REVIEW: Samsung Galaxy Z Fold8

Samsung has spent the best part of a decade chasing the perfect foldable shape, and with the Galaxy Z Fold8 it may finally have found it.

This is a wider, shorter “passport” style foldable rather than the tall, narrow design the Fold line has used since 2019, and our review lands just days after Apple unveiled its own take on the format, the iPhone Duo.

Apple’s passport-shaped foldable has been rumoured for years, but Samsung got there first with a shipping product, even though the idea itself isn’t new. Google tried something similar with the original Pixel Fold back in 2023, only for that design to quietly disappear from the lineup a year later.

Samsung has clearly learned from where that device fell short, and the Z Fold8 feels like the most convincing version of this shape yet.

Design & Build Quality

Closed, the Z Fold8 looks and handles like a normal phone, with a 5.5-inch cover screen that doesn’t feel cramped or oddly proportioned the way earlier Fold cover displays did.

Open it up and you get a 7.6-inch inner display with a 4:3 aspect ratio, which is far better suited to browsing, reading and video than the narrower, more elongated screens Samsung has in the (now) ‘Ultra’ Z Fold devices.

The new Flex Titanium hinge is the headline mechanical upgrade. It snaps open with real confidence, feels noticeably more durable than previous generations, and goes a long way towards flattening out the crease down the centre of the display.

It’s not entirely gone, but it’s far less visible and far less noticeable under a thumb than on the Z Fold7. The trade-off is that the more rigid hinge means Samsung has dropped the ability to prop the phone open at an angle for hands-free use, something previous Fold models allowed.

The phone carries an IP48 rating for dust and water resistance, and the frame is aluminium with Gorilla Glass Victus 2 on the rear.

Software Features

The Z Fold8 ships with Android 17 and One UI 9, and Samsung is now promising seven years of major OS and security updates, which is a genuinely strong commitment for a phone at this price.

The software makes reasonable use of the extra screen space, with split-screen multitasking and app pairing that work well once you get used to them. Samsung’s Galaxy AI suite is present throughout, covering writing tools, translation and Gemini-powered assistance, though much of it remains more of a novelty than something you’ll reach for daily.

Features like Now Brief, which surfaces weather, wearable data and suggested content on the home screen, are easy to ignore after the first few days. The Samsung Keyboard also remains a weak point and is worth swapping out if you’re a heavy typer.

Performance

Power comes from the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 for Galaxy, paired with 12GB of RAM as standard and 16GB on the top storage tier. In everyday use this translates to smooth, hiccup-free performance across multitasking, split-screen apps and general browsing.

Gaming performance is strong too, with support for ray tracing on titles that use it, though the compact chassis means the phone does run warm during longer sessions. That’s a familiar issue with slimmer foldables, where there’s simply less room for heat to dissipate compared with a standard flagship body.

Cameras

This is where the Z Fold8 makes its clearest compromise. Rather than the triple camera system found on the pricier Z Fold8 Ultra, the standard Z Fold8 sticks to two rear sensors, a 50-megapixel main camera and a 50-megapixel ultrawide, with no dedicated telephoto lens.

Both are capable in good light and hold up reasonably well after dark, but there’s no getting around the lack of optical zoom, which puts this phone behind rivals at a similar price when it comes to distance shots.

The 10-megapixel selfie camera on the front is fine for video calls, and the internal camera on the inner screen is serviceable for the same purpose but definitely not class leading.

Thanks to its folding form factor, you can just use the external, and much more capable rear cameras to take Selfies, with the external display turning into your viewfinder. Quality is much better this way.

Battery Life

The Z Fold8 packs a 4,800mAh battery, up from the 4,400mAh cell in the Z Fold7, and it’s enough to comfortably get through a full day of mixed use.

Samsung quotes up to 26 hours of video playback, and that tracks with real-world testing, though it’s worth noting Samsung’s own Z Fold8 Ultra carries a larger 5,000mAh cell.

Charging is capped at 45W wired and 20W wireless, which isn’t class-leading but is consistent with what Samsung has offered on its foldables for the past couple of generations. There’s no charger in the box.

Conclusion

The Galaxy Z Fold8 is the most convincing case yet for the passport-shaped foldable. The wider aspect ratio genuinely changes how the phone feels to use day to day, the hinge and crease improvements are real rather than marketing spin, and the software update commitment adds a lot of long-term value at this price point.

The camera setup is the clearest limitation, and anyone who leans heavily on zoom photography will be better served by the Z Fold8 Ultra.

But as an everyday foldable built around media, multitasking and general use, Samsung has landed on something that finally makes sense outside of the enthusiast crowd, and it’s done so before Apple has managed to ship a single unit of its rival design.

Samsung Galaxy Z Fold8 Pricing & Availability

The Samsung Galaxy Z Fold8 is available now from €2,049 for the 256GB model.

It can be bought directly from the official Samsung Store, as well as through Harvey Norman and Currys. It’s also available on bill pay plans through network operators including Vodafone and Three.