A group of around 30 people streamed past a towering display of strawberries at London’s Borough Market, filming employees as they poured ribbons of chocolate over the fruit. One staff member looked especially bewildered as we shuffled forward, phones aloft, to claim our cups.
“Why do you all have the same phone?” he asked, mouth agape. “I feel like I’m in the Matrix.”
It was a valid, if not hilarious, reaction. Dozens of tech reviewers carrying the same lavender, passport-size foldable phone isn’t an everyday sight, even in a bustling food hall in the heart of London. I’d have a similar reaction if I saw a crowd of people walking around with oddly squarish Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 8 devices.
Fresh off that week’s Galaxy Unpacked event, during which Samsung unveiled its latest foldable phones and smartwatches, we were now taking our new gadgets for a spin around the city. The reimagined Galaxy Z Fold 8 felt just as novel in my hand as it looked to passersby, with a squat, 4:3 aspect ratio and a palm-sized build.
One week later, the Z Fold 8 hasn’t lost its shine. Samsung’s new baseline book-style foldable is one of the most enjoyable devices I’ve ever used. Its compact, versatile design is optimized for both horizontal and vertical content, better reflecting how we actually watch, browse and swipe. And while it still has some of the pain points of today’s foldables, the pros far outweigh the cons.
One of the biggest pain points may be the high starting price: $1,900 for the 256GB option. The Z Fold 8 – along with Samsung’s other new foldables, the Z Fold 8 Ultra ($2,100) and Z Flip 8 ($1,200) – is available for preorder now and hits store shelves Aug. 7.
The Z Fold 8 arrives amid mounting rumors that Apple is preparing its own passport-size foldable iPhone, which could debut this fall. Samsung’s new device follows in the footsteps of other wider foldables like the Microsoft Surface Duo, the first Google Pixel Fold and the Huawei Pura X Max. But with major players like Samsung and Apple launching wider book-style phones, it’s possible we’ll be seeing a lot more of this 4:3 aspect ratio in the future.
I wasn’t expecting to like the Z Fold 8 this much. After all, last year’s Z Fold 7 won my heart – and a CNET Editors’ Choice Award – with its slim design and 21:9 cover screen, which made it feel like a standard slab phone when closed. This year, the Z Fold 8 Ultra sticks with that taller, conventional design, while the Z Fold 8 takes a different approach.
With a 16:10 cover screen and a 4:3 inner display, the Z Fold 8 feels more like a compact slab phone when closed and a mini tablet when open, thanks to the wider layout. It’s the lightest Z Fold device at 201 grams, measuring 4.5mm thick when open and 9.7mm when closed. I became enamored with the phone’s fresh configuration when I first held the Z Fold 8 at Samsung’s headquarters in South Korea last month and had to resist the urge to pocket it immediately.
The Z Fold 8’s real superpower is its versatility. When opened in landscape, the phone’s 7.6-inch main display is well-suited for watching YouTube videos, using a web browser or multitasking. (You can multitask with up to three apps, but that starts to feel a little cramped, so I usually keep it to two.) Typing in this format can feel like a bit of a stretch, even with my bigger hands, but overall, the phone fits nicely in my grip and is easy to navigate.
The Z Fold 8 is equally optimized for browsing vertical content when turned to portrait. This is how I prefer to scroll through Instagram, read documents and type, since it’s easier to stretch my fingers across the narrower keyboard. In this vertical orientation, social media apps really shine, and I can hold the phone with one hand while swiping. Scrolling through Instagram Reels feels more natural, as if I’m merely navigating a larger slab phone.
What strikes me is how easily navigable practically every app is in both landscape and portrait orientation. It largely boils down to preference. In landscape orientation, many apps like Audible, Gmail and Netflix default to full screen. Others like DoorDash, Uber and AMC offer the option to expand to full screen to eliminate the blank border bars or rotate to portrait view. The only app I preferred not to use in landscape was Instagram because of awkward cropping on the home feed, but otherwise I flipped the Fold around to my fancy.
Even when closed, the Z Fold 8’s 5.5-inch cover screen doesn’t feel cramped, which surprised me. I expected the more compact real estate to feel slightly limiting, especially when the keyboard takes up so much of the screen. But I hardly noticed a difference in the experience compared to a larger slab or foldable phone.
