Samsung unveils new Galaxy Z8 foldables and Galaxy Watches, available August 7
retained text
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 supposedly 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.
document fetched 2026-07-23 08:37 · canonical https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2026/07/samsung-unveils-new-galaxy-z8-foldables-and-galaxy-watches-available-august-7