Remember the time when buying a foldable meant accepting a few compromises? Granted, you got a bigger screen, but you also got a phone that wasn’t as sleek as a conventional one. You got the flexibility of a tablet in your pocket, but battery life, cameras, or general usability sometimes felt like a trade-off. However, foldable phones have come a long way since then, and the Samsung Galaxy Z Fold8 Ultra is perhaps the best indication of just how much the category has evolved. This phone is literally Samsung going all-in on the idea of a foldable flagship — one that doesn’t just feature a folding screen but is designed to replace more of the devices you carry around every day. Let us explain.
Pick up the Galaxy Z Fold8 Ultra in your hand, and the first thing you’d realise is how Samsung clearly thought beyond simply making a larger Fold. Because foldables have always had an inherent challenge: they need to be two things at once. When closed, they need to work as a conventional smartphone. Open them up, and they need to offer a meaningful reason for carrying around a larger display. Getting that balance right is harder than it sounds.
The Galaxy Z Fold8 Ultra leans into its ‘Ultra’ positioning with a larger 6.5-inch cover display and an expansive 8-inch main screen. Spec-wise, both of these are beautifully calibrated Dynamic AMOLED 2X displays refreshing at a smooth 1-120Hz. But specs aside, what really matters more is how the device feels when you actually move between those two screens.
The 6.5-inch cover display is large enough to be used like a regular smartphone. It is adequately tall and wide, featuring a 21:9 aspect ratio. It not only makes for a solid screen to look at but also for practical use in the hand — whether for replying to messages, scrolling through Instagram, or quickly checking something on the web. Of course, once you open the Galaxy Z Fold8 Ultra, you have a considerably larger workspace at your disposal.
But, beyond the usage factor, Samsung has also worked on the engineering underneath the display. The new hinge and display structure use what Samsung calls Flex Titanium technology, designed to improve structural support while also making the crease less visually distracting over time.
Now, this isn’t something you’ll notice from a quick glance. But with a foldable phone, the hinge is doing most of the heavy lifting. You open it, close it, fold it halfway, and do that repeatedly every single day. So, while a new hinge might not sound as exciting as a new processor or camera, it is one of the most important things that makes a real difference to how the phone holds up and feels over time.
Of course, the Galaxy Z Fold8 Ultra is still unmistakably a foldable. There is no getting around the fact that an 8-inch display has to fold somewhere. But Samsung’s approach here feels more refined than simply trying to make a smartphone that happens to unfold.
So, does the Galaxy Z Fold8 Ultra deserve the ‘Ultra’ name?
Well, we put Samsung’s latest and greatest through the things that matter the most on a foldable flagship — display quality, performance and productivity, battery endurance, and cameras. Let’s find out how the device fared.
Samsung’s foldable displays have historically been impressive, but the Galaxy Z Fold8 Ultra sets a new benchmark for factory calibration consistency between its inner and outer panels.
We recently put both screens through Digit’s display testing process using Calman software and a SpectraCal C6 HDR2000 colourimeter. For our testing, we evaluated the displays in Samsung’s ‘Natural’ colour profile, and the results were particularly interesting.
The 8-inch main display of the Galaxy Z Fold8 Ultra recorded 2,810 nits of brightness during HDR playback in our tests, while the 6.5-inch cover display reached 2,750 nits under similar conditions. Both are absolutely bright displays, but what stood out even more was the colour accuracy of the main panel, which is the star of the show and renders content with near-perfect precision.
It covers 98.5 per cent of the colour gamut with a staggering average Delta E of just 0.61, which is an exceptionally accurate result and means colours on the display are very close to what they are supposed to look like. To put that in perspective, any delta error under 2.0 is generally considered imperceptible to the human eye, meaning the foldable canvas is delivering true-to-life reference-grade colours.
You may not notice that while casually scrolling through Instagram, but it does make a difference when you’re looking at photos, watching movies, or working with images.
While the Cover Screen exhibits a slightly higher average DeltaE of 1.05 in our tests and covers 97.2 per cent of the sRGB space, it remains visually flawless in daily use. More importantly, though, the calibration between the two displays was close enough that moving from one screen to the other didn’t feel jarring. And that is very important. Because with a foldable, you’re constantly switching between two displays. If one looks noticeably warmer, dimmer, or less accurate than the other, the experience can feel inconsistent. The Galaxy Z Fold8 Ultra does an excellent job of making the two screens feel like parts of the same device.
