Samsung’s Newest Foldable Could Help Decide If The iPhone Ultra Sinks Or Swims

Samsung marked a new beginning with the launch of its new foldables in London last week. Seven years and eight generations later, the Samsung Galaxy Z lineup is getting a new style of foldable that’s more pocketable and handy, although at a steep cost. In addition to the two regular foldables every year, Samsung is bringing a third model: a wider-than-usual Galaxy Z Fold 8.

The naming admittedly is a bit misplaced. A Fold 8 Ultra — and not the regular Fold 8 — succeeds the Fold 7 from last year. It features a similar design, identical cameras, and a largely unchanged experience, save for a few sweet upgrades, such as faster charging and a faster processor.

The Galaxy Z Fold 8 is a newer, stouter foldable with a more versatile form factor than the previous Galaxy Fold designs. While Samsung is touting it as a device for recreational use, such as reading, watching videos, or gaming, the design patches many oddities of the longer design from the previous generation. And with Apple supposedly settling for a similar design for its first folding iPhone, the wider Fold may be here to stay as a convenient Android-based alternative with a rivaling design.

For consumers, choosing a foldable over a regular slab phone used to come with some hard choices. The initial crop suffered from small, barely usable outer screens, bulky and unwieldy form factors, and issues running apps the way they’re intended to.

Although Samsung ironed out the first two by making its foldables slimmer and lighter over generations, and expanding outer screens to simulate slightly tall but close-to-regular phones, the uncanny squarish shape of the inner screen still poses a challenge to running apps to their full utility. That’s seemingly on purpose, and allows the overstretched overachiever to run two apps to run side by side. The traditional Fold, thus by Samsung’s intended rendering, is a phone meant to be used with both hands.

Meanwhile, the Galaxy Z Flip — the Moto Razr-style clamshell — has symbolized style, ergonomics, and, to some extent, digital minimalism (with a little hackery, you can run most apps, including YouTube, Netflix, Google Maps, and Messages, with it unfolded).

The new passport-shaped Galaxy Z Fold 8 doesn’t fill a gap. Instead, Samsung has carved out a new tier between the two existing forms, and the Fold 8 sits squarely in it. This new Fold is not a plate-spinner’s phone, but rather for one who seeks to be entertained. That is, at least, how Samsung envisions it to be.

The outer screen, a 5.5-inch, super crisp, super bright, and super smooth AMOLED, gets a 10:16 aspect ratio and runs most apps without a tussle. The wide, squattish cover screen also makes winging your thumb along all four corners much easier. The inner 7.6-inch screen almost feels like a 13-inch iPad Pro shrunk down (despite its size similar to an iPad Mini, the aspect ratio is identical to the giant iPad Pro).

The inner screen’s 4:3 aspect ratio is better suited for a variety of video content and games much better than the iterative Fold (now called the Fold Ultra). The form allows a variety of different standard video content, whether you’re watching a cinematic wonder like Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey or Zack Snyder’s Justice League that are rendered in 4:3, a regular YouTube video presented in 16:9, or a galore of movies shot for the widescreen DVD aspect ratio of 21:9.

Compared to the Fold 8 Ultra, this shape allows for narrower letterboxing while watching videos. Letterboxing is the term used to describe black bars appearing on two of the four sides of a video due to unused screen space. Turning it sideways makes the Fold’s screen optimal for chores, fitting for both phones and small tablets, such as reading ebooks or web pages, or mind-numbingly scrolling TikTok (or vertical microdramas if that’s your poison).

If you’ve been pining for a true “small phone,” the Galaxy Z Fold 8 should quench your thirst, but without robbing you of the convenience of switching to a bigger screen on demand.

Even with these extra tablet-like traits, the wide Fold 8 feels streamlined for single-handed usage, even when unfolded. It weighs about 200 grams, which is less than a regular iPhone 17 Pro or a Pixel 10. Despite screens on two sides, the Fold 8 is whittled down to just 4.5mm.

In sheer figures, these numbers may not seem as impressive as they would when you hold the Fold 8 in your hand and find it to be unimaginably thin and light. I know that because I held it during a briefing session ahead of the launch. But that waifish design can leave you with a sense of unease, particularly about the rigidity of the screen, which is why Samsung has a new marketing pitch to allay the concerns.

New screen changes across the fold

Foldable screens bear the brunt of frequent folding and unfolding. As with anything physical and rigid to some degree, frequent bending can develop microscopic cracks at points under constant strain. For a folding phone, that means an inner display that’s prone to cracking internally and eventually malfunctioning — a common telltale sign is the development of black spots along the central rim.

Samsung now claims to have found a way to address that to some degree. Its solution to the problem is a metallic sheet milled from a titanium alloy and placed at the bottom of the display assembly. This titanium sheet, it says, offers 20 times more rigidity than the polymer film used in previous generations, something that’s worth testing over time.

