Samsung’s Galaxy Z Fold 8 is the future I want for smartphones

I have to give Samsung its flowers because it’s impressed me once again. The Galaxy Z Fold 7, Galaxy TriFold, Galaxy XR and now the Galaxy Fold 8, the most remarkable of the lot, and perhaps my favourite phone in years. I’m an excitable guy who loves gimmicks and new, shiny things, but the honeymoon period is over, and still this phone is definitely one to keep an eye on.

The Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 8 feels meant for me as someone who mostly just uses their phone for media consumption. Whether it’s hours of playing Slay the Spire, Marvel Snap or Pokémon Champions, scrolling social media, reading the latest Dungeon Crawler Carl novel or watching anime on Crunchyroll, the Galaxy Fold 8 does it exceptionally. Once in a while, I’ll take a picture or write an article, which the handset does well.

This phone is pretty superb, and while it’s difficult to say whether a smartphone (folding or not) is worth a $2,399 price tag, maybe wait for a sale or something because this phone is pretty dope.

The Future

Obviously, the biggest difference between this and everything on the market is its design. The Fold 8 sports what Samsung is calling a ‘passport’ design, because it’s similarly shaped to a passport. On the front, you’re getting a 5.5-inch display with a 16:10 aspect ratio, making it wider than other phones. I find this aspect ratio actually makes it complicated to type for long periods of time, like if you’re writing an article. But I’m wondering if I’ll get used to it over time. On the other hand, I didn’t mind typing on the larger screen for longer periods of time. When you’re holding the device in portrait, the keyboard is kind of spaced out perfectly for my hand, which makes typing not too difficult for long periods. Although if you’re a business person sending tons of emails on your phone, I actually prefer the Ultra. This phone could work for that type of person, but I find typing easier on the Ultra models.

But besides typing, this design is adorable and incredibly modern. It sort of feels like I’m using the next generation of technology, or like what I imagined tech would be like ‘in the future,’ when I was five years old watching Star Trek with my parents. It’s like one of those small thin tablets that you’d see Captain Jean-Luc Picard use, either folded or unfolded.

Speaking of the unfolded experience, I love how thin and light the Fold 8 is. Its thinness measures 4.5mm compared to the Z Fold 8 Ultra’s astounding 4.1mm, but the 0.4mm difference isn’t too big. And even more impressive, the Fold 8 weighs 201g, making it the lightest among the folding phones (not including flip-style devices). Sometimes I wear shorts to bed, and I’ve fallen asleep not realizing the Fold 8 is in my pocket, and its weight and size mean that it hasn’t fallen out of my pocket when sitting.

Probably the only thing that’s annoying about the Z Fold 8’s design is its camera placement. With the two cameras in the top left corner, the phone isn’t balanced when it’s lying flat on its rear. This isn’t untypical for Samsung devices; in fact, Samsung says this is part of their design language among its handsets, but folded or not, this experience is even more annoying than usual. Curious if they’ll do the same thing next year, as rumours point to Samsung’s S27 series sporting a horizontal camera setup.

The Z Fold 8 comes in Graphite, Cream, Lavender and Pistachio (though the Pistachio variant is exclusive to Samsung’s store only). I like the Lavender, but it’s pretty feminine. I probably would have picked the Graphite colour variant, or maybe Pistachio if I had the choice.

Small, but mighty

Powered by Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5, 12GB of RAM, and an Adreno 840 GPU, the Galaxy Z Fold 8 is a tank, and I haven’t really come across any issues. I’ve seen a weird glitch once or twice when swapping from folded to unfolded. When the handset returns to folded, the display is tiny and unusable, but locking and unlocking your device fixes this problem. This hasn’t happened a lot, but my phone has done this once or twice.

