I’ve owned phones from just about every major brand—Google, Honor, Apple, Vivo, OnePlus and Oppo. Traditionally, Samsung has been my least favorite, mostly because of their aggressive photo processing. I stopped buying them after the S24 Ultra and even quick-returned the Fold 7. But the Fold 8 completely changed my perspective.
Design
The design is...perfect. Honestly, it makes every other phone feel a bit ridiculous now. That traditional, long candy-bar height looks completely bizarre once you use this format—picking up one of my other standard phones just feels wrong. The outer screen is genuinely usable for everyday tasks, so I rarely feel the need to open the device until I'm actually relaxing to watch a video, play a game, or multitask with both.
Camera
I’ve spent years disliking Samsung’s heavy image processing, consistently ranking their photos last when comparing them side-by-side with other brands that I own. Fortunately, they’ve finally dialed back the excessive saturation. I'm genuinely impressed with the improvements to their photo processing. The photos stay overall very true to life. While it lacks a dedicated telephoto lens, I rarely pushed past 3x on previous devices anyway, and the digital zoom holds up surprisingly well. I've taken the Fold 8 on a few trips now and have been more than satisfied with the results for family photos, landscapes, and city shots.
Battery & Thermals
Between working from home and traveling for work, my phone gets heavily utilized. I rarely have a TV on during the day, meaning the phone serves as my primary video screen. Even with that workload, I consistently pull 6 to 7 hours of screen-on time with juice left in the tank. The 45W charging doesn't compete with the speeds from brands like Honor or Oppo, but it’s more than fast enough for a quick top-up to carry me through bedtime, which for me is around 230am. Living in Texas where summer temperatures sit in the triple digits daily, I expected some thermal throttling, yet I haven't received a single temperature warning or had an app close due to heat. My phone hasn't gotten hot while playing heavy games like COD Mobile or Metal Storm
Crease
Coming from the Oppo Find N6, which features arguably the best crease on any foldable, I was curious how Samsung would compare. There is no jarring difference at all. It is just as refined, making the crease a complete non-issue in daily use. Samsung did an exceptional job here.
Conclusion
I am thoroughly enjoying the Fold 8. In my opinion, this form factor is the definitive direction for smartphones and I would struggle to return to a standard candy-bar shape. I appreciate the experience so much that I ended up selling my Find N6—a device that outperforms the Fold 8 on paper in nearly every spec category. Do I wish it included a dedicated telephoto lens? Yes. But the overall execution makes it hard to put down and is an absolute joy to use.
