Over seven consecutive generations, Samsung’s book-style foldables have chased a fairly predictable goal: Get thinner, get lighter, make the crease a little more subtle, and marry the futuristic phone-meets-tablet idea with something that makes perfect sense in the present.
With the Galaxy Z Fold 8, Samsung has turned an interesting corner, splitting the line into two devices—a taller Z Fold 8 Ultra, and the base Z Fold 8 ( ₹179,999 onwards). The latter is a wider, squatter device that, in my three weeks of use, feels like the future of foldables. If the Z Fold Ultra is for productivity seekers, the Z Fold 8 is the shape made for the rest of us.
It’s all in the shape
It may not be the first foldable to try out the squat design—after all, Oppo’s original foldables and the first Google Pixel Fold did it years ago—but the design is still refreshingly different. Even in circles where foldables are no longer a novelty, the Z Fold 8 draws appreciative comments. Courtesy the reworked dimensions, what you have is a 5.5-inch AMOLED outer/cover screen (1264 x 1848 pixels, 3000 nits brightness, 120Hz) with a 10:16 aspect ratio, which is 4.88 inches tall and 3.24 inches wide. It is almost passport-sized in its dimensions.
In the hand, the chubbier dimensions and lighter weight keep the Z Fold 8 from feeling unwieldy. Most importantly, it’s easy to reach every part of the screen with just one’s thumb, thus getting rid of the finger calisthenics that has plagued flagship smartphone users for years now. It easily fitted into my jeans pocket, allowing for a pair of earbuds to nestle into the coin pocket above it.
Using it as my primary device, I was pleasantly surprised with how the extra width allowed maps and web browsers to shine (although you do have to scroll a bit more). Typing with two hands on the cover screen is a lot easier than on narrower phones, without ever feeling the need to open the inner display.
And when you do, the Z Fold 8 rewards you with a wider 7.6-inch AMOLED main display with a 4:3 aspect ratio, which makes the best case for buying this device. Most foldables do a terrible job with widescreen content, with chunky letterboxing above and below the video, but with the Z Fold 8’s squarish screen, videos and text content fills out the screen far better. The ergonomics reminded me of the iPad mini in how natural it felt to hold up for reading and streaming media.
It works perfectly well for scrolling and vertical content like Instagram Reels, or for landscape gaming, particularly when developers sweat the details towards supporting dynamic resolutions. There’s support for three apps in split-screen layouts or four (with a pop-up) on the inner screen.
Crack it open a bit like a book, put it in tent mode to watch videos on the cover screen, and the titanium-based display support along with the Armour FlexHinge keeps things durable, the crease increasingly less discernible, all while making the Z Fold 8 easy to unfold throughout the day. Dust and water resistance is still limited to IP48, and it would have been good to see Samsung provide the premier IP68 standard.
The chip and charging
Performance from the top-tier Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 for Galaxy chip is snappy, and the 12GB of RAM on my 256GB review unit (there’s 16GB memory on the 1TB storage model) never broke character for everyday tasks, or even when I threw heavier Gemini and Galaxy AI tasks at it.
The super-thin design isn’t suited for extended gaming sessions though, and the speaker output is a little less loud than the Z Fold 7 from last year. Galaxy AI and One UI 9 (on Android 17) features abound, and the ‘My FanCam’ mode, which allows one to motion-track a subject in a video and then crop it for different aspect ratios for social media, is a solid addition.
As far as longevity goes, the Z Fold 8’s silicon-carbon infused 4800mAh battery lasts a full day or about 6-7 hours of screen-on-time, and goes from zero to fully charged, at 45W charging speeds, in a little over an hour. There are no built-in magnetic charging rings.
Picture perfect
Now, depending on where you’re coming from, you may be a tad disappointed with the camera setup on what is unquestionably a pricey smartphone. The 50MP main camera is a bit of a downgrade from the Z Fold 7’s (or 8 Ultra’s) 200MP shooter, but the 50MP ultrawide is an upgrade from the Z Fold 7’s 12MP setup. The actual miss is that it doesn’t have a telephoto lens, which is reserved for the Z Fold 8 Ultra.
The 2x zoom on the Fold 8 is good, but the higher 4x and 8x digital zooms lead to fuzzier images in anything less than optimum light. For everyday photos and videos, the Z Fold 8 cameras turn out vibrant, detailed results, while low-light shots look good.
Verdict
This is a pricey phone. But there’s no getting around the fact that even smaller foldables cost a fair bit of money, so that’s hardly an issue exclusive to Samsung. Even with its shortcomings, the Z Fold 8 nails the design in a way that’s equal parts functional and fun. It’s been a while since a phone has evoked that emotion, and the Z Fold 8 does so in spades. The phone is a great example of how hardware can still be a differentiator in a market where simply shoving in more AI features seems to be the playbook.
Tushar Kanwar is a tech columnist and commentator, and tweets @2shar.