The EOTF (gamma) tracking on both displays follows the target curve beautifully, preserving shadow detail and highlight roll-off without artificial contrast boosting.
Sure, the larger display itself remains the biggest attraction. Because let’s be honest, an 8-inch screen changes what you can realistically do on a phone.
This brings us to one of the biggest reasons to consider a book-style foldable in the first place: multitasking. Having an 8-inch screen is great, but simply enlarging apps for that big screen isn’t enough. The software has to make use of all that extra space, and Samsung has spent years building and optimising its multitasking experience around the Galaxy Fold series.
The Galaxy Z Fold8 Ultra can run multiple apps simultaneously. You can keep a chat open while referring to a document, browse the web alongside a YouTube video, or drag content between compatible applications. It’s easy to underestimate how useful this can be until you actually start using a foldable phone as a work device.
For example, imagine researching something on Gemini while taking notes. On a regular smartphone, you’re constantly switching between apps. On the Galaxy Z Fold8 Ultra, you can keep both visible. The same goes for responding to emails while checking a presentation, monitoring your calendar while working on a document, or simply keeping a messaging app open alongside whatever else you’re doing.
Credit where credit’s due — Samsung’s software experience has had several generations to mature, and that shows in the way multitasking fits into One UI. The Galaxy Z Fold8 Ultra runs the latest One UI 9 based on Android 17, and features such as split-screen applications and floating windows aren’t exactly new anymore. But having an 8-inch canvas to work with makes them considerably more practical.
There are plenty of foldable phones available on the market, both old and new, that are marketed as foldable flagships. But packing a flagship processor is just as important as having a large folding display. After all, there is little point in having an 8-inch screen and all that multitasking prowess if the hardware underneath can’t keep up.
The Galaxy Z Fold8 Ultra features Qualcomm’s top-of-the-line Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 for Galaxy processor, paired with up to 16GB of LPDDR5X RAM and 1TB of UFS 4.1 storage. The synthetic benchmark numbers directly reflect this raw power: the device achieved a staggering AnTuTu score of 3,045,858 and laid down Geekbench scores of 2,625 for single-core and 6,946 for multi-core performance. Graphics and productivity metrics are equally robust, posting 5,959 in 3DMark Wildlife Extreme and 21,644 in PCMark.
Now, this is where the hardware actually matters. Multitasking isn’t just about having enough screen space. When you’re running multiple apps, constantly switching between them and keeping them active in memory, you need serious hardware underneath. And that’s exactly what ensures that the larger screen doesn’t become a bottleneck.
And perhaps that’s where the Ultra branding comes into play. The Galaxy Z Fold8 Ultra isn’t just a Fold with a slightly larger display or a few additional features. Samsung has packed pretty much everything you’d expect from a flagship smartphone into a foldable form factor. And that’s what makes the Fold8 Ultra feel different.
For years, we’ve had Samsung stick with a 4,400mAh battery on its main Galaxy Z Fold offering. And while the overall package has been great, the endurance hasn’t been the best. Practically, battery capacity is one area where foldables face a difficult engineering challenge. You’re trying to power two displays, including a massive inner panel, while keeping the device slim and light enough to comfortably fit in your pocket.
The Galaxy Z Fold8 Ultra is just 4.1mm when unfolded and still packs a 5,000mAh silicon-carbon battery, paired with Samsung’s latest hardware and software optimisations. This is a much-needed welcome upgrade, and the phone also supports 45W fast wired charging, helping reduce the amount of time you need to spend connected to a wall socket.
In our battery test, the Galaxy Z Fold8 Ultra lasted for over 17 hours and 38 minutes from a full charge, which is an exceptional endurance figure. But this is one area where individual usage matters a lot. An hour spent watching an HDR video on the 8-inch display will naturally consume more power than casually checking messages on the cover screen. The advantage of the Fold’s dual-display setup, however, is that you don’t always have to use the larger panel. For quick tasks, the cover display can handle the job. And when you need more space, you can always unfold the phone for a larger canvas.
