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LONDON – After dominating the seven-and-a-half-year-old U.S. foldable phone market from the start, is Samsung hearing Apple’s footsteps?
You could be forgiven for coming to that conclusion. A year after delivering a game-changing new design, as Samsung did last summer with the Galaxy Z Fold7, most electronics suppliers would bask in the glow of their success, delivering only modest improvements the following year. Samsung has done just that with the new Galaxy Z Fold8 Ultra.
But rather than just enjoying the victory lap, the electronics giant also unveiled a second phone to the Fold family: the Galaxy Z Fold8, a shorter, wider passport-style foldable that is so instantly alluring it makes you wonder why Samsung didn’t deliver such an eminently pocketable shape years ago.
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It is impossible to look at the new Fold8 and not believe to your core that Samsung is reacting to Apple in the rearview. The Fold8 does map well to what we think we know about Apple’s rumored iPhone Ultra, another passport-style foldable that most observers believe will be announced at Apple’s annual reveal in early September. Most Fold8 features and specs are as good as or better than what folks anticipate from Apple – and at a lower price.
Normally, companies dominating a market would never make changes to a successful product line in anticipation of a newcomer. But in this case, it makes sense: The newbie-in-waiting moves markets each time it introduces a new product.
Improving on the Galaxy Z Fold7
The Z Fold8 Ultra includes a lot of upgrades over 2025’s category-best Fold7. Unfurled, the 8-inch Fold8 Ultra display is slightly thinner. The Fold8 Ultra weighs the same as the Fold7, even though it’s packing a larger, higher-performance battery. The folding display and the external 6.5-inch screen are both 15 percent brighter. The larger, folding screen is more durable and the crease down the middle is a little less noticeable. And it has a custom version of the latest Qualcomm processor, the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5.
The Fold8 is much more compact. The 5.5-inch external display is just a third taller than it is wide, but inside is a super-wide 7.6-inch video-ready screen. In comparison, the height of the Fold8 Ultra’s outer screen is two-and-a-third times the width.
Despite the diminutive size, the Fold8 boasts many of the upgrades as the Fold8 Ultra, including the bright, 3,000-nit displays, the high-end processor and Samsung’s new Flex Titanium-branded advances to the folding display.
Word is that like Samsung, Apple also will feature titanium alloy technology in its folding display.
Samsung could end up bracketing the iPhone Ultra with the Fold8 and Fold8 Ultra, should Apple decide to price its new foldable at $2,000. The Z Fold8 will start at $1,900 (OK, $1,899.99). The Z Fold8 Ultra – with its larger displays, a higher-end camera system and larger battery – starts at $2,100. Given today’s sky-high memory prices, Apple could end up pricing its new foldable higher than both Samsung models.
The shape of things to come?
The shorter, wider Fold8 is what the market has been clamoring for since the first passport-style foldables came to market several years ago. Samsung did respond to the demands in its own way, subtly stretching each subsequent Fold a touch wider than the last.
But Samsung never gave the slightest hint it might abandon its trademark long-and-lean form to go full-on passport. Until now.
Regardless of what motivated Samsung, the company has a hit on its hands with the Fold8. Watch for it to become the dominant foldable in the company’s lineup, outselling the Fold8 Ultra – and for that matter, the new Galaxy Z Flip8 (starting at $1,200), the latest incarnation of the company’s compact-sized fashion-forward foldable.
For now, anyone who wants a foldable with the latest camera technology will need to spend an additional $200 on the Fold8 Ultra. But if the Fold8 turns out to be as popular as I suspect, then it will be interesting to see where Samsung takes the Fold-series over the next few years. My bet: The Fold8 will turn out to be the shape of things to come.
Mike Feibus is president and principal analyst of FeibusTech, a Scottsdale, Arizona, market research and consulting firm. Reach him at [email protected]. Follow him on X at @MikeFeibus.
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Samsung's new Galaxy Z Fold8 looks ready for Apple's foldable
