Early Verdict
It's too early to tell if this duo of Samsung foldables will live up to the hype, but seeing Samsung take an AV-first approach to its foldable lineup is certainly a plus
Pros
- +
Crisp and colourful image
- +
Huge battery upgrade
- +
Slim, futuristic design
Cons
- -
Expensive
- -
Needs further testing
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Samsung has applied an unexpected twist to its eighth generation of folding phones.
Traditionally, the Korean smartphone titan has split its foldable lineup into two subsets: the Flip, which is a throwback to the flip phones of the early 2000s, and the Fold, which is a book-style foldable that goes from traditional smartphone to small tablet form factor in a matter of seconds.
However, the Galaxy Z Fold 8 changes that, as the Fold now comes in two flavours: the Z Fold 8 and the Z Fold 8 Ultra.
If you're still reeling from that revelation, we need to hit you with another shocking announcement: the Z Fold 8 Ultra isn't the surprising new device of the duo. In fact, it's the standard Z Fold 8 that has caught us off guard – in a good way, of course.
We were lucky enough to attend an early hands-on session to check these new bendable smartphones out before their official announcement at Samsung Unpacked, and we've got plenty of early thoughts on this new duo of handsets.
Price
Samsung has shared UK pricing for both models in all storage configurations. Pricing is as follows:
| Row 0 - Cell 0 | Galaxy Z Fold 8 | Galaxy Z Fold 8 Ultra |
256GB | £1699 | £1899 |
512GB | £1869 | £2069 |
1TB | £2029 | £2049 |
These are premium handsets, and the pricing reflects that. The Z Fold 8 is actually £100 cheaper than the outgoing Galaxy Z Fold 7; however, the Z Fold 8 Ultra is £100 more.
The Z Fold 8 comes in four finishes – Graphite, Cream, Pistachio and Lavender – while the Z Fold 8 Ultra also comes in Graphite and Cream, as well as Violet Shadow and Green Shadow.
Design and build
The Galaxy Z Fold 8 Ultra is very similar to last year's Galaxy Z Fold 7 in stature. It retains the same 6.5-inch 21:9 outer display and 8-inch interior display, although it's somehow even thinner this year. That's a pretty impressive claim considering that the Z Fold 7 was just a hair thicker than the USB-C charging port when unfolded.
Samsung has also created an easier opening and closing mechanism through the inclusion of magnets, which makes the Z Fold 8 Ultra noticeably easier to unfold into its tablet form.
Both the Z Fold 8 and Z Fold 8 Ultra also come with the brand's new Flex Titanium Technology display architecture. Underneath the flexible AMOLED display now sits a super-thin titanium alloy mesh and a flexible titanium plate, which work together to create a flatter and more uniform display when the phones are unfolded.
The crease in the middle of the phone is, as a result, less prominent, resulting in a more seamless interactive experience on those larger interior displays.
Moving on to the Z Fold 8, this is where things get interesting. It features an entirely new form factor, with a 7.6-inch 4:3 landscape interior display with a 10:16 aspect ratio outer screen. While the Z Fold 8 Ultra is more akin to a chocolate bar when folded, the Z Fold 8 feels more like a passport.
Its shorter and wider stature makes it strangely satisfying to hold, as its size is almost like one of the BlackBerry handsets from around 15 years ago. And in a world of smartphones that are becoming less wieldy, especially for one-handed operation, it's incredibly refreshing to use this outer display, as every edge and corner is within thumb's reach.
Best of all, Samsung has reportedly made this change with content consumption in mind. While the Z Fold 8 Ultra remains a flagship for power users, the standard Z Fold 8 is positioned as a device designed for watching, reading, and scrolling.
Features
Both handsets sport a multitude of features to make them ideal for consuming movies and music. The Z Fold 8 and Z Fold 8 Ultra both feature displays with 3000 nits peak brightness, with HDR10+ support and Samsung's Vision Booster feature on board. This can boost contrast to ensure greater visibility when using the handsets in direct sunlight.
