Passport, please: three months with the Galaxy Fold 8

After I switched to Android last year, I tried a Samsung Galaxy Fold 7 for a few weeks. It was my first foldable, but I ended up returning it and spending the year with a Pixel 10 Pro XL instead. Three things bothered me about the Fold 7:

• The fingerprint sensor. Not because it’s bad or slow, but because of where the design forces Samsung to place it. On the tall Fold 7, that placement always felt wrong for my hands. Either too close or too far, making it harder to position a finger for an accurate read on the thin chassis. If they’d put the sensor in the screen, it would make the tap target effortless to hit every time, and reduce the risk of accidental triggering when you’re just holding the phone.
• One UI. Turns out I don’t like where 2 out of the 3 major smartphone manufacturers available in Canada have ended up with their design systems. Apple’s Liquid Glass seems designed to call attention to itself, and its outcomes don’t earn that level of preening. And Samsung’s OneUI is a strange combination of juvenile aesthetics and power user customizability that just doesn’t cohere. Google’s Pixel UI isn’t perfect, but it’s the closest I’ve found to a mobile operating system that feels designed to stay out of your way. Weirdly, it also has some of the most personality. Either way, this is Android, so a new launcher can remove most of the default UI from your daily experience.
• The cameras. They kinda sucked.

The Fold 7 was also expensive, but we’ll come back to that. Fast-forward about a year and I now have a Samsung Galaxy Fold 8 on my desk. The passport-sized one. I had no reason to replace my Pixel (or switch phones this often in general), but tech is one of my hobbies so I often do it anyway.

I’ve had the Fold 8 for a little over 3 months at this point, which is enough for the honeymoon period to have dissipated. What’s left is a more sober assessment that I hope gives you a sense of what these devices are like to live with over time.

Form factor: Inside vs outside

I’ve gravitated toward bigger smartphones in recent years, so it’s interesting to now be using a device that’s both smaller and larger, depending on how I’m using it.

The cover screen is terrific, a surprise delight. As an object, this feels like a different kind of thing than a typical slab phone when it’s closed. It does all the same stuff, but the shorter, squarer screen makes it more appealing for quick tasks. I thought it was the novelty talking at first, but the feeling hasn’t worn off yet. Something about this passport shape appeals to me, whether I’m adjusting podcast playback or answering a group chat or checking the weather. Or, for that matter, leaving it in my pocket, where it nestles more comfortably than my previous slab phones did.

When closed, this form factor is optimized for folks who are more excited by completing the task than by using a phone to do it.

Then you unfold it, and the inner display is a marvel. The fact that it folds continues to feel a little sci-fi, especially since the display itself is stunning to look at. Bright, vivid, and crisp, it’s everything you could ask for in a modern smartphone display. Browsing the web, watching videos, reading articles, playing games…it feels immersive in the same way a great tablet does. Because that’s what this is: a great tablet. It just happens to fold in half.

Samsung’s fantastic anti-glare technology maintains contrast in difficult lighting without ditching details, and really my only complaint about the inner display is that it has a camera cutout. I’d rather they didn’t bother with this inner camera at all. I wish they’d stuck the cutout in the corner at least, but I’ll take an honest cutout over an attempt to hide things under active display area.

Eventually, you close the device back up. Snapping it shut carries a sense of finality, punctuating the fact that you are now finished with whatever you were doing. And that’s really what using the Fold 8 feels like to me. I’m either deep inside a task, fully immersed, or I’m completely outside my smartphone, less distracted and unencumbered. On its own, each mode is specialized but limited. Together, they make the Fold 8 feel flexible and fun.

The ability to switch between these two modes with the same hardware is what ultimately sells it.

Buttons and cameras are still meh

Beyond the displays, there are a few more things I wanted to call out.

Firstly, the buttons. The fingerprint sensor suffers from most of the same basic issues as before, but because the phone is shorter it’s now much easier to reach. This can be a double-edged sword for accidental activation, so it’s not all good news, but the experience hasn’t bothered me enough to bail on it like last time.

