The Samsung Galaxy Z Fold8, thankfully, has remembered that phones can have a personality.
This is where the Fold8 starts making a case for itself as a lifestyle device rather than simply a phone.
For work, this is where the “phone that becomes a tablet” pitch stops being marketing language and starts being genuinely useful.
For a device that is essentially trying to replace both your phone and tablet, that is reassuring.
Meanwhile, On My Wrist…If the Fold8 is about making your phone do more, the Galaxy Watch9 is about making you aware of everything your body is doing.
Samsung’s latest foldable is lighter, wider and decidedly more passport than smartphone, while the Galaxy Watch9 wants to keep tabs on everything from your sleep to your steps. Here’s what it’s actually like to live with both. There was a time when getting a new phone felt like an event. You’d peel off the plastic, admire the colour, change the wallpaper and spend an unreasonable amount of time showing it to people who had not asked to see it. Then smartphones became, well, smart. Somewhere along the way, they also became a little boring. A black rectangle is a black rectangle, even when it costs a small fortune. The Samsung Galaxy Z Fold8, thankfully, has remembered that phones can have a personality.
Folded shut, it looks less like a traditional smartphone and more like someone shrunk a passport and gave it a 5.5-inch screen. Open it up and—plot twist—it becomes a 7.6-inch tablet. At 201g, it is also Samsung’s lightest Galaxy Z Fold yet. And yes, the first few days are spent opening and closing it for absolutely no reason. But after the novelty wears off, you realise the real party trick isn't that it folds. It’s that it changes what you can reasonably expect a phone to do.
The passport has entered the chat.
Let’s address the elephant, or, more accurately, the passport—in the room. The Fold8’s new shape is squat, wide and undeniably different. It is closer to a tiny notebook when closed than the long, narrow phones we’ve become accustomed to carrying. That makes it satisfyingly compact in a bag and surprisingly easy to hold, although it isn't necessarily a one-handed dream.
The 5.5-inch cover screen is particularly good for the things you want to do quickly: answer a WhatsApp, check Instagram, search for something or send an email without immediately disappearing down a 45-minute reel rabbit hole. Then you open it and suddenly you have 7.6 inches of screen real estate staring back at you.
This is where the Fold8 starts making a case for itself as a lifestyle device rather than simply a phone. Reading an article feels more like reading on a tablet. Instagram carousels get room to breathe. Websites are far less claustrophobic. And if you are the sort of person who says, “I’ll just watch one episode,” the larger screen is going to make that lie considerably more comfortable.
Samsung has built the inner screen around a 4:3 ratio, which makes it particularly suited to reading, apps and tablet-style use. Both displays also support up to a 120Hz adaptive refresh rate, while the inner display can hit 3,000 nits, making it impressively easy to see outdoors. Essentially, it is the best of consuming content—as Nolan intended.
My favourite feature? Having three things open at once
The feature I ended up using most wasn't the flashy AI or the folding mechanism. It was multitasking. Imagine researching a story while watching a reference video, keeping your email open and replying to WhatsApp without closing any of it. On a regular phone, this feels like trying to organise your wardrobe inside a handbag. On the Fold8, it actually makes sense.
You can run multiple apps side by side, use floating windows and move between layouts with One UI 9. The phone can support up to three apps in a grid, with additional apps floating on top. For work, this is where the “phone that becomes a tablet” pitch stops being marketing language and starts being genuinely useful.
For anyone whose workday involves approximately 46 tabs, 18 WhatsApp conversations, email, Google Docs and a YouTube video playing somewhere in the background, the Fold8 understands the assignment. And because it runs on the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 for Galaxy with up to 16GB RAM, it has enough power to keep up with that slightly chaotic magazine editor lifestyle.
The concert girlies are going to understand My FanCam
Now for the feature I suspect will become a cult favourite: My FanCam. If you have ever been to a concert and returned home with 200 videos of the artist, 100 of which feature someone's head, a speaker or the ceiling, this one is for you.
My FanCam can identify a person within a crowded frame, track them and automatically reframe the footage for the format you need. So your chaotic landscape concert video can become a properly framed vertical Reel without spending your evening dragging keyframes around in an editing app.
For festivals like Lollapalooza, where you are simultaneously trying to experience the show, film the show and somehow make the footage look like you had a professional camera crew with you, this is genuinely useful. Maybe I will take it to the BTS concert, who knows…
There’s also Audio Eraser, which lets you reduce things such as wind, voices and background noise individually. Translation: that beautiful clip of your favourite song no longer has to compete with the person behind you screaming the lyrics slightly off-key.
