Samsung’s Galaxy Z Fold 8 feels like the future

Is this the future of foldable phones?

Samsung clearly thinks so. The company has given its new wide foldable the “Z Fold 8” name, positioning the phone not as a widescreen oddity, but as the new normal, the default design for foldables going forward. Rumor has it that Apple feels the same way, with a similar squat shape widely predicted for the first foldable iPhone, expected to launch in September.

Whether you want to give the credit to Apple, Samsung, or even Huawei (which got here first with the Pura X Max), I think they might be onto something. After a week, the Z Fold 8 feels comfortable, natural, and normal, despite being the shortest and widest phone I can remember using. And thanks to the 4:3 inner display — better suited to both reading and watching video — I’m using this as a foldable more than I ever have with previous models.

It isn’t perfect. Not every app plays nicely with the short outer screen, though issues are pretty rare. And the drop from three cameras on last year’s model to two cameras on this year’s feels like a real downgrade for an $1,899 phone.

We won’t really know the future of foldables until Apple enters the market. But with the Z Fold 8, Samsung has already made a good case that this design should stick around.

Until now, foldables have mostly been one of three shapes: flippy, foldy, and more recently (and rarely) trifoldy. Samsung has played a large part in defining those categories. But the Galaxy Z Fold 8 is among the first of a new wave of wider models.

The 5.5-inch outer display is both shorter and wider than typical phones, almost the exact same dimensions as a standard passport, with a 10:16 aspect ratio. It looks a little odd when closed, but makes sense when you open the phone up to see its 7.6-inch, 4:3 inner screen — not coincidentally the exact aspect ratio used by most iPads. This feels more like a foldable tablet than any previous Z Fold yet, and perhaps because of that I’ve found myself opening it up more than any foldable I’ve ever reviewed.

This stretched shape is more natural for watching TV and movies, giving you a wider screen without too much letterboxing. It’s much better suited to this than the Z Fold 8 Ultra, which barely gives you any extra screen space for video when held vertically and has its selfie camera cutout in the way if you rotate it into landscape. The Z Fold 8 is arguably even better for reading, giving a convincing facsimile of the dimensions of a book when you hold it in portrait.

The shape takes more getting used to when closed, but less than you might think. Even when I tried the phone for an hour or so at Samsung’s press briefing I was surprised by how natural it felt, and a week with the Z Fold 8 has only cemented that feeling. After a while this doesn’t feel like an especially short or wide device, it just feels like a phone.

There are occasional errors that give away that Android wasn’t designed with these dimensions in mind. Once or twice Instagram has failed to fully load, leaving a white bar in the extra space on the right-hand side of the screen; the Withings app once crunched two rows of content together in an effort to fit things in vertically; and even Samsung’s default One UI Quick Settings panel is too long, requiring you to scroll to reach the bottom.

I’m not saying this squat screen is better than a regular slab phone, because it probably isn’t. You have to scroll a little more often because of the lost vertical space, and it can be a stretch to reach the phone’s far side. But there are advantages too: the extra width makes two-handed typing more comfortable (it’s not been much remarked, but this is a pretty similar size and shape to the classic BlackBerry); and because it’s so short, reaching the top of the phone is easier than ever. Anyone lamenting the death of the small phone may, perhaps paradoxically, find they’re a fan of the Z Fold 8.

It helps that all that reduced size keeps the Z Fold 8 light. At 201g, it’s Samsung’s lightest Z Fold yet. It’s slim too. At 9.7mm thick when shut, this is just a little chunkier than last year’s Z Fold 7, or this year’s Ultra, but it’s still far thinner than 2024’s Z Fold 6. Those dimensions put it within reach of a standard smartphone; an iPhone 17 Pro, for instance, is 206g and 8.8mm thick.

Despite its slimness, the Z Fold 8 actually packs a bigger battery than any Z Fold bar the new Ultra, with a capacity of 4,800mAh. That’s thanks to Samsung finally adopting silicon-carbon batteries, a more energy-dense design that just about every Chinese phone manufacturer has long since adopted.

Samsung has been duly cautious in its approach, emphasizing stability and longevity as it’s incorporated more reactive silicon into the battery anode. Silicon-carbon batteries have a tendency to degrade faster than traditional designs, meaning the battery life gets worse more quickly over time, but Samsung says it’s managed to avoid that risk. It’ll take a year or more to learn just how well Samsung struck that balance, but for now I’m heading to bed with 40 percent of the battery left every night, so the extra capacity is doing its job.

Charging is fine, but less impressive. The Z Fold 8 has 45W wired charging and 20W wireless, both of which are good by US standards but sluggish compared to many Android phones available elsewhere. Unlike Google’s Pixel 10 Pro Fold, the Z Fold 8 lacks the built-in magnets required to support Qi2 wireless charging, though it is compatible with Qi2 cases. In fairness, that helps keep the phone itself thinner and lighter, and Samsung is likely betting that you were going to put a case on it anyway.

That’s a shame, because the phone looks great. It fits right into Samsung’s existing design language, which I’ve long been a fan of for its slick simplicity. I love my lavender model, in a simple, subtle purple, as well as the online-exclusive “pistachio” — though it’s really more of a grayish green than anything resembling the nut.

There’s no IP68 rating, which is a shame, with IP48 protection leaving the Z Fold 8 a little more vulnerable to dust and sand than rival foldables from Google, Oppo, and Honor. Samsung says the phone is sturdier overall thanks to new titanium infused layers under the display, which also make the crease on the inner screen subtler. It’s not quite as difficult to see or feel as on Oppo’s impressive Find N6, but the crease really is a complete non-issue now.

The cameras might be more of a concern. Samsung has downgraded the Z Fold 8 to just two rear lenses, a main camera and an ultrawide — no telephoto at all. And while the new 50-megapixel ultrawide is a significant improvement on what came before, the main camera uses a smaller sensor, lower resolution, and narrower aperture than the previous generation, making it worse in just about every respect.

The photos it takes are fine. This is a similar main camera to the base Galaxy S26, with similar results, and roughly comparable to an iPhone 17. The low-light processing is better than I expected so long as subjects are mostly still, and colors are vivid but attractive. Like many Samsung cameras it finds fast-moving subjects tricky — almost every photo I’ve attempted of either of my cats has been blurry. The setup is improved by the ultrawide, which matches the main lens on quality in almost every shot, meaning there’s rarely a tradeoff for zooming out. But at this price, a telephoto lens wouldn’t go amiss.

Compared to previous generations of Z Fold, Samsung has kept the software updates fairly light. Google’s Gemini Intelligence Task Automation has rolled out to the phone, but isn’t yet available in the UK so I haven’t been able to test it. Then there’s My FanCam, an AI video editing feature which crops in to focus on a specific person. Now Nudge, Samsung’s take on Pixel phones’ Magic Cue, will suggest contextual actions you can carry out in split-screen, like adding an event to your calendar — though since it requires you to use Samsung Keyboard and specific messaging apps, it’s a little limited in practice.

The foldable market is going to change for good in a month or two’s time. Apple’s entry into the space could be the push foldables need to go mainstream, or the final proof that they’ll be forever niche.

Either way, the Galaxy Z Fold 8 makes a good case that this might be the shape their future hopes rest in. It’s compact enough to feel small when folded and wide enough to feel expansive when open. It’s great for watching TV and movies, but just as good for reading, the two things most people might actually want a foldable for, leaving the Ultra for the multitasking productivity obsessives. If I was buying one of Samsung’s new foldables, it would be this one. But while this feels like the future of foldables, it still needs to get substantially cheaper to become the future of phones.

Photography by Dominic Preston / The Verge