I wish Android phones had an equivalent to Face ID, I wish iPhones had under-display Touch ID, and I wish every manufacturer made a point of providing both biometric unlock options. If only customer convenience still drove product decisions.

Similarly, the camera problem also remains largely unsolved. These cameras still kinda suck. They’re not terrible, and you can configure them to output good things, but if you’re coming from a flagship slab phone these cameras are noticeably worse. I take way fewer photos with this phone. That will either matter to you a lot or not so much, but the gap is there and it’s not small.

A few other tiny points:

• Battery life is fine. About the same as my Pixel, maybe a little worse. It gets me through my day. Doesn’t feel impressive, but I have no battery anxiety, especially since it charges quickly.
• I’m always careful with my tech, but the fact remains this is a more fragile device than any slab equivalent. I’m becoming okay with this being a “bag device” sometimes rather than always a “pocket device”, because drops cost more now.
• I don’t care about the crease and I don’t think you should either.

Obligatory iPhone Duo comparison

As the product name suggests, this is Samsung’s 8th generation of foldable, but the category is on people’s minds again because Apple has recently released their first. Several of my friends have bought one so I’ve had a chance to spend a bit of time comparing.

Look to their reviews for proper insights, but my early impressions of the iPhone Duo highlight some of the choices Apple made differently:

• The iPhone is considerably heavier. Last year’s Fold 7 was the first foldable that didn’t feel like you were putting up with a chunky, hefty device in exchange for the folding. The iPhone is on the wrong side of that threshold for me. The Duo is to foldables what the AirPods Max are to Bluetooth headphones: another example of heft as a proxy for quality. I thought the Pixel 11 Pro Fold was chunky at 239g, but the iPhone Duo tips the scales at 254g (the Fold 8 is 201g). These numbers seem small, but for an object you actively hold and use every day, the grams add up quick.
• It has MagSafe charging. My Fold 8 has wireless charging, but it doesn’t feature the handy magnets that snap it to Qi2 accessories. I don’t rely on them, but my Pixel had the magnets, so it sucks to lose them here.
• They chose an asymmetric design. I’m left-handed, but even if I weren’t, I’d prefer the symmetrical shape of the Samsung. Aesthetically, but also practically. The Duo’s shape gives up screen real estate, ambidextrous use, and symmetry, and I’m not sure what it gains. One friend said the asymmetry makes it easier to orient the device without looking, which is a real benefit, but not one I’d be willing to make those earlier trade-offs for. Others have said comfort but I’ve been holding the Fold 8 for months and remain uninjured by its less-rounded corners.
• I still don’t like Nano Texture. Apple’s approach to anti-glare seems to impact image fidelity more than competing treatments from other manufacturers. Glare and its antidotes aren’t terribly important to me, so I only mention it because unlike on Apple’s larger devices, on the iPhone Duo it’s not optional. It isn’t optional on the Fold 8 either, but here it doesn’t result in faded black levels or diminished detail and colour saturation.
• I prefer volume on the side. I can see why they put the volume rocker where they did because it solves the problem of telling it apart from the fingerprint sensor without looking. But the muscle memory from over a decade of squeezing my phone to adjust volume is foiled by the iPhone Duo placing those controls on its head instead, where they’re tougher to reach in a pocket.
• Pencil support is cool. It’s not for me, but it’s cool and Samsung shouldn’t have dropped support for their S Pen. I hope it comes back in the future.

The iPhone Duo is a slick piece of hardware, but I can’t help wondering…what would I get for the (considerable) extra money I would have to spend to get an iPhone Duo instead of this Fold 8? Extra weight I don’t want, a wider shape that’s bulkier in my pocket, and literal cut corners on a more faded screen?

The real answer is that I’d get the privilege of using iOS and its ecosystem of apps. For some buyers (particularly here in North America), a category doesn’t exist until Apple’s in it. That’s the power of a strong brand. But across brands, the smartphone is the linchpin of an ecosystem and it’s getting tougher to make enough profit selling them. The darn things last too long. One way to do it is to tie buyers into perpetual service costs. Another is to push even further upmarket.

