Samsung Galaxy Z Flip 8 Review

The Galaxy Z Flip 8 arrives at a time when few recent handsets genuinely advance their specification from one year to the next. Samsung's answer here is a set of incremental promises: a lighter handset, a still more discreet crease, a richer cover screen and a more capable chip. That is relatively little on paper, so the question is whether it adds up to enough in practice.

The handset comes in two versions, with 256 GB or 512 GB of storage. Pink, graphite and white are offered broadly, while a water-green finish is listed as exclusive to Samsung's own site.

At first glance the design of the Galaxy Z Flip 8 looks a great deal like the previous generation. Even so, Samsung has managed to shave 8 g from it, bringing it to 180 g, and to make it thinner at the same time. Unfolded, the handset is only 6.1 mm thick, and folded it measures 13.1 mm. That is a genuine achievement, paid for only by a marginal increase of 0.2 mm in width and height, at 166.9 x 75.4 mm. Anyone used to the dimensions of Samsung's largest slab phones will not feel out of place.

Elsewhere there is little change. At the back sits an appealing 4.1-inch external display, with the two camera sensors and the flash placed directly on it, where they risk collecting dust. The screen occupies half of that rear face, and the central hinge, as last year, is very nearly invisible both to the eye and to the fingertip.

That achievement comes at a price of its own: the system is a little awkward to operate one-handed. The handset is slightly too wide and the hinge slightly too firm to flip the lid open with one hand in the manner of an old flip phone. While unfolding, the hinge can also produce a faint cracking sound, which is not troublesome but is not exactly reassuring in the moment.

The advantage of that firmness is that the lid does not have to be fully closed or fully opened, so the phone can be stood up like a small laptop. That is practical for taking photographs or for other actions in compatible applications.

On finish, an aluminium frame and Corning Gorilla Glass Victus 2 on the front are there to make it resilient. The plain plastic back is a disappointment that jars slightly with the rest.

Because of its hinge, the Galaxy Z Flip 8 is once again rated only IP48. That makes it reasonably resistant to water, to a depth of 1.5 m for 30 minutes, but only moderately so to dust, since it is protected only against solid foreign bodies of 1 mm and above. Its unusual format aside, the handset stays conventional elsewhere: the volume and power buttons sit on the right, a little too high for small hands, opposite a single SIM slot with no microSD tray. The power button houses the fingerprint reader, which would have been preferable under the display.

The recipe was good enough last year for Samsung to change very little in 2026, on both the cover and main panels. The main display is still a 6.9-inch Dynamic AMOLED 2X with a resolution of 2520 x 1080 pixels, or 400 ppi. It supports HDR10+, runs at a conventional 120 Hz refresh rate and has very discreet bezels.

While several manufacturers have spent this year chasing peak-brightness records, Samsung has visibly preferred to stay conventional, and the quoted values sit very close to the already satisfying numbers of the previous generation.

On measured colour accuracy, Samsung once again selects the Vivid profile out of the box. It is a little too saturated by default, at 2.5 in P3 and 1.8 in sRGB, with a white balance that is slightly cold at 6743, so the Natural profile is the better choice. That profile very slightly degrades the P3 figure, to 2.8, but substantially improves the sRGB result to 1.1 and brings the grey Delta E down to 1.1 as well, which gives more accurate colours across the vast majority of content and applications.

The absence of Samsung's recent Privacy Display technology is a genuine disappointment, particularly since nothing about the Flip's construction prevents it from being fitted.

The 4.1-inch cover display, a Super AMOLED panel, has little to envy of the main screen. It is a little less bright than its counterpart, and also less accurate in its colours, which flirt with the symbolic mark of 3, at 2.9 in sRGB and 3.1 in P3. It still flatters the eye and proves more than convincing for secondary content. The discreet black borders at the sides are welcome, even if their slight relief is disconcerting under the fingers.

One UI 9, the latest version of Samsung's interface, is built on Android 17. The update mostly serves to bring the new Android features across, because the bulk of the One UI changes, which are largely visual, arrived with One UI 8.5. It remains one of the best interfaces on the market, if not the best: very rich, easy to use and packed with options — sometimes too well hidden — for tailoring the experience, while staying visually pleasant and perfectly fluid.

Unsurprisingly, the Galaxy Z Flip 8 is loaded with AI-driven features. Alongside conventional tools for writing, editing, creation, assistance and search sit more distinctive elements such as Now Brief and Now Nudge, which surface contextual information for the user.

