The appeal of a book-style foldable is obvious. A smartphone that opens up to something more expansive, more capable – just, more. Yet, the tall and narrow Galaxy Z Fold designs of yesteryear never fully resonated with the general public. As each generation has pushed itself a bit wider than the last, the Galaxy Z Fold 8 is now here as Samsung’s first “ultra-wide” foldable. After spending over a week with it, I see why Samsung released two Galaxy Folds this year, and I figured out that this new Galaxy Z Fold 8 shape is the one made for everyone else.
Hardware |
It’s all about that shape
Put simply, the whole story around the Galaxy Z Fold 8 centers around its shape. That’s because the new design is, well, new. Foldables have been relatively stagnant over the past few years, with all efforts focused on refinement rather than experimentation. Everyone settled on the same core designs, form factors, and use cases, and all just put efforts behind thinner designs and not much else. Samsung is as guilty of that as anyone else, too.
The Galaxy Z Fold 8 sits in this weird place of somehow being a copy of the past and the future. This device is clearly gearing up for battle against Apple’s identically-shaped first foldable iPhone rumored to launch this Fall while also revisiting the lost form factor of Oppo’s original foldables and the first Google Pixel Fold. Originally, Android turned away from this wider design due to issues with app compatibility. While the shape was pretty much universally praised for a compact footprint and good handling of content, Android apps largely weren’t ready for it.
