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After several rounds of leaks, Samsung has finally made it official and launched three foldable phones in one afternoon, and only one of them is actually new.
Samsung officially unveiled the Galaxy Z Flip8, Galaxy Z Fold8, and Galaxy Z Fold8 Ultra at its Unpacked event in London, with prices starting at $1,199, $1,899, and $2,099. Pre-orders are open right now, and all three ship with Android 17 and One UI 9.
If you’ve bought a foldable before, you know the drill. New chip, slightly thinner body, a battery bump, a price bump to match. That’s still true here. But this is also the first time Samsung is using silicon-carbon battery (Si-C) cells across the whole lineup, which is the kind of change that doesn’t show up in a headline spec sheet but quietly buys you real battery life.
Samsung Galaxy Z Flip8
The Flip8 is the one built for people who just want a normal phone that folds in half. It’s $1,199, weighs 180 grams, and at 6.1mm thick it’s noticeably slimmer than last year’s Flip7. Samsung keeps comparing it to the Flip6 instead, which tells you the year-over-year jump wasn’t as dramatic as they’d like you to think.
The bigger story is the cover screen. You can now run pretty much any Android app on it, though you’ll need to install MultiStar from GoodLock to unlock that. Samsung also leaned hard into AI here. The FlexWindow now surfaces Now Brief and Gemini Intelligence right on the outer display, so you can fire off a request or check your day without opening the phone at all.
One thing to know before you buy: Samsung is splitting the chip again. The US gets the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 for Galaxy, while European units run the Exynos 2600. Same phone, different brain, depending on where you live.
Samsung Galaxy Z Fold8
At $1,899, the Fold8 is Samsung’s attempt to make a foldable that actually feels good for watching things. The outer screen is now shorter and wider at 5.5 inches, closer to a 16:10 ratio, which makes the inner 7.6-inch display land closer to 3:4 when unfolded. That’s a real change from past Fold models, where video always felt cramped into a tall, narrow window.
Quick specs: Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 worldwide, 12GB of RAM with 256GB of storage, and a 4,800mAh battery with 45W wired charging. At 201 grams, Samsung says it’s the lightest Fold it has ever made.
Should you upgrade? If you’re coming from a Fold6 or earlier and mainly use the phone for reading, streaming, or gaming, the new display ratio alone is worth a look in person before you decide.
Samsung Galaxy Z Fold8 Ultra
This is the one aimed at people who use their phone like a laptop. At $2,099, it’s a $100 increase over last year, and Samsung is positioning it as the productivity flagship, with an 8-inch main display and a body that’s just 4.1mm thick when unfolded.
Camera-wise, this is where the real jump happened. The 200MP main sensor now shoots HDR at full resolution, there’s a new 50MP ultrawide, and video shooters get 8K recording through a new APV codec plus Cine LUT color grading built into the phone. That’s a genuinely different tier of camera than what the standard Fold8 gets.
Battery sits at 5,000mAh with a new dual-path charging setup at 45W, and Samsung added an expanded graphite cooling structure to keep things from throttling during heavier tasks. It’s still running the same Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 chip as the rest of the lineup, so the performance ceiling is shared. The difference is how long you can push it before the phone slows down to cool off.
Concluding Thoughts
Every model in the lineup also comes with a six-month trial of Google AI Pro, including 5TB of cloud storage, and Samsung is leaning on Knox and a new AI Assistant Activity dashboard to make the growing pile of on-device AI features feel less like a black box.
Three phones, three very different jobs.
The Flip8 is for people who want simple and pocketable. The Fold8 is for people who want a bigger screen without carrying a briefcase. The Fold8 Ultra is for people who’ve already decided their phone is also their laptop. I just wish that last one didn’t cost more than most actual laptops.
