Samsung Galaxy Z Fold8 Ultra Puts an 8″ Workspace and a 200MP Camera in Android’s Thinnest Book Fold

Apple’s foldable has soaked up most of the oxygen this season, which is convenient if you already live inside iOS. Anyone who would rather keep Android, DeX, and three live apps on one slab still has a clearer answer: Samsung’s Galaxy Z Fold8 Ultra, priced at $1,799.99 (was $2,100), the first book-style Fold to carry the Ultra badge and the first to pair that badge with a camera and battery that finally match the price.

The folded phone imeasures 158.4 mm tall, 72.8 mm wide, and is only 8.9 mm thick. When you open it, however, the body flattens to a mind-boggling 4.1mm thin, making it the slimmest Z Fold Samsung has released to date, with a weight of only 215 grams. At the heart of this setup is a sophisticated Armor aluminum frame that provides excellent protection for the glass cover (Gorilla Glass Ceramic 3) and back (Gorilla Glass Victus 2), not to mention the IP48 rating. Flex Titanium under the inner panel and a quieter hinge take some of the old crease out of the middle of the screen.

The phone’s display is a 6.5-inch Dynamic AMOLED 2X with a resolution of 1080 by 2520 and 422 pixels per inch, which expands to 8 inches at 2504 by 2256 when unfolded. The inside screen includes the same ppi, HDR10+, anti-reflective coating, and a 3,000-nit peak, which is around 15% brighter than last year’s 7 Fold. Both displays also include the Vision Booster, which can benefit you in broad sunshine. If you enjoy editing photographs or reading long documents, one of the first things you’ll notice about the inside display is the pixel density.

The rear glass is a bit of a tease, hiding a triple camera array that is far more impressive than anything found on last year’s Fold. A 200-megapixel main camera with f/1.7 and optical stabilization, as well as Quad Pixel autofocus, handles the most of the job, while a new 50-megapixel ultra-wide with f/1.9 and focusing may be useful for sweeping vistas or close-up photos. Meanwhile, a 10-megapixel 3x telecamera at f/2.4 ensures that your portraits look sharp. Each cover and inner punch-hole has its own 10-megapixel f/2.2 camera, and when it comes to video, this phone can handle 8K at 30 frames per second, 4K at 120, Nightography films, Cine LUT previews, and the APV codec to assist you get a cleaner appearance.

The Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 for Galaxy is a 3-nanometer processor with Oryon cores and an Adreno 840 GPU that can handle whatever this phone throws at it. You get 12GB of RAM as standard, 256GB of UFS 4 storage, and seven years of Android upgrades, beginning with Android 17 and One UI 9. Wi-Fi 7, Bluetooth 6.0, UWB, NFC, and a 5 Gbps USB-C connector round out the radios. The side fingerprint sensor is located on the frame.

Silicon-carbon batteries finally break through the Fold’s persistent 4400mAh capacity constraint. The normal capacity is 5,000 mAh, and the batteries should endure for a reasonable 1,200 charge cycles before showing signs of wear, i.e. degrading to 80% capacity. Samsung claims you can get up to 27 hours of movie playback time from these. When it comes to topping up, cable charging is a rather quick 45 watts, and we’re informed that if you have a suitable charger, you’ll be roughly two-thirds of the way to full in half an hour. In terms of wireless charging, the Fold can handle 20 watts using the latest Qi2.2 specification while also charging your headphones or watch in reverse. The other significant hardware change is what Samsung calls Dual-path charging, which prevents the two cells in this 4.1mm thick body from fighting one other when charging.

One UI 9 has some exciting new features for you. When you glance at the inner panel, it morphs into a big virtual desktop, allowing you to open many windows while still having enough of screen area to play with. Two- and three-way splits are still accessible, and windows can be easily popped up and resized. If you need to multitask, you can even set apps to launch simultaneously or pin a taskbar to keep track of your work. Oh, and DeX can now handle several workspaces when plugged into a monitor, each with its own particular set of windows displayed. Let’s not forget about Flex Mode, which allows you to split an app across the fold, with the lower half for controls and the top half for the viewfinder or document.