Samsung Galaxy Z Fold8 Ultra review: Samsung’s best foldable faces a tough crowd

This also clarifies how the Ultra’s dual screens should work for you. In videos, the bigger display lets you catch minute details, and you can reduce letterboxing by watching content horizontally (buttons facing the sky). Reading also fares better here, since every line gets more room to breathe across the panel.

While the narrower outer display works just fine for those use cases, it fares better for mobile gaming that needs both thumbs, since the folded body provides extra palm grip. It’s also more convenient for texting, since a longer body fits more lines of past messages in your DMs.

We doubt we need to describe the Ultra’s value-add of two displays any further given Samsung had seven generations of selling it to users. But what needs saying are its overdue areas for improvement. IP48 rating for dust and water resistance feels a little long in the tooth when Chinese-branded foldables are going up to IP69K these days.

Same software perks as the Fold8, except for its multitasking

With One UI 9 (based on Android 17) running the show, the Galaxy Z Fold8 Ultra’s software is identical to the passport-shaped Fold8. We won’t repeat the improvements made to Bixby, Now Brief, and Now Nudge. These three (along with Galaxy AI) are the primary changes to an otherwise stable, refined, yet feature-filled operating system. Don’t forget it still keeps its Galaxy S26 series add-ons, like Call Screening.

Because of the focused efforts made to improve its agentic AI experience, app multitasking on the Ultra remained largely unchanged from the Fold7. You can do two side-by-side vertical apps with a third floating app window that’s resizeable. Oddly enough, it can do three apps on-screen (with the floating window being the fourth app). However, two of them become squares that share half a panel, which isn’t ideal for users who need three tall apps side by side. Perhaps Samsung can consider that as an option.

Imaging Performance

Before we showcase the Ultra images from this foldable, here’s a recap of its imaging chops:

• 200MP (main), f/1.7 aperture, Quad Pixel AF, OIS, 2x optical quality zoom, 23mm-equivalent
• 50MP (ultrawide), f/1.9 aperture, Quad Pixel AF, FOV 120˚, 13mm-equivalent
• 10MP (telephoto), f/2.4 aperture, PDAF, 3x optical zoom, 69mm-equivalent
• 10MP (selfie), f/2.2 aperture, 30mm-equivalent
• 10MP (inner), f/2.2 aperture, 22m-equivalent

Among Samsung’s three foldables launched this season, the Ultra is your only choice if you need a 3x optical zoom shooter. It’s anyone’s guess why the company didn’t explore 5x optical zoom alternatives to improve productivity or strengthen its Ultra positioning.

Another change is the ultrawide shooter, now at 50MP, which Samsung claims delivers improved detail, clarity, and macro shots.

Landscape samples

Except for its high-zoom range (10x digital and beyond), the Ultra has competent imaging prowess. We also felt its performance is close to the quality offered by its adjacent, passport-sized Fold8, despite using a 50MP main camera there. It’s clear to us that imaging isn’t really something a foldable sweats about once it meets the minimum acceptable quality level. That said, we did wish for a longer telephoto range if the bookstyle is meant to wear the Ultra badge.

For an Ultra, stopping at an ultrawide upgrade is also puzzling. Just across the pond is the OPPO Find N6 foldable with triple 50MP rear shooters (also with 3x optical zoom), but it has Hasselblad’s blessing and a lower sticker price to help it along. Perhaps Samsung feels its Ultra only needs to be the best shooting foldable in its stable, but it’s clear that others are less forgiving with their imaging needs.

Portrait samples

That said, Samsung’s shooting prowess still impresses, as seen in the images here. We’ve added the camera and zoom range used in each image’s title, so click the arrows to see them (none are edited or enhanced, and they are all taken and uploaded directly from the phone). Let’s not forget our travel experience in Japan using the Fold7, which is a really good testament to how capable foldable phones are for capturing all the joyous and beautiful moments:-

Benchmark Performance 

Samsung Galaxy Z Fold8 Ultra uses a Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 for Galaxy chipset. For users willing to pay a premium, this chipset is basically Qualcomm’s best 2026 option, with the added customisation Samsung paid for (0.14GHz higher clock rates for the prime cores).

For reference, the passport-shaped wide foldable Galaxy Z Fold8 also uses the same processor with the same specifications. The Galaxy Z Flip8, on the other hand, uses Samsung’s own Exynos 2600.

Packing the same processor (and resulting performance) as its smaller passport brethren has both pros and cons. On one hand, the quality is going to feel consistent regardless of bookstyle or passport-style formats. On the other hand, Ultra users are paying S$300 more for the same performance on the smaller device. In a way, a third option in Samsung’s lineup makes the Ultra clearer: if running multiple apps matters to you, you don’t really have a choice but to pay the extra moolah and enjoy the bigger display.

