Samsung unveils three new foldables — a wider Z Fold 8, a $2,099 Ultra, and a thinner Flip — ahead of Apple

Samsung used its summer Galaxy Unpacked on July 22 to do something it has not done before: launch three foldable phones at once, redesign its flagship, and plant a flag weeks ahead of Apple's long-rumored entry into the same category.

The lineup is the Galaxy Z Fold 8, a camera-focused Galaxy Z Fold 8 Ultra, and the Galaxy Z Flip 8. Preorders opened the same day, and all three go on sale August 7.

The prices

• Galaxy Z Fold 8 — $1,899 to start. Notably, that is cheaper than last year's Z Fold 7.
• Galaxy Z Fold 8 Ultra — $2,099, a new top-tier model.
• Galaxy Z Flip 8 — $1,199. The Ultra and the Flip each run about $100 more than last year's comparable models.

Compare the New Foldables

Samsung's 2026 foldables compared: Z Fold 8 vs. Fold 8 Ultra vs. Z Flip 8

A side-by-side of the three foldables Samsung unveiled at Galaxy Unpacked — starting price, availability, and what makes each one different, at a glance.

Tap a column to highlight it

	Galaxy Z Fold 8	Galaxy Z Fold 8 Ultra	Galaxy Z Flip 8
U.S. starting price	$1,899	$2,099	$1,199
On sale	August 7, 2026	August 7, 2026	August 7, 2026
Preorders	Open now	Open now	Open now
Type	Book-style foldable	Book-style foldable (camera flagship)	Clamshell foldable
What sets it apart	New wider design; lightest Fold yet at 201g; 7.6" inner + 5.5" cover screens	200MP main + 50MP ultrawide cameras; Flex Titanium build	6.1mm thin, lightest Flip yet; new hinge and a cover screen that acts more like a full screen
AI	Galaxy AI with Google Gemini	Galaxy AI with Google Gemini	Galaxy AI with Google Gemini

How this is calculated

A side-by-side of the three foldables Samsung unveiled at its July 2026 Galaxy Unpacked, using U.S. starting prices and specifications from Samsung's announcement and launch-day reporting. Detailed per-model specs beyond these fields are in the article; figures can change with configuration and region.

Data as of July 21, 2026 · verified July 21, 2026 · v1

Assumptions, limitations & sources

Assumptions

• · U.S. starting prices; other regions and storage tiers differ.

Limitations

• · Starting prices only — higher storage and RAM tiers cost more.
• · Availability is the U.S. on-sale date; regional dates may vary.
• · Compares only the three new foldables, not Samsung's full phone range.

Sources

• Engadget — Galaxy Unpacked July 2026 live coverage — Engadget, checked July 21, 2026
• 9to5Google — Galaxy Z Fold 8 official: wide redesign, $1,899 — 9to5Google, checked July 21, 2026
• Yahoo/Tech — everything announced at Galaxy Unpacked July 2026 — Yahoo Tech, checked July 21, 2026

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The tech: a wider Fold, a thinner Flip

The headline change is the Z Fold 8's new shape. After years of tall, narrow folding phones, Samsung widened the body — Engadget measured it as roughly 18mm wider and shorter than the Z Fold 7 — for a squarer, more tablet-like unfolded screen. It is also Samsung's lightest Fold yet at 201 grams (the Fold 7 was 215g). Inside is a 7.6-inch main display with a 5.5-inch cover screen, the new Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 "for Galaxy" chip, up to 16GB of RAM and 1TB of storage, and a 4,800mAh battery, in a Flex Titanium frame. As WIRED framed it, the new proportions are the whole point.

The Z Fold 8 Ultra is the camera flagship, pairing that titanium build with a 200MP main camera and a 50MP ultrawide. The Z Flip 8, meanwhile, is about thinness: at 6.1mm it is Samsung's slimmest Flip, with a redesigned hinge and a cover screen that now behaves more like a full display when the phone is shut.

Does it have AI?

Yes — AI is central to the pitch. All three phones run Samsung's Galaxy AI suite with Google Gemini integration, and Samsung used the event to highlight new AI features across its devices and watches. As always, the useful test will be how many of those features people actually use day to day, but the platform is the same cross-device Galaxy AI + Gemini stack Samsung has been building out.

Are they competing with Apple? Directly.

That wider Fold is not just an aesthetic choice. Apple is expected to launch its first foldable iPhone around September, and Samsung's move to a squarer, more tablet-like design — plus an August 7 on-sale date — reads as a deliberate attempt to define the premium foldable before Apple arrives. After essentially owning the U.S. foldable market for years, Samsung is now defending it against the one competitor that could reshape it overnight.

How many will ship? Any preorders?

Preorders opened July 22, and the phones ship August 7. As for launch volumes: Samsung does not publicly disclose specific launch-day shipment numbers, and any figure floating around before sales begin is an estimate, not a Samsung number — so we are not going to print one. What is real is the preorder-now, ship-August-7 window, and the fact that foldables remain a small but strategically important slice of Samsung's overall phone shipments.

Who runs Samsung?

The company that makes these phones is Samsung Electronics, and it is led by two co-CEOs: Tae-moon "TM" Roh, who heads the Device eXperience (DX) division that includes phones, and Jun Young-hyun, vice chairman and head of the Device Solutions (DS) semiconductor division. Both sit under Executive Chairman Jay Y. Lee (Lee Jae-yong). It has been a wrenching stretch for the company's leadership: former co-CEO Han Jong-hee died in 2025, and Roh was elevated to co-CEO that November.

The stock and the money

Samsung Electronics trades in Seoul as KRX: 005930, and it is having an extraordinary run. Riding the AI-driven boom in memory chips, its market value sits at roughly $1.1 trillion (about ₩1,600 trillion) as of mid-July 2026, per market trackers — a figure that moves daily, and one far above where the company sat just two years ago. (For context on how fast that changed: as recently as 2023, Samsung's chip business was posting record losses.)

Here is the five-year profit-and-loss picture, from Samsung's own annual results — revenue and operating profit, in Korean won:

• FY2021 — revenue ₩279.6 trillion, operating profit ₩51.6 trillion (a record year).
• FY2022 — revenue ₩302.2 trillion, operating profit ₩43.4 trillion.
• FY2023 — revenue ₩258.9 trillion, operating profit ₩6.6 trillion — a brutal year, gutted by a memory-chip downturn.
• FY2024 — revenue ₩300.9 trillion, operating profit ₩32.7 trillion, as chips recovered.
• FY2025 — revenue ₩333.6 trillion (about $240 billion), operating profit ₩43.6 trillion.

The pattern tells the story behind the phones: Samsung's fortunes swing less on any single Galaxy launch than on the memory-chip cycle — and right now, with AI demand surging, that cycle is running hot.

The bottom line

For buyers, the choice Samsung is offering on August 7 is clearer than usual: a wider, lighter Fold 8 at a lower starting price, a maxed-out Fold 8 Ultra for camera and power, or a thinner, cheaper Flip 8. For the industry, the more interesting question is what happens in September — when, for the first time, Samsung's foldable will not be the only one from a company that sells hundreds of millions of phones a year.