Z Fold 8 Review
I have been using the Z Fold full time now for a week now including life with a regular 9 to 5 job. Here is how it went.
As I mentioned in my 72 hour impressions post, I was lucky enough to get my Z fold early despite being a paying customer so I already have a fair amount of time with the device even though it only officially released on the 7th of August.
To start off lets have a quick overview of the specs. The Z Fold 8 is equipped with a 5.5 inch 16:10 WUXGA+ Dynamic AMOLED 2X screen and a 7.6" 4:3 QXGA+ Dynamic AMOLED 2X main screen both of these are great screens as is to be expected of Samsung who is a leader in display manufacturing. Its also equipped with both a 50MP Main and Ultrawide cameras on the back which despite what some youtubers have said are still very good and very capable, to round out the camera suite the Cover and Main displays are adorned with a pair of 10MP selfie cameras.
Other notable specs are the phone gets a Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 for Galaxy, essentially a more strictly binned version of the 8EG5 chip, paired with 12GB of RAM or 16GB if you go for the 1TB storage tier and finally its equipped with a 4800mAh battery, larger than any previous fold device although the now ultra variant also got a boost form 4400mAh to 5000mAh. The phone is 4.5mm thick when unfolded or 9mm thick when folded without a case and just 201g in weight.
For reference for slab phones in the same price category the S26 Ultra is 7.9mm thick and 214g in weight and has a battery of 5000mAh an the iPhone 17 Pro Max is 8.75mm thick and 206g and has a battery of just 4823 mAh in the global version. So in my opinion Samsung has done well to squeeze a flagship chip into the device as well as a battery as big as these giant slab phones, part of this is of course down to Samsung finally starting to use a small amount of silicon in the anodes of their batteries.
Size comparison of iPhone 17 Pro and Z Fold 8
The most striking thing about the fold 8 when you first see it is the squat 16:10 cover screen it features when folded. This something fairly fresh in general in the smartphone market both inside and outside of foldables. Looking around even into the depths of the GSM Arena and XDA Forums i couldn't find a device that had a 16:10 other than the Huawei Pura X foldable from last year that had an internal 16:10 screen.
Z Fold 8 Folded in hand
I do really like it though the dimensions are good in multiple ways, firstly its basically like a Pro Max iPhone or Ultra Samsung but with the top 1/3rd lopped off the top meaning the screen is roomy when it comes to typing even with both hands but also things at the top of the screen like quick action and notification panels are now much more reachable with one hand.
Then you open it up and you notice the smoothness of the hinge which compared to previous foldables I've used is amazing and really shows that this is a 8th generation device. Again as I mentioned in my 72 hour impressions, I think a large contribution to this is the new redesigned hinge that they have adopted in the Fold 8 that rather than being able to stick at most angles actually actively pushes the device into its open state once you open it more than about 20 degrees.
In order to achieve this much more refined hinge however, it meant that Samsung did ditch flex mode. Personally I am not fussed by this, I felt it to be a gimmick on both my previous Pixel Fold and various Samsung Z Flips I have used in the passed, I would much rather this smoother and easier hinge over a gimmick that is hardly used.
This then leads on to the next thing you will notice the main screen featuring now 2 new titanium layers it helps to keep the screen as strong and crease free as possible for a display that bends in half and at least when new it does a great job of that. Even after a full week it there is almost no crease and it is genuinely barely noticeable if you run your finger over it. Not that a crease particularly bothered me anyway but here at least for now Samsung has virtually eliminated it.
Z Fold 8 Unfolded in hand
The main screen is of course the main reason you would buy this phone over either a slab phone or another foldable due to its form factor and I have to say so far its been totally worth the switch just for this.
Unlike a lot of reviewers I still work a 9 to 5 office job, while at work I do tend to put some kind of video on in the background while im working and then again at lunch time I like to watch youtube or play games (usually balatro) on my phone in the break room.
While sure it was perfectly fine on a slab phone this now means I have a nice big screen when i un fold it which to me is a benefit cause at one point I was bringing in my iPad mini to work for this purpose so now that's one less thing to bring with me and its also with me wherever I go.
Watching video is a joy honestly thanks to the amoled screen the little letter boxing there is just melts away into the background and the image is sharp thanks to its 1848 x 2448 resolution meaning the display has a PPI of 403.6 or in apple parlance its a Retina quality display. I have particularly liked though going back and watching old cartoons like Sailor Moon, Batman The Animated Series and SpongeBob to really take advantage of the 4:3 screen they also make the screen shine to its full ability with the depth of colour and contrast in these displays.
One thing that isn't totally amazing though is the speakers, mostly due to their placement. The speakers themselves sound decent for phone speakers, they have decent base for a device so thin and don't get super distorted when up at high volume.