The phone did not cross 35°C even after repeated benchmarking, and it was only slightly warmer to the touch during intense mobile gaming. 

Battery life

Our battery benchmark uses PCMark for Android’s Work 3.0 Battery Life, with results shown in minutes. This controlled benchmark simulates real-world usage, such as web and social media browsing, video and photo editing, parsing data with various file formats, writing, and more. The test starts at 100% and ends with 20% left on the device.

Samsung didn’t just upgrade the bookstyle’s battery capacity to 5,000mAh (up from the previous 4,400mAh), but also swapped to a newer blend of silicon-carbon battery technology, on top of upping its charging to 45W (wired) and 25W (wireless). It’s nice to see so many uptime-related upgrades at once.

We felt the improvements. The Fold8 Ultra gained an extra 2+ hours of uptime (134 minutes, to be precise) over its predecessor, and still clocked similar battery life to its smaller, passport-shaped Fold8 despite the huge increase in display size. 

It’s a little unfortunate that Fold8 Ultra still isn’t anywhere close to what the OPPO Find N6 can do, but nearly 13 hours of uptime total (all on the big display, with 20% battery to spare) feels sufficient.

Wired charging also feels fast, clocking in 30 minutes for the first 50% and topping off to 100% within 70 minutes. It slows down considerably after 80%, so you’ll need to give it time to reach a full charge before you head out.

A magnetic wireless charging case is required if you want to stick it to a wireless charge, but the charging still goes through on a flat charging pad, just like the Fold8.

Conclusion

We have good news and bad news.

The good news is that you’ll be very happy with the Samsung Galaxy Z Fold8 Ultra, and it’s still a significant upgrade from its predecessor in several ways.

The phone is a highly competent bookstyle foldable that’s able to satisfy both old and new users of this form factor. The gains are obvious: an updated chipset, vastly improved handling with bevelled edges, the confidence of updated battery technology (silicon-carbon) with considerably longer uptime, and less visible creasing on its most important display. It keeps its core multitasking focus while adding extra battery life. 

These are strong reasons to consider this foldable as a daily driver, especially if you need to run two or more apps simultaneously. We haven’t even factored in areas where Samsung leads the market, such as onboarding widely used third-party mobile AI tools (Perplexity, Gemini) via Galaxy AI and including privacy protections through the Samsung Knox platform.

The bad news is that Samsung faces foldable rivals that are slightly more affordable and just as competent at shoring up the form factor’s weaknesses. In that vein, it takes the shine off the Ultra name on Samsung’s version.

For Samsung users, owning the bookstyle called Galaxy Z Fold8 Ultra sounds right: the phone is the biggest and baddest in the current Galaxy Z lineup. But in the premium-tier category (at a matching S$2,798 price), bringing its best foot forward is to be expected. Great hardware and ad-free software performance are the bare minimum. Fringe features set these phones apart from the rest to satisfy a tough crowd.

In the case of Galaxy Z Fold8 Ultra, “the rest” refers to rivals like OPPO Find N6 and Honor Magic V6, bringing higher IP5X or IP6X ratings and durability promises, less touchable creases, and equally impressive (if not better) battery life and performance, at lower prices. And they didn’t think to call themselves Ultra, despite the innovation and quality in these rivals, too.

Beyond offering a software ecosystem that’s most compatible with your daily life, Samsung could also help users feel more at ease with higher IP ratings and narrow the imaging gap by refining more secondary cameras (like its telephoto). It may have seven generations of foldable wisdom to rely upon, but its silicon-carbon expertise is practically a newborn next to Chinese foldables that’ve been perfecting theirs for half a decade or longer. Cost is also a concern, because every dollar the consumer saves by buying a Chinese alternative also means one fewer person supporting Samsung’s Ultra ambitions for this phone.

It’s a little sad because the bookstyle itself is as amazing to use, and was also responsible for so many advancements that made its younger Galaxy Z Fold8 possible. Many of the perks, like bevelled edges and improved titanium reliability to support its display, also went to the passport-style Galaxy Z Fold8 (which is S$300 cheaper). Much was sacrificed for the entire Galaxy Z lineup to shine. As a result, the Z Fold8 Ultra feels limited to users who cannot stand having a smaller Main Screen, since the other upgrades aren’t as exclusive.

That said, we still gave a high score to the Galaxy Z Fold8 Ultra, because upgraders coming from the Fold7 would certainly feel the difference. Late adopters are even more spoilt for choice between its predecessor or the latest model, too.

We doubt Samsung will lose sleep over missing out on getting extra accolades for a really good phone. It’s a unmistakably powerful, premium multitasking device, with tangible improvements for longtime Samsung fans. The main camera is lovely, and it’s still undeniably one of the most intuitive Android operating systems for daily use. These are enough reasons to get the Galaxy Z Fold8 Ultra and be satisfied with the refinements it has managed thus far.