Samsung Bets Big on Foldables Before Apple Enters

Samsung can't afford to play it safe with Apple's first foldable looming

Samsung used its July 22, 2026 Galaxy Unpacked event in London to unveil its most aggressive foldable lineup yet — the Z Fold 8, Fold 8 Ultra, and Z Flip 8 — alongside the Galaxy Watch Ultra 2 and Watch 9. The timing is not incidental: Apple's first foldable iPhone is expected (though sources differ on how certain the timeline is) to arrive as early as September 2026, and Samsung has spent seven years building foldable market dominance that analysts say is now at risk.

What's new

The headline change is a bifurcated Fold strategy. Samsung introduced a brand-new wider, shorter Fold 8 form factor alongside a slimmer, taller Fold 8 Ultra — a hedge against uncertainty over which shape wins with consumers. The Fold 8 Ultra also debuts Flex Titanium display technology, which Samsung claims uses a titanium film 20x stiffer than its prior polymer film to achieve a near-invisible crease.

Key specs and pricing:

Z Fold 8: $1,899.99 starting price (reportedly down $100 from its predecessor, though the exact baseline comparison is unclear), 7.6-inch main screen, 5.5-inch cover screen, 4,800mAh battery, 45W wired/20W wireless charging, 50MP main + 50MP ultrawide cameras (no telephoto, a downgrade from Fold 7's 200MP main sensor).
Z Fold 8 Ultra: $2,099.99 (up $100 from Fold 7), 8-inch main screen, 6.5-inch cover screen, 4.1mm thick unfolded, 5,000mAh battery, 200MP main + 50MP ultrawide + 10MP telephoto (3x optical zoom).
Z Flip 8: $1,199.99 (up from $1,099.99), 6.9-inch inner AMOLED, 4.1-inch cover screen, 4,300mAh battery, 12GB RAM/256GB storage.
Galaxy Watch Ultra 2: $699.99 (+$50), 800mAh battery (+35%), 10.7mm case (-12% thickness).

All three foldables use silicon-carbon batteries for the first time and carry an IP48 durability rating.

The AI push

Samsung is leaning hard on software to differentiate. New devices ship with Gemini Intelligence 1, a preinstalled Gemini Notebook, and a six-month Google AI Pro trial. Task automation — first introduced in a February beta — now spans more than 40 popular apps. The Fold 8 adds a proactive "Now Nudge" feature for cross-app suggestions, while the Flip 8 gets a "Now Brief" widget generator. The Watch 9 supports Gemini without a wake word.

Samsung also introduced Smart Switch tools aimed at easing iOS-to-Galaxy transitions and "My FanCam," an AI video editor that uses person-detection to track subjects. Separately, Samsung and Google are launching intelligent AI smart glasses this fall — first teased at Google I/O 2026 — with frames from Gentle Monster and Warby Parker, though pricing and release specifics remain unannounced.

The risks Samsung is managing

The report flags several vulnerabilities heading into Apple's expected entry:

Battery chemistry uncertainty: The Verge reports that silicon-carbon batteries may degrade faster over time due to silicon reactivity instability. A Samsung executive, BD Yang, cautioned that these cells must be carefully managed — a sensitive topic given Samsung's 2016 Note 7 recall over battery safety.
Recent underperformance: The Galaxy S25 Edge reportedly underperformed in sales despite launching before Apple's iPhone Air, raising doubts about Samsung's ability to preempt Apple competitively.
Competitive gaps: Honor's Magic V6 has a larger 6,660mAh battery; Oppo's Find N6 reportedly achieves a subtler crease via 3D liquid printing in its hinge; Google's Pixel 10 Pro Fold reportedly offers more comprehensive dust protection than Samsung's IP48 rating.
Form-factor risk: Samsung's Galaxy Z TriFold, introduced last year, left the US market within three months — a reminder that novel foldable shapes carry real market risk. No explanation for the discontinuation was provided in the underlying reporting.

IDC analyst Francisco Jeronimo predicts Apple will capture 34% of the foldable market by value in its first year, calling the launch "a turning point for the foldable segment." No shipment or revenue figures were provided to contextualize that projection.

Why founders should care

Founders building for foldable or unconventional form factors should likely track UI/UX adaptations — Instagram is reportedly optimizing its app for the Z Fold 8's shorter screen — as an early signal of how quickly platforms and third-party apps will need to adjust once Apple enters.
The heavy bundling of Gemini across phones and watches suggests hardware specs alone may increasingly matter less than OS-level AI integration. Founders building AI-adjacent products may want to monitor how deeply assistants get embedded at the operating-system layer, since this could shift where value accrues in the stack.
Samsung's battery caution is a reminder that new chemistries (like silicon-carbon) carry real degradation and safety-messaging tradeoffs. Hardware startups introducing novel battery technology may want to weigh long-term reliability communication carefully, particularly given Samsung's own history with the Note 7 recall.
The rapid retreat of the Z TriFold after under three months suggests novel hardware form factors can carry elevated market risk even for an established player — a data point worth weighing for founders making hardware form-factor bets of their own.
If Apple does capture roughly a third of foldable market value in its first year, as IDC projects, it would suggest incumbents in adjacent hardware categories can face fast share shifts once a dominant platform player enters — a dynamic that may be relevant well beyond phones.

What's still unclear

Sources differ on whether Apple's foldable iPhone will arrive in September or merely "in the coming months." There's also no confirmed data yet on real-world sales performance, degradation rates for the new silicon-carbon batteries, or specs and pricing for Apple's rumored foldable — all of which will matter for how this competitive story plays out over the next few months.