However samsung put both speakers in the left half of the device on the top and bottom this means if your watching a landscape video on the cover display you do get good (as you can get for being so close to each other) stereo separation. Upon opting the device the speakers are now on top and bottom of the device so are essentially acting in mono.
This can be mitigated by using headphones though which given I am not a yobbo I have been doing when using it at work or out on public transport which obviously then circumvents this issue. While I would have liked to see Samsung make this a better experience without headphones, I imagine they looked at their user testing and usage data and saw that most people do use headphones.
My Z Fold 8 with My Sony WF1000-XM6 Earbuds
One other aspect a lot of youtubers put emphasis on but perhaps unfairly in my opinion, is the camera system, yes this phone lacks a real zoom camera, but in my opinion the cameras on this device are still really good, and even the cropped 50 mp of the main camera for a 4x or even 8x zoom in the right conditions is perfectly serviceable. Personally I think if the number 1 most important thing on a phone is the camera I would say this phone isn't for you and you should go and look at the Samsung S26 Ultra or Xiaomi 17 Ultra however if you otherwise are drawn to the phone the cameras certainly are decent enough.
But You be the judge for yourself below I have taken several different shots both indoors and out on the Z Fold 8 and the iPhone 17 Pro. One caveat I will add is I used the goodlock camera assistant module to unlock the 24MP binning mode on the Samsung camera, which I recommend you do too if you buy this phone, this then also matches the 24MP binning of the iPhone for more like to like comparison.
| Test type | Samsung Z Fold 8 | Apple iPhone 17 Pro |
|---|---|---|
| Indoor Macro Shot |  |
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| Indoor Macro Shot |  |
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| Indoor 8x Zoom Shot |  |
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| Indoor 4x Zoom Shot |  |
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| Close Detail |  |
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| Outdoor 4x Zoom |  |
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| Outdoor Ultrawide |  |
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| Outdoor Wide |  |
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| Outdoor Wide |  |
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| Outdoor Wide |  |
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Performance wise this phone is no slouch either, as mentioned at in the specs rundown it comes equipped in all regions, which is not always a given for Samsung, with a Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 for Galaxy and while even with this big screen I am not prone to playing big heavy games on my phone, the most I will get to in terms of gaming is a bit of Balatro or Pokemon TCG Pocket while riding the train or bus. The phone has not once felt sluggish or slow even when I've been in a 3 app multitasking session, which is always good to see.
This brings me onto the final point of the review, OneUI, I think this is the killer feature of the phone, personally OneUI is my favorite flavor of android, especially if you utilise the features that are unlocked with goodlock. But OneUI is one of those things that really is a blank page waiting for you to mold it into what works for you, My setup on my phone can be totally different have buttons in different places or even settings menus in different orders for what works best for each of us.
On top of this OneUI is now on its 9th iteration and is a distant echo from the touchwizz days, this means the phone is fast, fluid, and most important consistent and reliable. There has been some notable additions this year too, for example OneUI 9 benefits from Googles efforts to reverse engineer airdrop meaning as a Mac user I can now quickly and easily airdrop things to my Mac or to my family that still use iPhones without having to download additional software. OneUI 9 also fully commits samsung to Foldables slowly becoming the future with what they call a Foldable First Design, the biggest of which that is relevent to the fold is the ability now to do a three way side by side by side multitask that you can then resize to bleed over to the page similar to what oppo/oneplus(RIP) implemented in their foldables.
I think this is one thing to me that has made the phone so enjoyable to use over the past week, hopefully far into the future too, coming from an iPhone and the disaster that is iOS26 and the marginal improvement that is iOS27 beta, at least when it comes to being fast, fluid, consistent and reliable even on my flagship newest iPhone offering running the fastest chip apple ever put in an iPhone there would still be times where the phone bogs down, or a button that is purely software just doesn't work or an icon on the home screen (or multiple) just don't render, or render at 144p and then suddenly pop into full resolution like I'm playing San Andreas on the PS2. So as I mentioned in my first impressions, it has been death by 1000 cuts, and I have bled out on the oak veneer floor of the apple store and been rushed off to android land to repair my soul.
So to wrap this all up, While there are some sacrifices here like the lack of flex mode or missing telephoto camera, I think this phone is better for those sacrifices, the flex mode, makes the main screen better for its intended purposes, and the lack of telephoto helps save space and weight which come at a real premium on a device like this. Now do I think you should go out and buy this phone? Well it really depends™ If you are the type of person that plays a lot of games, watches a lot of youtube, movies, or other video on your phone absolutely go buy it, If you are someone that just wants something reliable and proven go buy an S26. And if your the type of person that just wants the best camera ever go buy a Xiaomi 17 Ultra.
Last Edited: 5 days, 5 hours ago.