groups?
YELLOW: VIRTUOUS
GREEN: ACTIVITIES WITH MULTIPLE BALLS
BLUE: CRUISE LINES
PURPLE: ON THE __, TO MEAN “PRECISE”
Right, the answers are below, so DO NOT SCROLL ANY FURTHER IF YOU DON’T WANT TO SEE THEM.
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NYT Connections today (game #1145) – the answers
(Image credit: New York Times)
The answers to today’s Connections, game #1145, are…
YELLOW: VIRTUOUS: FAIR, GOOD, JUST, RIGHT
GREEN: ACTIVITIES WITH MULTIPLE BALLS: BEER PONG, BINGO, JUGGLING, POOL
PURPLE: ON THE __, TO MEAN “PRECISE”: DOT, MARK, MONEY, NOSE
My rating: Hard
My score: 1 mistake
Apart from CRUISE LINES, which I saw immediately, this was a game where I sort of knew what the groups were about, but also sort of didn’t.
My mistake came in collecting VIRTUOUS and thinking that this was all about alignment and making something measure up correctly — so I had RIGHT, JUST, GOOD, and NOSE, as in “on the NOSE”, which I never considered could be a group.
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Then I collected the four ACTIVITIES WITH MULTIPLE BALLS, but thought they were something about games that happen at parties; not that I have ever been to a party where a game of BINGO broke out.
Yesterday’s NYT Connections answers (Wednesday, July 29, 2026, game #1144)
YELLOW: FASTENERS: NAIL, RIVET, SCREW, STAPLE
GREEN: NONDESCRIPT: BASIC, MID, PLAIN, VANILLA
BLUE: UNITS OF WISDOM: GEM, NUGGET, PEARL, WORD
PURPLE: ____BOARDS IN A CLASSROOM: BLACK, CHALK, CORK, WHITE
What is NYT Connections?
NYT Connections is one of several increasingly popular word games made by the New York Times. It challenges you to find groups of four items that share something in common, and each group has a different difficulty level: green is easy, yellow a little harder, blue often quite tough and purple usually very difficult.
On the plus side, you don’t technically need to solve the final one, as you’ll be able to answer that one by a process of elimination. What’s more, you can make up to four mistakes, which gives you a little bit of breathing room.
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It’s a little more involved than something like Wordle, however, and there are plenty of opportunities for the game to trip you up with tricks. For instance, watch out for homophones and other word games that could disguise the answers.
It’s playable for free via the NYT Games site on desktop or mobile.
Mythos helped to find a new meet-in-the-middle technique that relies on a Möbius Bridge, a more sophisticated fingerprinting algorithm used in meet-in-the-middle attacks. Using it, Green said, the code Mythos produced was able to reduce the number of required inputs to 289. Anthropic said that savings can reduce the time required for such attacks by 200- to 800-fold.
The ability to produce that many inputs makes the attack beyond reach outside of the laboratory. Further, the actual speed-up is unknown, since the weakened AES algorithm tested used only 7 rounds. Specification-compliant AES, Green said, uses 10, 12, or 14 rounds, depending on key size.
Anthropic is careful to explicitly spell out most of these caveats. The Monday blog post goes on to argue, however, that the results are nonetheless meaningful and could ultimately fundamentally disrupt the process of cryptanalysis, or the adversarial testing of cryptosystems.
“The cybersecurity community is now grappling with the fact that language models are able to discover so many bugs that the standard human processes (like vulnerability triage, verification, and remediation) struggle to keep up,” Anthropic wrote. “We predict that the same will soon be true in academic cryptography research. As language models increasingly produce novel research outputs autonomously, human researchers may become bottlenecked on studying and validating these results for technical validity, novelty, and utility.”
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Not mentioned in Anthropic’s report is whether its researchers used Mythos to attack more tested cryptosystems, such as elliptic curve cryptography and RSA. Attack improvements against these systems would be more impressive. By achieving the most impressive result against an algorithm still in its infancy, it’s not clear how much of an advantage Mythos truly provided. There’s no way of knowing if researchers using conventional cryptanalysis techniques were already close to discovering the same attack.
Ultimately, the lesson from the research is simple. AI-assisted cryptanalysis remains untested, and providers of these platforms have a vested interest in exaggerating their benefits. At the same time, there’s growing evidence that LLMs may provide significant advantages in finding cryptographic weaknesses. It would be a mistake to conclude that LLMs won’t one day play an important role in the race between securing and compromising our most vital assets.
The headline and body of this story have been updated to reflect the withdrawing of HAWK.
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