Most companies are trying to do both, so everybody’s now making these jewellery computers. And in this strange new category, Apple has become Rolex. It’s not only that they’re expensive, it’s that the extra money seems to go into making them look and feel like status objects whether or not the customer benefits.

Speaking of extra money…

These things cost so much

When the iPhone X first pushed mainstream smartphone prices past $1,000 USD (nearly a decade ago now), I remember holding two conflicting thoughts:

1. That’s outrageously expensive, this is just a phone. No matter how fancy, things in this category shouldn’t cost so much.
2. The price has caught up to how advanced these devices actually are. Our mental model for the category was defined when its best examples were way less sophisticated than what we apply the same label to today.

In the end, I was able to convince myself that $1,000 was acceptable for a flagship phone, and I’ve spent about that much or less out of pocket each time I’ve upgraded since then thanks to various deals, trade-ins, and so on. But with foldables, suddenly those possible costs crested the $2,000 mark. This time, no matter how hard I tried to apply my Olympic-level skill at justifying bullshit technology purchases, I couldn’t do it.

It turns out no smartphone is worth $2,000 to me. Now I had a threshold. And as a result, I sat through 6 generations of foldables before combining trade-in values and promotions brought the cost within reach.

Last year’s Fold 7 was a big step forward for the category, and my patience meant I got to jump in at a high point without paying more than I intended to. Sure, I quickly discovered I don’t like the tall & skinny kind of foldable, but I didn’t have to blow my budget to learn that. And this year, the Fold 8 is costing me less than buying the cheapest iPhone 17 would have. I wouldn’t have bought it otherwise.

That’s my advice here: find your threshold and respect it, especially for big purchases. Even as a technophile, it’s important to choose carefully which things you want to be on the frontier of and which things you’re willing to wait on. It’s called the “bleeding” edge for a reason.

Anyway, the iPhone Duo starts at $3,000 here in Canada, so uh…yup.

Just another phone (that folds)

The Galaxy Fold 8 is the most fun I’ve had with a smartphone in a decade. But if this one broke tomorrow, I wouldn’t replace it.

Don’t get me wrong, I think this form factor is super freaking cool. But I can’t stress enough how not mainstream these devices are, even now.

Not because they’re a bad experience, but because they’re a new one. The hardware is in a decent place at this point, but we’re still figuring out what good looks like on the software side. There’s also an emerging rivalry between the “short & wide” archetype and the “tall & skinny” one. Having used both, I can tell you it’s not a clear victory for one over the other, though I know which side I’m on. And that’s not even mentioning the entirely separate flip category, which is also back with a vengeance.

On the one hand: phones are exciting again! On the other: folding phones are so extravagant, so absurdly expensive, that I don’t think anyone even vaguely uncertain about affording one should waste their time considering it. They’re not better smartphones than a flagship slab in most of the ways people care about: they’re less durable, battery life is the same at best, and cameras are worse. Admittedly, this Fold 8 is smaller when folded, which will appeal to folks who’ve been waiting for the era of the small flagship to return. But are those folks willing to put up with the tradeoffs?

I can’t say whether the Samsung Galaxy Fold 8 is right for you or not. What I can confidently say is this: you don’t need to pine for these things. The Fold 8 is incredibly impressive, but it’s just another phone. It folds, and that’s awesome, but it’s also a novelty.

This is a luxury toy for well-heeled tech enthusiasts who want an exciting glimpse at how new paradigms evolve. Innovation is born when constraints change, and for software developers that often means when the hardware landscape changes. Foldables remain a niche within a niche, but now that Apple’s joined the party (fashionably late, as ever), their entourage brings developer attention. A rising tide lifts all boats, and I’m interested to see how broad the appeal gets as the prices drop and the software advances. That’s why I bought front-row seats.

But as geeks like me delight in how neat it is that our smartphones can now show more feeds at once on an even bigger display that also folds, everyone else will continue to look at us with patience and grace and ask “okay, but why?”