Besides that issue, the Z Fold 8 is nearly faultless and can handle any task. Multitasking with several apps, having apps side by side, playing games, scrolling through social media, watching YouTube and Netflix, taking pictures; all of it works without hiccups on either screen. I’ve done so much mobile gaming with the Z Fold 8; I’m obsessed. I’ve played Sea of Stars, Slay the Spire, Pokémon Champions, Marvel Snap, and Dead Cells, and they all work great and, more importantly, look amazing on the Fold 8 when it’s unfolded. Like, Slay the Spire takes up the whole display, leaving only bezels; it almost looks like a framed picture. Occasionally, I’ll even play on the smaller front screen, but it’s definitely a better experience when you’re using the larger panel. And I’ll play Slay the Spire for hours straight, and the device stays at a pretty consistent temperature, never getting too warm.

And the battery life, while not the best on a foldable, is pretty solid. On a regular Monday, the phone can last the whole day — I start my day typically writing an article on the device, and move to my laptop after the first article is dead. So, I’m typically only using my phone during lunch or in the bathroom. After work, I’m typically hanging out with roommates, playing games on my device while watching TV. Then at night, when I play games on my PlayStation or hang out with my boyfriend, I’m typically scrolling through social media between Overwatch matches or while vibing. And by then, I get a warning saying that I have about 15 per cent left, and I charge it before bed. I haven’t really needed to worry about the battery, unless I’m going out that night and I plan on taking pictures.

I wish it had MagSafe; MagSafe is nice, especially when you have a MagSafe wallet.

Not without flaws

The Z Fold 8’s two 50MP cameras take pretty pictures with a good amount of detail, beautiful colours, and a surprisingly great sense of dynamic range. I took it around the streets of London and had a blast, but I noticed that the S26 Ultra that I had with me could take pictures with more detail than the Z Fold 8. And I was missing the telephoto when I wanted to take a picture of the guards at Buckingham Palace. (No one ever mentions how far away they are; I thought you could go up next to them and take a selfie.) But besides when I was taking a picture of a statue that had a lot of detail and those aforementioned guards, I didn’t feel like the Z Fold 8 was missing anything. You can tell that there is some post-processing happening; after you take a picture, sometimes it looks pretty bad, and after a few moments it looks a lot better.

Samsung has a ton of AI features on the device that I mentioned in my hands-on. I didn’t really come across any of it during my time with the device, as I expected. Now Nudge, a feature that uses AI to understand your screen and help you take your next step, barely ever showed up, and I made sure it was enabled.

I would see the Now Nudge feature that appears when I’m texting, but I rarely use the Google Messages app, and talk via Instagram and Facebook Messenger, so I never see this feature either.

Next generation of phones

I think the Z Fold 8 might be the natural evolution of smartphones. During my time at MobileSyrup, I’ve seen many fads like phones you can squeeze, or ones that you can control through hand gestures, and some successes like facial recognition and hole punch cameras, and I think the Z Fold 8 is one of these successes. Expect one of these from Google and Motorola in the coming year or two, and more importantly, Apple is rumoured to launch a similarly designed phone next month.

At this current moment, I’d say this is the phone of the year; it’s well-rounded in terms of a solid camera, battery and display, but the clutch form factor brings it a step further. I wish it was a bit more affordable, but with the ongoing RAM crisis and Qualcomm announcing that it’s increasing the price of its Snapdragon chips, this higher price tag might become more of the norm.

I recommend the Z Fold 8 to anyone who’s okay to spend a little more on their phone and spends their time commuting or playing games on their handset. If you’re completely business-focused or need the best camera for videos, you might want to consider the Z Fold 8 Ultra or S26 Ultra, but otherwise anyone can get enjoyment out of this device.

Now that I’m done with this review, I’ll move on to the Z Fold 8 Ultra, and following that, it’ll likely move to Made by Google devices that launch in the near future, but I’m honestly sad. I would much rather keep using this device, and it’s not to say that this phone is better than the Z Fold 8 Ultra or any other device, but this feels like the next step in the evolution of smartphones, and everything else feels like a step back.