Foldables don’t usually get my juices flowing. The sad fact is that while I like the “idea” of a folding phone, the sheen quickly dulls, and I’m left reeling from the compromises. Even after just a few hours of playing with the brand-new Galaxy Z Fold 8, I think it reinforces that wide foldables were always the right decision.

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Wide and wieldy

Much has been made of what Apple is going to do when the company finally drops its own take on a folding device at some point in the not-too-distant future, and I think that has lit a fire under Samsung to think more broadly about where the Galaxy Z Fold series could and should have gone from the very get-go.

Whether it is a rebuttal to the eventual Apple take on the genre, I do think that Samsung has absolutely nailed the fundamentals of a wide foldable in ways that Google was unable to do with the original Pixel Fold.

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As soon as I picked up the svelte passport-sized phone, I was enamored. I’ll be honest, this is the first time in a few years that a form factor has made me smitten. It’s light and thin, and the color choices are among the most impressive aspects. I would 100% suggest opting for the online exclusive Pistachio if you are thinking of picking one up.

I’ve used this specific foldable shape before. The Oppo Find N2 was the first, followed by the original Pixel Fold, but while I loved the shape and size of those, Samsung has imbued its trademark high-end finishes and hardware prowess to create the best version of it.

While the jury is still out on cameras, battery life, and other real-life use aspects, the hardware alone is a leap back into a forgotten form factor on the Galaxy Z Fold 8. The 5.5-inch package is just 9.7mm thick when folded and 4.5mm when unfolded.

It’s not too tall that it’ll poke out of a pocket, and the 7.6-inch inner display is a 4:3 canvas that reminds me of the iPad Mini, save for iOS ruining that experience. Samsung didn’t confirm to us ahead of time whether there would be any S Pen support, but that could have been an easy home run for this notebook’s size and shape. I figured someone must have mentioned this internally, but it feels like a missed opportunity, especially given that Fold 7 dropped support last year.

I’m kind of frustrated that we ever went down the 1:1 route for foldable phones in the first place. Side-by-side phone apps have never really felt “productive” in my experience. The larger inner canvas just feels more “true” to a productivity experience. Web pages, videos, apps, it’s taken Samsung a while to realize, but this feels like a step in the best direction for this form factor – tri-fold notwithstanding.

Samsung is positioning this as the “entertainment” Fold, and it certainly is.

Videos can fill the entire inner display. I say “can” as you might get cropping on the Y-axis. For 2:1 video content, you still have smaller black bars, but it’s vastly improved over the Z Fold 7 and 8 Ultra for immersion. No, videos don’t get bigger, they just look less…annoying. I know my colleague Ben Schoon actually disagrees, which is probably a great discussion, as you might have your own opinion on which is better visually. 4:3 probably is by no means the perfect display ratio, but I still think it’s more my style as it feels better.

Webpages show more content without adding unnecessary blank space or padding. Overall, this is the superior way to consume content on a device of this type because it doesn’t eat into the screen thanks to the better aspect ratio. I will say it isn’t perfect, but it’s still vastly superior to the square screen layout.

Snapping 16:9 and 2:1 content to the 4:3 display zooms in drastically. You lose a lot of extra information from videos, and this is arguably the weakest component of this change. Just don’t zoom in, and you’ll have an excellent time.

Even when you’re using apps side-by-side, the squat experience just mimics the outer screen. You don’t really miss out, nor does it feel any less “productive” in any sense of the word. This is the best of both worlds in more ways than one. It helps that you get chipset parity with the Galaxy Fold 8 Ultra too, so you’re not even taking a performance step down. I kind of figured it might end up being slower as a way to differentiate, but it feels in lockstep with Samsung’s best devices.

A quick note on webpages and certain optimized games. These can be run in portrait orientation on the inner display. This does mean you have to turn the Galaxy Z Fold 8 around, but I can see why One UI is optimized for this orientation. It takes better advantage of the Y-axis for scrolling, ensuring you get more content in that direction rather than stretching out and changing how things look and feel.

I also enjoyed using the outer display; it didn’t feel too drastically different, and the reachability was something I feel like might be a really powerful sales aid for Samsung.

Both displays are top-tier and, finally, there appears to be a visible reduction in the crease. It’s not something that has ever really bothered me, but at the right angle, you might be able to make it out. Samsung says it’s due to a new Titanium alloy film and plate. Whatever they did, it worked. The screen is much smoother and more seamless.

Switching things up has brought about some compromises. This phone only ships with a dual camera system. There are some neat functions like My Fan Cam that’ll auto-crop on a person or subject in a video. I didn’t get the opportunity to test that, but it seemed like a nice function for concerts and events.

The Galaxy Z Fold 8 is perfectly proportioned for your pocket

I’ve gushed about the Galaxy Z Fold 8 probably enough already. It feels like a step in the right direction for foldables, but it is, after all, still a foldable.

Most people will not gain any major lifestyle benefit from a phone such as this. However, you are getting a proper tablet experience in your palm, a smaller footprint, and all the trappings of Samsung’s software improvements with the firm’s hardware prowess.

Samsung has created three distinct products that give anyone with a desire for a folding phone a great set of choices. The Flip is the entry-level option, the Fold 8 is, in my opinion, the best choice for 95% of people, while the Fold 8 Ultra is for people who liked what Samsung was doing already.

I can’t help but feel like this is where Google may have dropped the ball by following the pack. There’s an affinity I already have for the Z Fold 8 that has been missing from a lot of recent devices. It scratches an itch that has been persisting with the foldable form factor for a while, and we could have had better versions of this, but the industry decided against it.

I felt indifferent toward the Galaxy Z Fold 8 Ultra; it’s just an upgrade over the Z Fold 7. The Z Fold 8 is the step back in the “tablet in your pocket” that I think we were promised with foldables almost a decade ago. The Pixel Fold did it first, and while it had problems, I’m glad we’re getting a rebirth of the form factor, and I’m 100% here for it.

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