Alright, by now, we have established that the Galaxy Z Fold8 Ultra offers a no-compromise foldable flagship experience, with superb inner and outer displays, practical multitasking capabilities, and excellent endurance despite being very slim. With that, you may naturally question, ‘So what about the camera?’ And yes, for a very long time, foldable phones gave you a lot of ‘phone’ for your money, but if cameras were your priority, the conventional candybar flagship was usually the safer bet. However, the camera setup is what makes the Galaxy Z Fold8 Ultra a complete package, something you would expect from a phone carrying the Ultra name.
For the spec nerds, Samsung hasn’t simply carried over the cameras from the previous generation and called it a day. The Galaxy Z Fold8 Ultra gets a 200MP ISOCELL HP9 primary camera with OIS, a brand-new 50MP ultra-wide camera and a 10MP telephoto camera offering 3x optical zoom. For selfies and video calls, there are a couple of 10MP sensors on both the cover and inner screens.
For obvious reasons, the 200MP main camera clearly does most of the heavy lifting, and rightly so. In our testing and the samples we captured, it delivered plenty of detail, while colours looked vibrant without going completely overboard. More importantly, the camera feels reliable. You can pull the phone out, take a shot, and expect the kind of result that won’t make you wonder whether you should have carried a separate flagship phone for photography.
The 50MP ultra-wide is another important addition. In the past years, ultra-wide cameras on foldables have often felt like the camera you switched to only when you absolutely needed to fit more into the frame. But the Fold8 Ultra’s ultra-wide is quite capable. There is more detail to play with, and you don’t get that immediate feeling of stepping down to an inferior camera just because you’ve switched away from the main sensor.
And then there is the 3x telephoto camera, which rounds off the setup by giving you some proper optical reach instead of relying entirely on digital zoom. Of course, if extreme zoom is what you’re after, Samsung’s Galaxy S26 Ultra still sits in a different category. But that’s also not really the point here. Between the ultra-wide, main camera, and telephoto lenses, you’re getting quite a versatile camera system alongside an 8-inch folding display. And that is something previous generations of foldables haven’t always been able to offer without some compromise.
Of course, buying a foldable flagship also comes with another question: what happens when it’s time to upgrade? Flagship smartphones aren’t exactly affordable, and resale value is always something you end up thinking about when moving to a newer device.
Samsung’s answer to that is the Galaxy Forever programme in India, which offers a more flexible way of owning the Galaxy Z Fold8 Ultra. The programme lets buyers pay for the phone through 24 no-cost EMIs and also bundles Samsung Care+ protection against accidental and liquid damage. But perhaps the more interesting bit here is the assured buyback value.
Samsung offers up to 55 per cent buyback value on the invoice price, depending on when you decide to upgrade or return the device. The window to do that opens from the 10th month and runs until the 25th month. So, if you’re someone who upgrades their flagship phone regularly, you don’t necessarily have to wait until the phone has completely run its course before deciding what to do next. For instance, Samsung lists a 55 per cent assured buyback value if you upgrade or return the device between the 10th and 11th months. This drops to 50 per cent between the 12th and 13th months, with the value gradually changing over the rest of the programme.
So, instead of buying a phone, using it for a couple of years, and then figuring out what it is worth in the resale market, Galaxy Forever gives you a clear idea of what your upgrade path may look like from the beginning. And considering the price of flagship foldables, that certainty could be useful for someone planning their next upgrade.
So, after putting the Galaxy Z Fold8 Ultra through everything that matters, does it deserve the Ultra name? Well, yes.
Obviously, the 8-inch Dynamic AMOLED 2X display is the prime highlight, and it is arguably one of the best reasons to consider the phone. But Samsung has also made sure that everything around that larger screen gets the hardware and software to back it up. You have the powerful Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 for Galaxy processor, up to 16GB of RAM, a larger 5,000mAh SiC battery, a capable camera setup, and multitasking features that make practical use of that gorgeous 8-inch screen.
And all of this combined makes for a solid overall package. The Galaxy Z Fold8 Ultra isn’t just a foldable with a screen that happens to unfold. Instead, see it this way — use the phone shut when you want a conventional smartphone experience, or open it up when you need a much larger screen and don’t want to be limited by one.
To answer it even more directly, if you have the budget and the will to go all in on a smartphone loaded to the brim with the best hardware and software Samsung has to offer — and one that also happens to fold — you should definitely go for the Galaxy Z Fold8 Ultra.