AI this, AI that
We’ve reached peak AI-feature fatigue. Every device promises to “change the way you work” and then gives you a button you forget exists. The Fold8's AI features are more interesting when they quietly remove annoying little steps from your day. Circle to Search, for instance, lets you search for something already sitting on your screen. See a celebrity wearing a bag you desperately need to identify? Circle it. Need to translate text in a screenshot? Circle it. Trying to understand what you're looking at without explaining it to a chatbot first? You get the idea.
The phone can also record and transcribe calls and voice recordings on-device, with the ability to distinguish between speakers and recognise Hindi words within English conversations. For anyone who interviews people for a living, this is the kind of feature that can quietly save you hours.
And yes, there is Gemini, Bixby, Now Brief and Now Nudge doing various clever things in the background. But for me, the best AI is the kind you don't have to think about. If a phone can take three irritating steps out of something I have to do 20 times a day, I am listening.
Then there is the camera situation
The Fold8 has two 50MP rear cameras, a wide and an ultra-wide, along with 10MP selfie cameras on both displays. The main camera is the star, and the foldable design gives you a few tricks you don't get on a conventional phone.
You can use the rear camera for selfies while seeing yourself on the cover screen, partially fold the phone to prop it up for hands-free shots and use Dual Recording to capture both what's happening in front of you and your reaction to it.
Which, frankly, feels designed for the age of “I need to document this but also want to be in the frame”. The compromise is the missing telephoto camera. If you regularly photograph concerts, sporting events or anything happening 50 metres away, the lack of a dedicated telephoto lens becomes noticeable.
And then Samsung gave the phone a personality again
Good Lock might be the sleeper hit here. You can customise the phone far beyond changing a wallpaper: build your own themes, add notification effects, control individual app volumes, create shortcuts and even customise how screenshots and screen recordings work. You can also force apps into split-screen or floating windows. It reminded me that personalising a phone used to be part of the fun. Remember when everyone had a different ringtone? We're almost back there.
The battery doesn't make you pay for all this
Despite having two screens, the Fold8's 4,800mAh battery managed to get through a full day in testing, including around nine to ten hours of screen time in one review. It supports 45W wired charging and 20W wireless charging, while Wireless PowerShare can top up your earbuds or smartwatch.
For a device that is essentially trying to replace both your phone and tablet, that is reassuring. And when you are travelling, Samsung DeX takes things one step further. Connect the Fold8 to a compatible monitor or TV and it can transform into a desktop-like workspace, complete with multiple windows, files, presentations and documents. Will it replace your laptop? No. Could it stop you from carrying one for a short work trip? Absolutely.
Meanwhile, On My Wrist…
If the Fold8 is about making your phone do more, the Galaxy Watch9 is about making you aware of everything your body is doing. The first thing you notice is how light it is. At just over 34g, with a thin aluminium body and flexible sport band, it is comfortable enough to wear to bed, which is important because so much of its appeal comes from sleep and health tracking.
The Watch9 packs in the expected fitness tracking, GPS, sleep and activity monitoring, along with newer features such as Sleep Score, Energy Score, Vitals and Blood Pressure Trends. Samsung's Health app can also track food and provide additional metrics such as an Antioxidant Index. There is, however, a slight problem with knowing this much about yourself.
At some point, you are no longer checking your health—you are checking the dashboard that tells you how much you need to check your health. The amount of data can feel overwhelming, particularly when you're presented with multiple scores without an obvious explanation of what to actually do with them.
And then comes the Watch9's only flaw: the battery. The 44mm version packs a 445mAh battery, but testing found it could struggle to last a full day, particularly with sleep tracking, workouts and regular use. Charging can also take well over an hour. Which is slightly ironic for a watch whose whole personality is built around keeping track of your life when it keeps asking to be plugged into one.
So, would I make the switch? Yes! It is a phone when you need a phone, a tablet when you need a tablet, a mini editing suite when you are at a concert and, occasionally, a desktop when you have decided travelling with your laptop is simply not happening.
That is what makes the Fold8 interesting. We spent years making smartphones thinner, faster and more powerful while keeping them essentially the same shape. Samsung has finally changed the part we actually hold. The Galaxy Watch9 is a slightly more complicated proposition. It is beautifully light, comfortable, capable and packed with health and fitness features. But the battery life feels like the price you pay for that slimness, and it is a price I'm not sure everyone will want to pay.
Together, though, the two make a strong case for Samsung's ecosystem: one device gives you more room to work, watch, create and multitask; the other keeps tabs on what you're doing while you do it. And if the future of smartphones is supposed to be about making our lives easier, I'll take the version that also lets me film my favourite artist at a concert without accidentally capturing the back of someone's head.