Samsung also claims the newer display reduces the probability of that persistent crease that sticks out after hundreds or thousands of folds. While both the Fold 8 and the Ultra share this virtue, they might soon not be the only ones benefiting from it. That’s because Samsung is the leading supplier of folding displays. Expected to join its roster of marquee clients is Apple, which is rumored to use a Samsung display for the first-ever folding iPhone — the iPhone Ultra — launching this fall with the iPhone 18 Pro series.

It’s difficult to say whether the first-gen iPhone Ultra will use the latest version of folding screens with the titanium alloy tech as the Galaxy Z Fold 8 or cede to using the older generation with a polymer film instead. But future foldables from across different brands should benefit from the innovation — as could other mobile formats that might use a folding display in the future (I’m thinking of those rollable wristwatch concepts that ricocheted across digital platforms almost a decade ago.

Not the first unconventional Galaxy Z Fold

While the Galaxy Z Fold 8 feels like a sobering third alternative between the overengineered Fold 8 Ultra and the hamstrung Flip 8, it’s not the first “other” foldable format from Samsung. Before the Galaxy Z Fold 8, the Korean behemoth introduced its uber-premium TriFold with a cavernous 10-inch display when fully unfolded.

Despite being an engineering marvel — backed by months of relentless marketing, the phone did not exactly fly off the shelves due to obvious concerns: durability and high price. After a short three-month run, the TriFold was officially discontinued, though rumors about a successor with a sliding screen are still abuzz.

The squattier Fold 8 may not, thankfully, witness the same fate. It’s neither astronomically priced — though it’s not cheap either — nor does it look like an incorrect fold away from disaster. It does feel novel, but not enough to make you feel nervous. And while concerns about fragility can’t be fully abated, considering you’re getting a phone that has a bending screen on one side and an all-glass face on the other, it doesn’t offer a new challenge that the existing set of foldables don’t.

Where Fold 8 can fail to strike

The Galaxy Z Fold 8 may come in handy for many use cases, but photography may not be one of them. For perceivable constraints around space inside the svelte body, Samsung limits the number of cameras to two — promising, but not — 50MP cameras on the back. On top of that, there’s no telephoto sensor, so you can bid farewell to any portraits with natural bokeh. For a phone that’s pricier than an iPhone 17 Pro Max and the Galaxy S26 Ultra — the devices most new Fold 8 users will shift from, it could easily foster disappointment.

Samsung is understandably pouring that moolah into the design and the engineering backing it, but a third camera and a more capable 200MP primary sensor wouldn’t be much of an ask, especially as the equally slimmer Fold 8 Ultra (and older Fold 7) cradles them both.

To a prospective buyer, these cutbacks could look like an attempt to upsell the bigger Fold 8 Ultra rather than elements skipped due to design limitations.

The only saving grace here may be the fact that even the iPhone Ultra could skimp on a third camera in a similar fashion — not that I believe it’s justified.

A litmus test for the iPhone Ultra

A twinning display, or the lack of a third camera, might not be the only overlap between the Galaxy Z Fold 8 and the rumored iPhone Ultra. The two foldables are likely to be identical on many other fronts, with strikingly similar spec sheets. Other than differences in processors, software interfaces, and the indelible feud between rounded and sharp edges, the Galaxy Z Fold 8 and the iPhone Ultra will easily feel like two peas in the same pod.

And so, the initial response that the Fold 8 gets for its new design could help us predict if the iPhone Ultra will lift the curse that the Vision Pro brought upon Apple. Its rumored $2,500 (starting) price tag may not be of much help, but Galaxy Z Fold 8’s success — or the lack of it — could help vaguely reflect the iPhone Ultra’s ultimate draw.

Samsung expects the new Fold 8 to outsell the Fold 8 Ultra and the Flip 8. Couple that with iOS 27’s upcoming new, smarter Siri AI features, and those numbers could spell success for the iPhone Ultra as well.

At the same time, getting the design right was only part of the problem that Samsung had overcome. The other, more daunting, chunk is selling the Galaxy Fold 8, which could be difficult despite the svelte and polished new foldable. Global supply chains for components such as RAM and storage, to which Samsung is a key contributor, are crunched under ever-soaring demands to get new AI infrastructure in order.

The Galaxy Z Fold 8’s $1,900 price may dull Samsung’s projections and could instead push buyers to fall back on older, less expensive models. Of course, that wouldn’t be the case for anyone who wants to try the new, pro-content consumption design of the Fold 8.

If you pre-order the Galaxy Z Fold 8 before August 7, you will be eligible for a Samsung $200 store credit that you can use on accessories, such as the newly launched Galaxy Watch 9.