I just spent an hour with the Galaxy Z Fold 8, and it's everything I've wanted from a foldable for 7 years

I’ve just spent about an hour using the Galaxy Z Fold 8, and it’s the one Samsung device that I didn’t want to put down. That’s really saying a lot. As someone who has gone to numerous launch events and gotten hands-on with probably hundreds of devices over the past 15 years, for a device to get my attention enough to make me not want to put it down is huge.

It comes down to the new form factor, really. While this is likely because of Apple, I don’t really care; this is the perfect form factor for a foldable right now. It’s shorter and wider, making it easier to use one-handed, particularly that cover display, which is a 16:10 aspect ratio. So it’s really not that wide; it’s mostly like the smartphones we had a decade ago that were 16:9, before LG pushed us to 18:9 and to even taller smartphones. It’s really like a throwback, and I absolutely love it.

A big selling point for this foldable, according to Samsung, is the fact that it is built for content consumption. Of course, Samsung needed a marketing way to differentiate the two devices. So the Galaxy Z Fold 8 Ultra is built for productivity, and the Galaxy Z Fold 8 is better for consuming content. And that is definitely true. Below, you can see what a full-screen YouTube video looks like on the Galaxy Z Fold 8 vs the Galaxy Z Fold 8 Ultra.

In the gallery below, you can see what a full-screen video looks like on the Galaxy Z Fold 8 vs the Galaxy Z Fold 8 Ultra.

Samsung’s lightest fold yet

Samsung also made sure to mention that this is their lightest foldable device yet, weighing in at just 201g. To put that in perspective, that is lighter than the smaller Google Pixel 10 Pro. Making this really impressive for a foldable. And you can really feel it in the hand.

With foldables, the one thing we really want to see is them getting lighter and thinner. Making them close to the same weight and thickness as a regular slab phone, and Samsung really seems to have done that here.

But one of the ways Samsung is able to make this so thin is by having a camera bump. While the Galaxy Z Fold 8 is wider now, it does still wobble quite a bit when it’s on a table. That’s one of my pet peeves, but I love this form factor so much that I might just put up with it, to use this as my daily driver.

Bigger battery, faster charging

Both of the Galaxy Z Fold 8 models get bigger batteries and faster charging this year. This was leaked out ahead of time, so the Galaxy Z Fold 8 gets a 4,800mAh battery with 45W charging, which can get you 63% charge in 30 minutes. But what Samsung didn’t say in any briefing or in any of these leaks is that these are silicon-carbon batteries.

That’s right. All three Galaxy Z foldables launching today are using silicon-carbon batteries. Finally! Though these batteries have very low silicon content, so they are technically still classified as “lithium-ion”. Samsung says that we will see more of their devices coming with silicon-carbon batteries in the near future.

Should you buy the Galaxy Z Fold 8?

Yes. But you should wait for full reviews, versus just an hour or two of hands-on time. We can’t really test things out like battery life and the camera in a short hands-on time. But so far, I’m very excited to get my own review unit of the Galaxy Z Fold 8 later today after Unpacked. It’s basically everything I’ve been asking for from a foldable for the last 7 years, now in a device that actually exists.

I will say, I’m pretty surprised by the price of this Galaxy Z Fold 8; it starts at $1,899, and I fully expected it to start at $1,999 or higher.

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