Samsung Galaxy Z Fold8 Ultra Review: Refinement Wears an Ultra Badge

It says something about Apple’s influence that, yet again, the most interesting smartphone conversation of the year revolves around a product that hasn’t even been announced. Every rumour surrounding Apple’s first foldable has sent rivals scrambling, and Samsung appears to have decided that waiting until September wasn’t an option.

For years, Samsung’s foldable strategy was beautifully uncomplicated: one Fold, one Flip. This year, however, the script has changed. The Galaxy Z Fold8 arrives as what many suspect is Samsung’s answer to Apple’s expected passport-sized foldable, leaving another device to shoulder the responsibility of being the flagship flagship (if you will…). The Galaxy Z Fold8 Ultra.

Which is rather fascinating. Instead of simply increasing prices, which is a move that would have been easy to justify given the ongoing memory supply crisis, Samsung has wrapped the inevitable ₹25,000 premium in an “Ultra” badge. It’s smart positioning. Whether it earns that badge, however, is a far more interesting question.

Because beyond a slightly larger battery, a new ultra-wide camera and a handful of refinements, this isn’t a dramatic reinvention of the Fold formula. It’s the culmination of years of careful iteration rather than one giant leap.

Design

If there is one area where Samsung deserves unqualified praise, it’s here.

After years of tiny, almost invisible improvements, Samsung has finally reached the point where the crease is no longer something I constantly notice. Unless you’re deliberately hunting for it under harsh lighting, it simply fades into the background. That’s no accident.

Samsung’s new Flex Titanium construction replaces conventional support layers with a titanium-based display structure that not only improves durability but also reduces pressure on the folding panel. Combined with refined hinge mechanics, better display tension and improved magnetic balancing, opening the phone now feels remarkably smooth and almost effortless.

More importantly, all of this engineering translates into something tangible in daily use. At just 4.1mm when unfolded and weighing 215g, this is comfortably Samsung’s slimmest and lightest Fold yet. Those numbers don’t sound revolutionary on paper, but they quietly transform the experience. It slips into pockets more naturally, feels noticeably less fatiguing during long reading sessions and no longer reminds you that you’re carrying what is essentially a tablet folded in half.

This is one of those rare instances where engineering disappears behind usability, and that’s exactly how good design should work.

Display & Sound

Samsung has always treated its foldables as display showcases, and the Fold8 Ultra continues that tradition.

The inner display now stretches to 8 inches, using a Dynamic AMOLED 2X LTPO panel with an adaptive 1-120Hz refresh rate, HDR10+ certification and an impressive 2256 × 2504 resolution. Pixel density jumps from 328ppi to 422ppi, although I’d be lying if I claimed I could actually spot that difference in everyday use.

What I could notice immediately was brightness.

The panel now peaks at 3,000 nits, and HDR content absolutely benefits from it. Whether I was catching up on Netflix, watching YouTube HDR videos or simply editing photographs outdoors, the display remained vivid and punchy even under Mumbai’s unforgiving afternoon sun. It remains one of the finest screens available on any smartphone, and arguably the biggest reason to own a foldable.

The outer display sees virtually no changes, which isn’t necessarily a criticism. It’s still a 6.5-inch Dynamic AMOLED 2X panel, runs at 120Hz, supports adaptive refresh rates and is perfectly usable as a regular smartphone display before you unfold the larger canvas inside.

Audio, meanwhile, remains reassuringly premium. The stereo speakers are loud without sounding harsh, vocals remain clean and bass has enough presence to make movies and music enjoyable without immediately reaching for earbuds. I never once found myself wishing they were louder or richer.

Camera

This is where the “Ultra” branding carries the greatest burden.

An Ultra phone should make you stop questioning the cameras altogether. Instead, the Fold8 Ultra mostly makes you appreciate how good Samsung’s image processing has become.