I tend to use the cover display for texting or firing off a quick email, but I also like propping the phone up in tent mode, which turns it into a tiny stand for watching videos while I move around my apartment. (I watched four episodes of Downton Abbey while I literally unpacked after Unpacked.) The phone adapted to what I was doing, rather than forcing me to adapt to it.
Ah, yes, the question you’ve likely been searching for: How noticeable is the crease on the Z Fold 8?
I’m pleased to report that I hardly notice it at all. Samsung equipped the Z Fold 8 with its new Flex Titanium display, which is thinner and more durable than previous Galaxy Fold displays, while also minimizing the crease.
I admittedly didn’t find the crease on the Z Fold 7 particularly obvious either, but it’s even less so on the Z Fold 8. Also helpful is the anti-reflective coating on both the Z Fold 8’s cover and main displays, which makes it easier to view content without distractions.
Flex Titanium combines a titanium-alloy film with a titanium plate. These sit under the OLED panel to create a thinner display structure that’s designed to better withstand drops and other impacts – which is helpful if you’ve just spent nearly two grand on a phone.
I went to Samsung Display’s top-secret lab in Korea to see how the company tests for durability, which includes dropping a heavy marble-size ball repeatedly on the screen and ensuring it can withstand half a million folds. I haven’t been clumsy enough to test the durability of the Z Fold 8’s display firsthand, but it was reassuring to see those tests in action.
Durability upgrades don’t necessarily extend beyond the display. The Z Fold 8 still has an IP48 rating, meaning it can be submerged in up to 1.5 meters of water for 30 minutes and is protected against solid objects larger than 1mm, but not dust or sand. That’s in line with most foldable phones, although Google’s Pixel 10 Pro Fold stands out with an IP68 rating that matches the dust- and water-resistance of premium non-folding phones.
One of the biggest trade-offs of choosing the Z Fold 8 over the Z Fold 8 Ultra is the scaled-back camera system. While the Ultra gets a top-of-the-line triple-camera setup, including a 200-megapixel wide-angle, the Z Fold 8 steps down to a 50-megapixel wide and 50-megapixel ultrawide camera. It also has 10-megapixel selfie cameras on both the cover and inner displays.
But the lack of a telephoto lens isn’t particularly limiting. Whenever I need to punch in, sensor cropping on 2x and 4x shots does the trick just fine, and images still look sharp and clean.
Here are a few of my favorite photos I’ve taken on the Z Fold 8.
I was thrilled to hear that Samsung had bumped up battery capacity on the Z Fold 8 by introducing a silicon-carbon battery. The Z Fold 7’s 4,400-mAh battery was one of its weak points, but the Z Fold 8 pushes that up modestly to 4,800 mAh. That’s not a game-changing improvement, but it helps nudge the battery life a little further.
After starting with a full charge at around 10:30 a.m. on a Saturday, I made it through just over 24 hours of near constant use (thank the jetlag for that) before the battery was depleted. That included using the larger main display for scrolling through Instagram, ordering DoorDash and watching YouTube videos, as well as relying on the cover screen for texting and streaming for over 3 hours straight.
The next day, the battery went from full at around noon to dead by 4:15 p.m. the following afternoon. I used the Z Fold 8 to text, navigate, jot down notes, send emails, order a Lyft and snap photos. It was a heavier-use day, split between Wi-Fi and 5G, even though I spent a good chunk of the afternoon away from my phone and at the movies watching The Odyssey.
In CNET’s 45-minute endurance test, which includes a combination of streaming, scrolling through social media, joining a video call and playing games on the inside screen, the Galaxy Z Fold 8’s battery went from full to 93%. That matches the Z Fold 7’s result, which is surprising as I expected slightly better performance this year.
In a 3-hour streaming test over Wi-Fi, during which I watched a YouTube video in full-screen mode at full brightness on the main display, the Z Fold 8’s battery dropped from 100% to 86%. That’s a slight improvement over the 84% the Z Fold 7 scored last year.