Samsung has also implemented its effective anti reflectivity display coating, which is appreciated considering these phones sport large interior screens that can easily catch the light.
What wasn't disclosed during our early hands-on session is whether these phones support Samsung's excellent ProScaler feature. If this is on board, we presume it will be the improved version found on the five-star Galaxy S26 Ultra.
As for sound, it seems as though Samsung is sticking with Dolby Atmos, which can be accessed via the built-in speakers and either wired or wireless headphones.
Samsung has outfitted both foldables with the Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 for Galaxy processor and, depending on your storage configuration, that will be paired with either 12GB or 16GB of RAM. The Galaxy S26 Ultra uses the same processor and RAM combination, and it has no trouble handling the Android operating system with Samsung's One UI system running on top.
This includes Samsung's exhaustive list of Galaxy AI features. We'll spare you the full list, but the usual suite of picture editing, search functions and writing tools are all present.
Samsung's nifty Now Brief feature is also here, which can show you contextual information throughout your day, while Now Nudge will recognise important information on your screen (such as times, dates, and locations) and offer contextual replies based on information from other apps, such as your calendar.
Features-wise, the biggest way in which these phones differ is with their cameras. The Z Fold 8 sports two outer cameras – a 50MP main and a 50MP ultra wide – while the Z Fold 8 Ultra features an upgraded 50MP ultra wide camera (up from 12MP), a 200MP main camera, and 10MP telephoto lens.
There's also a difference in battery capacity. The Z Fold 8 gets a 4800mAh battery rated for up to 26 hours of video playback, whereas the Z Fold 8 Ultra moves up to a 5000mAh cell with an additional hour of video playback. Both support wired fast charging up to 45W.
Picture
Screen size differences aside, both handsets offered a similar picture experience during our brief hands-on testing. As per usual, our testing environment was less than ideal, as we weren't allowed to download or log in to any streaming apps, so we had to rely on movie trailers played on YouTube. Therefore, our early findings here won't be representative of our final review.
We watched the trailers for Dune: Part Three, The Odyssey, and Spider-Man: Brand New Day during the hands-on session; clearly we're huge Zendaya fans.
Both devices presented sharp and crisp images, with punchy and bold colours and fairly smooth-looking motion. The biggest difference between the two, however, was the presence of the letterboxing bars.
As both phones use OLED displays, the bars remained perfectly black and easy to ignore, but the aspect ratio of the standard Z Fold 8 meant that the bars themselves were much smaller and, therefore, less noticeable.
We would have ideally swapped the colours to the natural preset, and also preferably streamed something in HDR10+ to see these phones at their maximum potential, but Samsung made us pinky promise not to swap settings or install any apps.
Sound
We'll keep this brief, we weren't able to do any meaningful sound testing during our hands on time.
We did, however, manage to quickly blast the speakers on the Z Fold 8 Ultra in the busy hands-on area, and found that they cut through the hustle and bustle surprisingly effectively.
We'll need to plug a pair of our reference headphones in to fully assess how these phones handle music, but looking generally at Samsung's portfolio, we know that its handsets tend to fall behind Apple and Sony's best offerings when it comes to music.
That could all change with the Z Fold 8 and 8 Ultra, but only time (and some thorough testing) will tell.
Early verdict
Samsung's surprising duo of new foldables have made a positive first impression. We've been a fan of having a bigger screen to watch movies on that conveniently fits into your pocket for quite a while now, so having an even more compact option that's made with content consumption in mind is music to our ears.
We'll need to test both phones before we apply a full verdict, so stay tuned for our Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 8 and Galaxy Z Fold 8 Ultra reviews coming soon.
MORE:
Read our full Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 7 review
As well as our Samsung Galaxy S26 Ultra review
And check out our picks for the best smartphones
What is a hands on review?
'Hands on reviews' are a journalist's first impressions of a piece of kit based on spending some time with it. It may be just a few moments, or a few hours. The important thing is we have been able to play with it ourselves and can give you some sense of what it's like to use, even if it's only an embryonic view.