The cover screen is the part most people will want to read about. On the previous generation, displaying applications of your choice beyond the official apps and widgets involved needless complexity. The good news is that this iteration has simplified matters a little. Samsung's MultiStar application still has to be installed, and an Applications widget added from the settings, but MultiStar can now be installed directly from the cover screen through the Labs area, without having to go hunting in the Galaxy Store.

It does not match the configuration flexibility of the main home screen, since changes often have to be made through the settings rather than on the screen itself, but the cover display is highly customisable in appearance, content and organisation, and it allows interaction with most of that content without opening the handset. Beyond basic widgets and apps such as weather, calendar and calculator, it can be used to watch videos, film yourself, hold a conversation in a messaging app or check a social network. The appeal and the comfort are inevitably limited on a 4.1-inch panel, but the wow effect is real.

On software support, Samsung commits to seven years of updates, covering both Android versions and security patches.

There is still no Snapdragon in the Flip this year. Samsung prefers to advance its in-house solution with the Exynos 2600, built on a 2 nm process. Supported by 12 GB of RAM and with specifications revised upwards, it would have been reasonable to expect considerably better results than last year. That is not what happens.

The outcome is far from shameful, and everyday use remains entirely fluid and comfortable, but this thin foldable will suit gamers and users of demanding software less well than handsets with similar specifications. Antutu 11 benchmarks show a real gap against other devices, and Geekbench results are actually lower on the CPU side than the previous generation, although the GPU is fortunately better.

This slightly disappointing chip, which nonetheless allows browsing and even gaming smoothly enough — Genshin Impact on high barely stutters — does not even deliver reduced heat. When a demanding application is running, the temperature climbs quickly around the cover screen, which can genuinely interfere with holding the phone.

On connectivity, there is modern Wi-Fi 7 to look ahead with, but only Bluetooth 5.4, where 6.0 would have been an appreciated gesture.

Still fitted with a fairly modest 4300 mAh battery, the Galaxy Z Flip 8 nevertheless does better than the model it replaces. Battery life measured with a mixed-use test came in at 17 hours 28 minutes, an hour and twenty minutes more than the 2025 handset returned under the same test. The phone can probably thank its finer, less power-hungry chip, and perhaps a better-optimised One UI 9. That is still less than most of its competitors in this part of the market, but it is enough to get through a good day without worrying about recharging too often, and it is the price paid for the handset's slimness.

The same pattern of familiar hardware with better results applies to charging. Samsung still limits the handset to a meagre 25 W maximum over a cable, and 15 W wirelessly, but the recorded figures are better than a year ago. A full charge takes almost thirty minutes less than the previous generation, at 1 hour 29 minutes, which is a marked improvement and brings the phone back into line with the average for this bracket.

Fitted with a single speaker grille at the bottom, the Galaxy Z Flip 8 nonetheless produces balanced stereo sound emerging from the top and the bottom. This is neither an area of particular generosity nor of penny-pinching, and the result is an average solution. It is entirely sufficient for watching a dialogue-driven video in a quiet environment, thanks to mids that take up a lot of room, but the system saturates quickly at high volume or with more energetic music.

As in the two previous generations, there is no telephoto module on the Galaxy Z Flip 8. That is regrettable at this level of the market, and the relatively modest main pairing does not change either. There is a 50 MP wide sensor at f/1.8 with optical stabilisation and a 12 MP ultra-wide at f/2.2, while selfies rely on a 10 MP f/2.2 front camera. In pure megapixel terms, plenty of competitors are more generous. Fortunately, megapixels are not everything.

Where the main module is concerned, the handset acquits itself with honour. By day, in good conditions, the image — captured by default at 12 MP with pixel binning — is accurate in colour, contrast and rendered detail. Zoom is limited to x10, which is best avoided unless a mush of pixels is the goal, but the sensor copes well at x2 and even x4 in some cases. A telephoto would genuinely not be a luxury.

At night the main sensor also does relatively well, helped by a night mode that may ask for a second or two of stillness. Again, heavy zooming should be avoided, while blur and noise can already appear on complex shots taken without any zoom at all. Some handsets in the same bracket do better, but the results remain sufficient for ordinary users.

The same cannot be said of the ultra-wide module. At night the advice is simple: do not use it. The image is as noisy as it gets and is very rarely usable. By day the result is fortunately better, though not something to show off. The corners are quite strongly distorted and overall sharpness is not impressive. At this level of the market it is reasonable to expect more.

As for selfies, the results, with or without the blur effect for portraits, are again satisfying without really shining. Despite how practical the folding screen is for self-portraits, since the phone can simply be stood up, the keenest selfie takers will probably want a device with a more generous front sensor. Video capture is limited to 60 fps in UHD.