Samsung Galaxy Z Fold8 Ultra Review: The Telephoto the Standard Fold8 Gave Up

Samsung's first Ultra-branded foldable answers the exact question our Galaxy Z Fold8 review left hanging: what if you don't want to give up the telephoto lens for the new, wider "passport" body shape? The Z Fold8 Ultra keeps the redesigned shape and adds back everything the standard model dropped — plus a genuine flagship camera system on top. It comes at a real cost: $2,099 makes this the most expensive Galaxy phone Samsung has ever sold.

Design and Build

At 215g, the Ultra is a touch heavier than the standard Z Fold8's 201g, but it's actually thinner when folded — 8.9mm against the standard model's 9.7mm — thanks to an Advanced Armor aluminium frame doing more structural work per millimetre. It's available in Graphite, Cream, Violet Shadow, and Green Shadow, a distinct palette from the standard Fold8's softer colourway, aimed squarely at buyers who want the Ultra tier to look the part. Gorilla Glass Victus Ceramic 3 protects the inner folded display while Gorilla Glass Victus 2 covers the back — a meaningfully tougher spec than most foldables manage on either surface, let alone both. This marks the true continuation of the Z Fold line's traditional proportions, distinct from the wider, shorter "passport" body Samsung introduced on the standard Z Fold8 this generation — anyone who preferred the older, taller Fold shape over the new one specifically should look here rather than at the base model.

Like the standard Z Fold8, dust resistance is capped at IP48 — full protection against water jets and submersion, but only partial protection against dust particles under 1mm. Even at this price, that remains an unresolved constraint of current folding-hinge engineering rather than something Samsung chose to skip on the cheaper model alone. The crease itself is a genuine point of disagreement across early reviewers rather than a settled fact — Trusted Reviews found it harder to spot than on previous Z Folds, while GSMArena's own hands-on unit showed a noticeably more prominent crease; GSMArena is careful to note that may reflect a heavily fold-cycled demo unit rather than the production experience most buyers will actually get, so it's worth checking in person before assuming either account applies to your unit. Side-mounted fingerprint sensing, stereo speakers, and Ultra Wideband support all carry over as standard, and GSMArena's own pros list specifically credits the Ultra's build as "competitively thin, lightweight and durable" even against foldables that have never had to accommodate a triple-camera module.

Displays

The inner display grows to 8.0 inches — genuinely large for a foldable, built on the same LTPO AMOLED and Flex Titanium substrate technology as the standard Fold8 but with more usable canvas for split-screen multitasking. The cover display steps up to 6.5 inches at a 21:9 aspect ratio, FHD+ resolution, wider and more phone-like to use one-handed than any previous Z Fold cover screen. Both panels share the 1-120Hz adaptive refresh rate and a marketed 3,000-nit peak brightness — Samsung hasn't held back display quality to differentiate the tiers, only size and glass durability. GSMArena's own lab measurements largely confirm the marketed peak on both panels at a 10% test patch, but found no real improvement at a more typical 75% pattern — both inner and cover displays measured around 1,400 nits in that mode, essentially unchanged from the standard Fold8. The genuine, measured upgrade is elsewhere: the new anti-reflective coating noticeably improves real-world sunlight legibility even without a corresponding jump in raw brightness numbers, exactly the kind of practical difference a spec sheet alone wouldn't capture. Minimum brightness on both panels bottoms out at a single nit, comfortably dim enough for reading in bed without disturbing anyone next to you.

Camera

This is the Ultra's entire reason to exist over the standard Fold8. A 200MP f/1.7 main sensor with quad-pixel autofocus leads a genuine three-camera system, joined by a 50MP f/1.9 ultrawide — a real, measurable step up from the 12MP unit on the Z Fold7, with GSMArena's own camera testing finding both the main and ultrawide lenses turn in strong results day and night with very good stabilisation throughout — and, critically, a 10MP f/2.4 telephoto with real 3x optical zoom and OIS, the exact capability Samsung removed from the standard Z Fold8's dual-camera setup. Video maxes out at 8K using Samsung's APV codec with real-time Cine LUT colour grading, a genuinely professional-leaning feature set that puts clear distance between this and the standard model's camera story. If you found our Z Fold8 review's biggest criticism — no telephoto — to be a dealbreaker, this is Samsung's direct answer. The cover-screen camera also gets a real upgrade alongside the inner selfie sensors — a 10MP f/2.2 unit at an 18mm focal length, wide enough to genuinely double as a capable primary camera when the phone is closed, not just a selfie afterthought.

