Samsung has launched three folding phones at once, each aimed at a different kind of customer. It is the clearest indication yet that foldable phones have become a market of their own.
The Galaxy Z Flip8 folds into a compact square, the passport-shaped Z Fold8 opens into a screen intended mainly for content, and the Z Fold8 Ultra targets productivity and high-end photography.
“The question is no longer about whether a foldable has a place within the market,” says Justin Hume, vice-president for mobile experiences at Samsung South Africa. “It’s now a question about which foldable is the right one to go for.”
That question says more about the state of foldables than a specs-fest of thinner bodies and improved cameras.
Until now, the folding phone’s hinge was the headline, and opening a phone into a small tablet was used to justify both the novelty and the price. The various models were technically different, but generally divided into two shapes: a conventional phone that folded in half and a narrow device that opened like a book.
Samsung has now split that second group in two. The familiar book-style Fold has become the Z Fold8 Ultra, while the Z Fold8 name has been transferred to an entirely new passport-shaped model.
It is all about the shape. The Ultra opens into a tall 8-inch screen suited to running apps side by side. The standard Fold8 opens into a wider 7.6-inch display with a 4:3 aspect ratio. Turned on its side, it becomes a 3:4 screen, suitable for reading for books and websites. It weighs 201g, less than Samsung’s own Galaxy S26 Ultra.
The change creates an unusual hierarchy. In most smartphone ranges, moving down from Ultra means accepting fewer features in exchange for a lower price. The standard model performs essentially the same job, but with less expensive specs.
The Fold8 does have a less capable camera system than the Ultra. Its main camera is 50MP, compared with 200MP on the Ultra, and it has no dedicated telephoto lens. Yet Hume objects to describing it as an Ultra Lite.
“I’d actually call it a different perspective on the product,” he says. “The Z Fold8 Ultra is about productivity. It’s about the 200-megapixel camera and high-intensity usage, whereas we are prioritising the Z Fold8 more for content, media and e-book-type utilisation.”
In practise, trying it out in the streets of London after its global launch at the Old Billingsgate market, it proved to be delightfully capable, as well as highly portable.
Samsung arrived at this format by examining what Fold owners were doing after the novelty of repeatedly opening and closing the phone had worn off.
According to Hume, content accounts for 56% of the daily activity of owners of the predecessor, the Fold7. They also use multi-window functions five times more often than customers with phones from the conventional Galaxy S range.
On could say this is how a product category begins to break into a market. The defining feature becomes less important than the different jobs people find for it. But cost remains a barrier.
The Flip8 starts at R26,999 in South Africa. The Fold8 begins at R40,999, while the 1TB Fold8 Ultra reaches R60,999. These are phones for customers who don’t pay much attention to price tags. But they are also the best argument yet for foldables.
The foldable that fist persuaded the world that Samsung was serious about the category, the Fold5, weighed 253g and was 13.4mm thick when closed. The Fold8 Ultra weighs 215g and closes to 8.9mm. Its external screen has the proportions of a normal smartphone display, eliminating the narrowness that compromised earlier Fold models.
That evolution creates an awkward moment for Apple. Its first folding iPhone is expected in September, although the company has not confirmed it. Reports point to a passport-shaped device remarkably similar to the new Fold8.
Apple is expected to offer one interpretation of a folding iPhone. Samsung’s defence is choice. It will already have three interpretations of a folding Galaxy, backed by eight generations of work on the hinges and displays that make them possible.
“We’ve now got to a point where we’ve got a foldable that is for everyday immersion, a foldable that’s for maximum productivity, all the way through to one that is for self-expression,” says Hume. “These are actually three different phones for three different audiences.”
* Arthur Goldstuck is CEO of World Wide Worx, editor-in-chief of Gadget.co.za, and author of “The Hitchhiker’s Guide to AI – The African Edge”.