July 22, 2026
By Bob O'Donnell
With all the buzz of anticipation surrounding the rumored foldable iPhone that Apple’s widely expected to announce this fall, you have to wonder a bit what the good people at Samsung are thinking. After all, they’ve had foldable phones since 2019 and at their recent Unpacked event in London, the company unveiled their 8th generation devices. That’s a lot of iteration, design refinement and technology development they’ve done, yet it’s not clear that they’re currently getting (nor will be receiving) the credit they deserve for all that work and market category creation.
Nevertheless, they continue pushing the foldable smartphone experience forward and these latest 8th generation devices clearly demonstrate the real-world expertise they’ve acquired over the years. What’s particularly intriguing about the new launch is that they’ve added a new passport-style, wider but shorter form factor, called simply Galaxy Z Fold 8, to their existing pocket-sized Flip device and their taller, narrower flagship device, now renamed the Galaxy Z Fold 8 Ultra. (Frankly, for clarity’s sake, I wish the company had stuck with Z Fold 8 for their top-of-the-line model and called the new form factor Z Fold 8 Wide as was widely rumored, but alas, it did not.) The new Z Fold 8 is about 1.36” shorter and 0.36” wider than the 8 Ultra, leading to a slightly smaller, but more tablet-like 7.6” 4:3 aspect ratio inner display and a 5.5” 16:10 outside display versus an 8” nearly square and 6.5” 21:9 aspect ratio on the 8 Ultra.
If rumors are to be believed, this passport or tablet-style design is very similar to what Apple is expected to unveil this September with their iPhone foldable. In other words, Samsung is essentially leading the way on foldable design and innovation and yet, there are many who believe Apple could end up getting credit for evolving or even creating the foldable smartphone category. To be fair, there’s no question that an Apple foldable will drive significantly more attention to the devices overall—and Samsung should benefit from that—but it still doesn’t seem right.
On the technology side, Samsung has managed to integrate several important advancements into these new 8th generation devices. Chief among them is an enhanced screen experience enabled by a new display structure the company calls Flex Titanium. As the name implies, Flex Titanium uses a titanium alloy—in both a durable yet less than human-hair thin titanium film beneath the OLED display panel and in a plate that the display attaches to—that reduces the visible impact of where the interior screen folds in half (the “crease”) to almost nothing. A great deal has been made about the crease issue in previous generations of foldables, and it’s definitely been a stopping point for some potential buyers who’ve been interested in the category, but uncertain about how the crease would impact the usability of the phone. As a long time and very loyal user of Samsung foldables, I can speak with seven years of experience to the point that in real-world usage, the crease almost immediately fades into the background and is a non-issue. Still, for people who are new to the category and only briefly glance at the devices, it is typically something they see and point out, so making this change is a very important step forward for the company. (Plus, Apple’s foldable is rumored to have similar “creaseless” display technology.)
Samsung is also leveraging camera enhancements from the S26 line and is bringing its highest performing Ultra camera system to the Z Fold family. The Fold 8 Ultra includes the now typical 3-camera system with a 200MP main camera, 50MP Ultrawide and 10MP telephoto, while the Fold 8 offers a two-camera system with a 50MP main camera and 50MP Ultrawide.
As one would expect, the new devices also integrate the latest Snapdragon processors from Qualcomm—the Snapdragon 8 Gen 5 Samsung Edition, which was first introduced with the S26 family of phones earlier this year. The new chips offer 20% increase in CPU performance, 23% increase in GPU performance, and 37% increase in Hexagon NPU performance for enhanced AI experiences, all while decreasing power consumption. Speaking of AI, the new Galaxy Z Fold line all include multiple new AI-powered applications for on-device photo editing, image creation and more. The new Now Nudge feature provides some agentic-like on-device intelligence that helps provide more context around your emails, messages, calendar items and other personal content.
Given the industry-wide challenges of increased memory prices, it’s not surprising to see that Samsung raised prices for its 8th generation offerings by roughly $100 versus its 7th generation offerings (up to $2,099 for the Fold 8 Ultra vs. $1,999 for the Fold 7 and $1,199 for the Flip 8 vs. $1,099 for the Flip 7). The wider Fold 8 starts at $1,899 with 12 GB of memory and 256 GB of storage.
In addition to its latest foldables, Samsung used this year’s summer Unpacked event to update its smartwatch line to Galaxy Watch 9 and Galaxy Watch Ultra 2 and to tease its upcoming Smart Glasses products. The new glasses, being built in conjunction with Google, Warby Parker and Gentle Monster, will run Android XR and be powered by Qualcomm’s Snapdragon AR1 Gen 1 processor. Like the Ray-Ban Meta Wayfarers, they incorporate cameras and microphones, so can react to your surroundings, but they do not incorporate displays. More details are still to come, but AI-powered integration with Google’s Gemini will be a key feature of the devices.
As a hardcore foldable fan, I’m always happy to see Samsung innovate in this category and the enhancements they’ve made to the 8th generation devices—particularly the new form factor choice with the Fold 8—are solid steps forward. I have believed for a while that the flexibility and capabilities that foldable smartphones provide could and should make them mainstream devices. By continuing to refine their efforts, it seems Samsung is definitely moving them in that direction.
Here’s a link to the original column: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/samsung-unpacks-new-foldables-bob-o-donnell-xerbc
Bob O’Donnell is the president and chief analyst of TECHnalysis Research, LLC a market research firm that provides strategic consulting and market research services to the technology industry and professional financial community. You can follow him on LinkedIn at Bob O’Donnell or on Twitter @bobodtech.
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