The rumors haven’t left much to the imagination, but Samsung has unfurled its 2026 foldable lineup today. There are three models for the first time in Samsung’s eight-gen foldable family, including the top-of-the-line Z Fold 8 Ultra. That phone is the successor to last year’s Galaxy Z Fold 7, but the Z Fold 8 is new—the company’s first wide-body foldable designed for media over multitasking. And then there’s a new, thinner flip phone, plus a pair of smartwatches.

You can preorder Samsung’s new hardware today, but the component shortage has made these already spendy product lines more expensive this year. Even the Z Flip 8 is now well over a grand, and the Ultra costs almost twice as much.

The Z Fold 8 Ultra has the same basic form factor as the last few Samsung tablet-style foldables. A 6.5-inch OLED on the outside is about the same ratio as a standard smartphone screen. Open it up, and you get an 8-inch display that’s roughly twice as wide. That makes the main display close to square.

While the Ultra’s display is perfect for running two phone apps side by side, it’s not ideal for content consumption. The 5.5-inch cover display on the wider phone has a chunky 10:16 ratio. Unfold it, and the Z Fold 8 becomes a 7.6-inch 4:3 display. This gives widescreen videos a little more breathing room with smaller black bars, and it’s allegedly an ideal shape for reading documents in portrait orientation. Both the Ultra and wide-body Folds are impressively thin at 4.1 mm and 4.5 mm (unfolded), respectively.

The Galaxy Z Fold 8 goes wide.

Credit:
Samsung

Samsung’s larger foldables should have noticeably better battery life. The Z Fold 8 has a 4,800 mAh cell, and the Ultra goes all the way to 5,000 mAh. The Z Fold 7, which slimmed down Samsung’s foldable silhouette considerably, only managed to fit 4,400 mAh. The Z Flip 8 is slightly slimmer than past devices of its type, and the battery capacity remains at 4,300 mAh. Samsung has mercifully improved charging speeds this year, but only for the tablet-style foldables. Both those phones now max out at 45 W instead of 25 W, where the Z Flip 8 remains.

All of Samsung’s new foldables feature a design element the company calls “Flex Titanium.” No, it’s not going back to titanium frames. Flex Titanium consists of a titanium alloy film under the flexible OLED panels. Samsung says this makes the screen more resistant to impact and smoother to open, and it reduces the visibility of the dreaded foldable crease. There’s also a new low-reflection finish on the displays that should make them more usable outdoors.

If you want that wide screen, you’ll have to compromise on cameras. The Ultra has a triple lens setup like last year’s big foldable: a 200 MP primary, a 10 MP 3x telephoto, and a 50 MP ultrawide. The Z Fold 8 has only two rear cameras: a 50 MP primary and a 50 MP ultrawide. The Flip 8 has the same primary but swaps in a 12 MP sensor for the ultrawide.

The Galaxy Z Flip 8 is a little thinner.

Credit:
Samsung

The new phones will ship with Android 17 and One UI 9, which Samsung says has been further optimized for the AI era. Now Brief can make more suggestions, including for security and privacy insights. That could potentially mean more alerts from Now Nudge, which proactively offers AI help across the device. The phones also ship with Gemini Notebook (formerly NotebookLM), with support for enhanced foldable multitasking.