The one honest weak link among the three rear lenses is that same telephoto — GSMArena's own testing calls it the clear laggard of the set, usable in daylight but a real step down after dark, and PhoneArena's own direct comparison against the Motorola Razr Fold found a concrete physical reason why: the Fold8 Ultra's telephoto uses a 1/3.94-inch sensor, nearly four times smaller than the Razr Fold's 1/1.95-inch unit, a real optical disadvantage no amount of processing fully overcomes, especially in lower light. Selfie duties are split across two separate 10MP cameras — one on the cover display at an 85-degree field of view, one on the inner display at 100 degrees — rather than a single shared sensor, giving genuinely appropriate framing whichever way you're shooting rather than a compromise angle picked to work adequately on both.

Performance

The same Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 for Galaxy chip powers both Fold8 models, with identical RAM scaling — 12GB on 256GB and 512GB tiers, 16GB on the 1TB tier — and the same Android 17, One UI 9 software with Samsung's 7-year update commitment, matching the most generous policy in Android outside Google's own. Performance parity with the standard model means the Ultra's premium is entirely about camera, display size, and build, not raw horsepower — worth knowing if benchmark numbers are what you're comparing. One UI 9 itself is an incremental refinement rather than a reinvention — GSMArena's own testing found the interface "tidier" and more polished in small ways (thicker, easier-to-use Quick Toggle sliders, for instance) rather than dramatically different from One UI 8.5, but multitasking remains genuinely the most complete foldable software experience available, with Samsung DeX desktop mode and USB video output both carrying over as real, functional productivity features most rivals still can't match. Galaxy AI features are built on the same Gemini-powered foundation as the standard Fold8, with the larger inner display giving multi-window AI workflows genuinely more room to breathe than on any non-Ultra Samsung device.

Battery and Charging

A 5,000mAh battery is the largest Samsung has ever fitted into a Z Fold, a real capacity increase over the standard Fold8's 4,800mAh despite the Ultra's slimmer folded profile — GSMArena's own reporting on the leaked EU energy label puts the improvement at roughly 14% over the Z Fold7's 4,400mAh cell, with an estimated endurance rating around 51 hours against the Z Fold7's 40:28h, close to a 20% real-world gain. That's a genuinely needed fix — GSMArena's own testing found the Z Fold7 placed notably below its sibling foldables on battery, with an Active Use Score of just 11:44h at the time. 45W wired charging reaches 67% in 30 minutes — slightly faster than the standard model's 63% — while 20W Qi2 wireless and 4.5W reverse wireless charging carry over unchanged. Even with all of that improvement, GSMArena's own published cons list is direct that "battery life could be better" remains a fair criticism relative to rivals like the Motorola Razr Fold, not a fully solved problem.

Competition

Samsung has effectively owned the book-style foldable category for seven years with minimal serious competition, and GSMArena's own verdict is candid that this is the generation where that stops being true. The Motorola Razr Fold, which launched a few months before the Fold8 Ultra, undercuts it by around $200/€600 while offering a larger 6,000mAh battery against Samsung's 5,000mAh, meaningfully faster 80W wired charging against 45W, and — per GSMArena's own testing — genuinely better still photography and longer battery endurance, all with roughly twice the base storage. Samsung still wins on raw multi-core performance, its 200MP main sensor resolution, S Pen support, Samsung DeX, and seven generations of foldable software refinement the Razr Fold simply doesn't have yet — this isn't a case of the Fold8 Ultra losing outright, more that the price premium over a genuinely capable new rival is harder to justify than it would have been a year ago. GSMArena's own review flags a second threat too: the Honor Magic V6, offering a better camera experience and larger battery at a substantially lower €1,700, with the widest market reach of any rival even if still far behind Samsung's own retail footprint.

Verdict

Frequently Asked Questions

How it compares: Z Fold8 Ultra vs standard Z Fold8

Samsung

Galaxy Z Fold8 Ultra

From £1,899

91

Samsung

Galaxy Z Fold8

From £1,699

87

vs

8.0", Flex Titanium

Inner display

7.6", 4:3

200MP + 50MP + 10MP tele (3×)

Main cam

50MP + 50MP, no telephoto

5,000mAh · 45W

Battery

4,800mAh · 45W

215g

Weight

201g

From £1,899

Price

From £1,699

Full Galaxy Z Fold8 Ultra review

Full Galaxy Z Fold8 review