The Z Fold 8, Z Fold 8 Ultra and Z Flip 8 are here, and the biggest news isn’t the price tag.
- Three new foldables, one wider Fold 8, one Ultra flagship, and a slimmer Flip 8
- Prices climbed again, the Fold 8 Ultra now opens at $2,100
- Flex Titanium tech promises fewer creases and sturdier hinges
- Gemini gets baked deeper into everything, from Notebook to Fan Cam
Samsung skipped the suspense this year. No slow drip of leaks pretending to be surprises, just a full reveal at Unpacked in London, and it turns out the foldable phone is finally starting to feel less like a novelty and more like, well, a phone you’d actually pick over a regular one.
There are three new devices this round. The Galaxy Z Fold 8 Ultra sits at the top, and it’s the first time Samsung has used the Ultra name on a foldable, which tells you exactly how seriously they want you to take it. It’s got a 6.5 inch cover screen, an 8 inch inner display, a 200MP main camera, and a body that’s just 4.1mm thin when unfolded. Impressive on paper, less impressive on the wallet, since it starts at $2,100.
Then there’s the Galaxy Z Fold 8, which is the one actually worth talking about, because Samsung finally broke away from the tall vertical fold it’s been stuck on for years. This one opens sideways, wider than tall, with a 4:3 inner screen that feels closer to a mini tablet than a stretched out phone. It drops the telephoto lens the Ultra has, but the battery is bigger, the price is a little lower at $1,900, and honestly this shift in form factor might be the most interesting design decision Samsung has made in its foldable line in years.
Rounding things out is the Galaxy Z Flip 8, the clamshell that keeps getting quietly better without much fanfare. Slimmer build, a 6.9 inch main display, and a starting price of $1,200, which is a hundred dollars more than last year because apparently that’s just the pattern now. There’s chatter that this might be the last standalone Flip generation, though nothing official has confirmed that, so take it as rumor for now.
All three phones run on the same Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 chipset, so performance differences will mostly come down to cooling and battery rather than raw power. Samsung’s new Flex Titanium design is meant to fix one of the most common foldable complaints, that visible crease down the middle, by adding a titanium alloy layer beneath the flexible OLED. Whether that actually holds up after months of daily folding is something we’ll only know once real world use kicks in.
On the software side, Gemini is doing a lot of the heavy lifting. There’s app automation that can handle more than 40 apps for things like booking tickets or ordering food, Gemini Notebook comes preinstalled, and there’s a genuinely fun new Fan Cam feature that auto crops video to keep one person in frame as they move. It’s the kind of small addition that sounds gimmicky until you’re at a wedding trying to film your one friend who won’t stop wandering off.
Samsung also refreshed its watch lineup alongside the phones, with the Galaxy Watch 9 and Watch Ultra 2 both getting brighter displays, bigger batteries, and deeper integration with a new AI powered Health Assistant that tracks vitals, sleep apnea risk, and a new Heart Health Score.
Pre-orders are open now, with devices hitting shelves August 7. For anyone who’s been on the fence about foldables, this might be the generation that finally makes sense, assuming you’re okay with the fact that “cheaper” and “Samsung foldable” still don’t belong in the same sentence!
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