Samsung Galaxy Z Fold8 Ultra review
New Flex Titanium 8.0-inch OLED and the good old 6.5-inch cover screen
Although there's no change to the internal screen size and it still sits at 8 inches, the flexible 120Hz LTPO OLED panel has been upgraded in several ways. For starters, the resolution has been bumped up to 2256 x 2504 pixels. HDR10+ support is still at hand, but unfortunately, still no Dolby Vision.
Samsung is also advertising the display as brighter than before, but perhaps the most important updates are the so-called Flex Titanium technology and the anti-reflective coating. The latter has been around for three Galaxy S26 Ultra generations now, and it improves sunlight legibility quite a bit.
Galaxy Z Fold8 Ultra vs. Galaxy Z Fold8 vs. Galaxy S26 Ultra
The Flex Titanium tech, on the other hand, improves usability differently. The new display module incorporates a thin titanium alloy sheet sitting under the OLED panel and a separate titanium plate supporting the entire display module. These titanium pieces improve durability and uniformity. The crease is less prominent not just visibly, but to the touch as well.
It remains to be seen whether the crease will become bigger with time, as is usually the case with the previous foldable panels, but practice shows you stop noticing it pretty quickly so it probably doesn't matter.
When it comes to the cover display, there are no apparent changes, nor does Samsung advertise them. We are dealing with the same 6.5-inch LTPO OLED panel with 120Hz refresh rate and 1080 x 2520 pixel resolution.
Galaxy Z Fold8 Ultra cover screen
We didn't see an increase in peak brightness on a 75% white coverage, but we do see an improvement in the 10% patch test where the Galaxy Z Fold8 Ultra reached almost 3,000 nits, as advertised. The maximum auto brightness at 75% is still around 1,400 nits, but due to the anti-reflective coating, sunlight legibility is better.
Max display brightness test
White test pattern (nits)
- Manual (75% fill)
- Auto (75% fill)
- Peak Auto (10% fill)
vivo X Fold5
Galaxy Z Fold8
Motorola Razr Fold
Galaxy Z Fold8 Ultra
Galaxy Z Fold7
Honor Magic V6
Huawei Mate X7
The cover screen also seems to comfortably reach 3,000 nits on a 10% white patch, while the peak brightness on a 75% white surface sits at around 1,400 nits - just like before. Excellent performance in either case.
Max display brightness test
White test pattern (nits)
- Manual (75% fill)
- Auto (75% fill)
- Peak Auto (10% fill)
Oppo Find N6 (cover, gallery)
Honor Magic V6 (cover display)
Motorola Razr Fold (cover)
Galaxy Z Fold8 (cover)
Galaxy Z Fold8 Ultra (cover)
Galaxy Z Fold7 (Cover display)
Huawei Mate X7 (cover screen)
We recorded a minimum brightness of 1 nit on both displays, which is sufficiently dim for pitch-black environments.
Refresh rate
The refresh rate control is pretty straightforward. Samsung offers two modes - Adaptive and Standard. The standard caps the refresh rate to 60Hz, but it's still adapting to the content displayed.
The displays can go down to 24Hz to preserve power when the system deems necessary or when you are playing a 24fps video on your phone. It works on YouTube. And since both the inner and outer panels are LTPO, the system dials down to 1Hz when the display is idle.
High refresh gaming is supported as long as the game title offers higher frame rate rendering.
Battery life
The Galaxy Z Fold8 Ultra offers a significant battery upgrade over the Galaxy Z Fold7, even if the battery is not the largest by today's standards. Most handsets that moved from regular Li-Po batteries to Si/C cells boast bigger jumps in capacity. Still, the bump in battery capacity from 4,400 mAh to 5,000 mAh is more than welcome.
The battery tests below show a notable jump not just in the overall Active Use Score, but also in screen-on tests like web browsing and video streaming. On the other hand, the Z Fold8 Ultra still lags behind some of its competitors with larger batteries in the 6,000+ mAh range. The vanilla Z Fold8 posts similar runtimes with a lesser battery, but with a smaller screen that likely compensates.
The same goes for the cover screen. You do get a bit of extra runtime on the screen-on tests, but still behind most competitors in this regard.
Charging
Samsung phones, and foldables in particular, have never been among the fastest to charge. But with this year's Galaxy S and Galaxy Z Fold generations, the smartphone maker is making notable changes in this regard. The Galaxy Z Fold8 Ultra now supports 45W wired charging over Power Delivery with the appropriate PPS profile, up from 25W. The wireless charging has also been bumped up to 25W from 15W.
That may not sound like much on paper, but our tests show that the Galaxy Z Fold8 Ultra is finally competitive. The total charging time from 1% to 100% has been cut by about half an hour, while a 30-minute charging cycle gives you 71% of the charge back, a notable improvement compared to the 53% charge that the Fold7 offered within the same time.
Interestingly, there are a handful of foldables that beat the Samsung to the finish line, yet the Galaxy Z Fold8 Ultra is quicker than most in the first 15 and 30 minutes of our charging test. Arguably, Samsung's charging curve makes more sense, since nine out of ten times when you need quick top-ups is when your battery is approaching 0%, so making the curve steeper in the first half an hour of the test makes a bigger difference in the real world.
Charging speed
- in 15 min
- in 30 min
- Time to full charge (from 0%)
Oppo Find N6
Huawei Mate X7
Galaxy Z Fold8 Ultra (folded)
vivo X Fold5
Motorola Razr Fold
Galaxy Z Fold8 (folded)
Galaxy Z Fold7
As usual, Samsung has implemented several battery protection features. For instance, you can limit the charging to 80, 85 or 90%. Or you can also turn off fast charging altogether.
Speakers
The Samsung Galaxy Z Fold8 Ultra features a full-fledged stereo speaker setup this time around, or at least the top speaker behind the earpiece gains another slit. On paper, this should improve sound quality and perhaps loudness too, because in the previous models, the sound was firing only from the cover screen's earpiece at the back (when using the phone's inner screen).
Speaker grilles
However, our sound tests seem to suggest otherwise. The -29.3 LUFS loudness score is about "Average" and a tad below last year's Fold7. It's also quieter than most competitors. But that's not the main issue here. Tuning has been modified as well.
While music tracks sound fuller and deeper, the bass seems to overpower the mids and vocals. Everything sounds somewhat muffled. We like the old tuning better - the Z Fold7 sounds cleaner and louder.
Use the Playback controls to listen to the phone sample recordings (best use headphones). We measure the average loudness of the speakers in LUFS. A lower absolute value means a louder sound. A look at the frequency response chart will tell you how far off the ideal "0db" flat line is the reproduction of the bass, treble, and mid frequencies. You can add more phones to compare their differences. The scores and ratings are not comparable with our older loudspeaker test. Learn more about how we test here.