The headline feature is the 200MP primary sensor, and while the hardware itself feels very familiar, the images coming out of it consistently impressed me. Samsung appears to have refined its processing pipeline more than its optics, producing photographs with excellent dynamic range, reliable colours and far more natural sharpening than some of its previous flagships.

In daylight, it’s exactly the sort of camera you can trust. Point, shoot and move on.

The biggest upgrade this year is the new 50MP ultra-wide camera, and honestly, I ended up enjoying it more than expected. Ultra-wide cameras are usually afterthoughts on foldables, but this one captures genuinely detailed landscapes with good colour consistency compared to the main sensor. Even indoors, distortion remains well controlled and exposure is surprisingly balanced.

The 10MP telephoto, however, feels like it’s tagging along for the ride.

Its 3x optical zoom is perfectly serviceable, but anything beyond that quickly exposes its limitations. Images become softer, grain starts creeping in and the magic of Samsung’s computational photography can only do so much. Thankfully, I don’t rely heavily on telephoto photography, so this never became a deal-breaker for me.

One of the more interesting additions to Galaxy AI is FanCam, which automatically crops and tracks a subject from a wider video, effectively creating a close-up clip without needing a second camera angle. I genuinely enjoyed using it. The catch, however, is that it really shines only with 8K footage. The feature relies heavily on having plenty of extra pixels to crop into, so videos shot at lower resolutions take a noticeable hit in sharpness and quickly begin to look soft. But shooting in 8K makes FanCam feel surprisingly polished. It’s almost like having a virtual cameraman following your subject.

Now no! The Fold8 Ultra doesn’t completely redefine smartphone photography. But for perhaps the first time, I found myself thinking that I could comfortably use a foldable as my primary camera without feeling like I was making a compromise.

Performance

Performance has never really been Samsung’s problem, and it certainly isn’t this year.

The Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 for Galaxy feels purpose-built for a device like this, which, given Samsung’s close collaboration with Qualcomm, it essentially is.

My workflow tends to push phones in ways benchmarks never can. I edited multiple 4K Reels using Instagram’s Edits app without a single slowdown, routinely kept dozens of Chrome tabs open and often worked with Google Sheets on one side of the display while drafting stories in Google Docs on the other.

Everything remained fluid.

I’m hardly a serious mobile gamer, but I did spend a few sessions playing BGMI just to see if the phone stumbled under sustained load. It didn’t. Frame rates stayed stable and thermal management remained impressively controlled throughout.

Ultimately, though, gaming isn’t what this phone is built for.

The Fold8 Ultra shines as a productivity machine. Its large canvas genuinely changes how you multitask, and unlike many foldables from a few years ago, the software finally feels mature enough to make full use of it.

Battery Life

Samsung has finally embraced silicon-carbon battery technology, and while it’s late to the party compared to several Chinese manufacturers, the benefits are immediately noticeable.

Capacity grows slightly to 5,000mAh, but the bigger story is improved thermal efficiency and faster charging. Throughout my testing, the Fold8 Ultra stayed remarkably cool, which made the phone feel more reassuringly premium.

My routine is fairly predictable. I wake up around 8 AM, spend some time browsing, then switch to the inner display for work through most of the day. Emails, writing, messaging, occasional YouTube videos, photo editing and social media make up the bulk of my usage.

By bedtime, I’ve been having around 20% battery remaining on the device. Compared to last year’s Fold, the improvement is obvious. That said, I can’t help feeling slightly conflicted.

For a 5,000mAh silicon-carbon battery, I’d expected even more endurance. It’s entirely possible Samsung is still fine-tuning software optimisation, because the raw hardware suggests there should be additional headroom. Charging, thankfully, makes up for some of that.

The move to 45W wired charging is long overdue, taking the phone to roughly 50% in about 20-25 minutes. Wireless charging also feels considerably faster and more practical than before, making quick top-ups genuinely worthwhile.

This is the first Samsung foldable that I’ve comfortably trusted to get through an entire working day without battery anxiety. I just suspect there’s still untapped potential waiting to be unlocked.