The new standard for foldables

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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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

That smaller footprint also means it slips nicely into pockets without the tall form factor or extra heft of previous book-style foldables.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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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