Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 8: Price, Specs, and Everything Else You Need to Know

Samsung just gave its foldable lineup its biggest shake-up in years — and it’s going to cost you more to get one. At Galaxy Unpacked in London, the company unveiled three new folding phones: the Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 8 Ultra, the standard Galaxy Z Fold 8, and the Galaxy Z Flip 8. Two new smartwatches came along for the ride too.

The headline change isn’t a spec bump, though — it’s a genuine redesign. For the first time, the Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 8 breaks from the tall, narrow shape Samsung has used for years and switches to a wider, horizontal fold. Add in a fresh titanium build, deeper Gemini AI integration, and a $100 price hike across the board, and this is arguably the most significant foldable update since the original Z Fold.

Here’s a full breakdown of pricing, specs, release date, and whether it’s actually worth the upgrade.

Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 8 Price: How Much Will It Cost?

Prices went up across the entire foldable lineup this year, continuing an industry-wide trend driven by memory shortages and rising component costs. Here’s what each model costs at launch, per Samsung’s own Unpacked press materials:

• Galaxy Z Fold 8 Ultra: starts at $2,100
• Galaxy Z Fold 8: starts at $1,900
• Galaxy Z Flip 8: starts at $1,200

That’s $100 more than last year’s equivalent models across the board. As Engadget noted in its analysis of the price increases, a flat $100 bump is actually a relatively restrained move given how badly memory shortages have hit the wider electronics industry — Google’s upcoming Pixel phones and Apple’s next iPhone lineup are both rumored to be following suit.

Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 8 vs. Fold 8 Ultra: What’s the Difference?

Samsung is now splitting its book-style foldable into two distinct devices, and the differences go beyond just price.

The Galaxy Z Fold 8 Ultra keeps the familiar vertical fold. It has a 6.5-inch exterior display and an 8-inch interior screen, both running at a 120Hz adaptive refresh rate. Its camera system leads with a 200MP main sensor alongside 50MP ultrawide and 10MP telephoto lenses, supporting 30x Space Zoom and 8K video. It’s built around a 5,000mAh battery and is just 4.1mm thin when unfolded.

The standard Galaxy Z Fold 8, on the other hand, is the one making headlines for its shape. It ditches the tall-and-narrow layout for a horizontal fold, giving it a 4:3 aspect ratio when open and a device that’s noticeably wider than the Ultra when closed. It packs a 7.6-inch main display, a 5.5-inch cover screen with up to 3,000 nits of brightness, and a larger 4,800mAh battery than last year’s Z Fold 7. Its camera setup is simpler too, with 50MP main and 50MP ultrawide sensors, but no telephoto lens.

Both phones run on Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 for Galaxy chipset and use Samsung’s new Flex Titanium construction, which adds a titanium alloy layer beneath the flexible OLED panel to reduce crease visibility and improve durability — details Samsung and Engadget both cover in their full rundown of everything announced at Unpacked.

Galaxy Z Flip 8: The Compact Sibling

If a book-style fold isn’t your thing, the Galaxy Z Flip 8 gets the same Flex Titanium hinge and a slightly slimmer, lighter body than its predecessor. It has a 6.9-inch main display and a 4.1-inch cover screen, a 50MP main camera with a 12MP ultrawide, and a new Mirror Mode that turns the cover display into a makeup-friendly viewfinder. According to Engadget’s hands-on impressions, it’s a fairly iterative upgrade over the Z Flip 7, but the tougher hinge and added AI features on the front screen make it a more capable everyday companion.

New AI Features Across the Lineup

Every phone in the lineup leans heavily on Google’s Gemini. All three foldables come with Gemini-powered task automation that can handle things like booking tickets or ordering food based on nothing more than a photo or a voice request, plus a pre-installed Gemini Notebook and a free six-month trial of Google AI Pro. There’s also a new Fan Cam (or MyFan Cam) feature that lets you digitally track and crop a single person throughout a video automatically.

One thing that hasn’t changed: despite the redesigned hardware, none of the new foldables offer native Qi2 wireless charging support — you’ll still need a magnetic case to take full advantage of a Qi2 charger.

When Can You Buy the Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 8?

Pre-orders for the entire lineup, including the new Galaxy Watch 9 and Galaxy Watch Ultra 2, are open now. All the devices officially go on sale on August 7.

Is the Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 8 Worth the Upgrade?

If you’re currently on a Galaxy Z Fold 6 or earlier, the redesigned Fold 8 is a genuinely bigger leap than Samsung’s usual yearly refresh — the new aspect ratio alone changes how the phone feels to use day to day. If you already own a Z Fold 7, the case is less clear-cut: the core upgrades (a bigger battery, Flex Titanium build, deeper Gemini integration) are meaningful but incremental, and the shift to a horizontal fold means relearning how you hold and use the phone.

For anyone budget-conscious, the $100 price increase across the board is worth factoring into your decision, especially with rumors that Apple and Google are about to make similar moves with their own flagship phones later this year.

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