The Z Fold 8 has an improved 45-watt wired charging speed, which gets the battery from 0% to 73% in half an hour, and to full in about an hour. The phone also supports 20-watt wireless charging, but I couldn’t tell you how quickly it charges because it was practically impossible to keep it aligned on a wireless charger without a Qi2-compatible case. For yet another year, Samsung’s foldables don’t have built-in magnets, which the company says helps keep them slimmer and lighter. I just wish we didn’t have to choose between the two.
I’m not one to obsess over AI features, but I’m pleasantly surprised by one in particular: Now Nudge. It does a good job of suggesting actions based on what’s on your screen, and then opening the appropriate app in split-screen mode.
For example, if someone texts asking if you’d like to grab dinner, a suggestion to pull up your calendar will appear, so you can view it on one half of the screen while replying on the other, instead of swiping between apps. This capability is similar to Magic Cue on Google’s Pixel phones, which is one of my favorite features.
But, like Magic Cue, Now Nudge doesn’t always work as it should. Not all messages asking for my availability will trigger the option to view my calendar, for instance, and sometimes it’ll surface events that happened months ago. But when it works, Now Nudge shows how AI can be intuitive and helpful rather than annoying.
My FanCam is another fun feature that leans toward practicality. You can go to a video in your gallery and choose one person to track with AI, so it looks as though the camera is following them. This can come in handy if you’ve recorded your kids’ soccer practice or ballet recital, or if you want to edit any video in a way that keeps the focus on the key subject. You can also change the video’s aspect ratio, allowing you to turn a horizontal clip into a vertical one for social media. The downside is that video quality gets degraded as My FanCam zooms in on a subject.
There’s one feature I’m more hesitant about. After debuting on the Galaxy S26 series earlier this year, Photo Assist’s text prompt feature lets you describe how you want to change an image. I asked it to add more flowers to a snapshot of greenery, and it did a good job, even if the overall image became grainier.
But the ethical implications of altering reality in this way give me pause, even with an “AI-generated content” disclaimer in the lower left corner. There are subtler instances where Photo Assist can be helpful, like when I used it to remove a trash can behind me in an otherwise lovely portrait photo.
The Z Fold 8 is powered by a Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 chip, which keeps the phone running smoothly, even when tapping into the myriad AI features. It comes out of the box with Android 17 and One UI 9, and you’ll get seven years of software and security updates.
The Z Fold 8 comes with 12GB of RAM with either 256GB or 512GB of storage, as well as a 16GB RAM option with 1TB of storage. I tested the 256GB version.
Benchmark tests for the CPU in Geekbench 6 place the Z Fold 8 slightly above the Galaxy Z TriFold and Motorola Razr Fold, just under the Honor Magic 8 Pro and on par with the Galaxy S26 series.
In a graphics test using 3DMark’s Wild Life Extreme, the Z Fold 8 exceeded the performance of the Galaxy Z TriFold and Razr Fold, and is slightly topped by the S26 series.
The Galaxy Z Fold 8 is a satisfyingly compact yet versatile foldable phone that’s great for endless scrolling, binge watching and web surfing. While the Z Fold 8 Ultra is the true follow-up to last year’s Z Fold 7, and is therefore better suited for multitasking and pro-grade photography, the Z Fold 8 is a good fit for most people who want a premium foldable phone that adapts to their habits. I’ve loved using this phone over the last week, and have no intention of putting it away.
That said, I do wish certain compromises didn’t have to be made, especially with the $1,900 cost. A triple-camera setup would be ideal at that price, and the continued lack of built-in magnets for Qi2 wireless charging is disappointing. The addition of a higher-capacity silicon-carbon battery is a welcome change, though the improvements in battery life are rather modest.
Still, the Z Fold 8 stands out in a sea of smartphone monotony. It’s a refreshing and fun design that can fit squarely in my palm or expand into a roomy canvas for watching videos, reading or scrolling through social media. While most apps work well in any configuration, it’s nice to have the flexibility to use the one that feels best for the task at hand.
For anyone who spends hours reading, watching and scrolling on their phone, the Z Fold 8 might be the right fit. Just don’t be surprised if its unusual shape catches the attention of curious onlookers.