Dominic Preston, reporting for The Verge earlier in July:

A year after overhauling its Z Fold phone with a radically thinner design, Samsung has changed things up again, this time altering the shape entirely. The Z Fold 8 is wider than any of Samsung’s previous foldables, and shorter too, a size and shape somewhere between Samsung’s traditional Flip and Fold models.

In photos, I wasn’t impressed by the squat shape. In person, to my surprise, it feels great, and almost immediately intuitive. If you want to get a feel for it yourself, grab your passport — the Z Fold 8 is about the same height and less than half an inch more narrow.

This isn’t Samsung’s only new foldable this year, and in fact, its lineup just got more confusing. The Z Fold 8 may be the official follow-up to last year’s impressive Z Fold 7, but in truth the Z Fold 8 Ultra is the straightforward sequel. That phone has the same squarish inner screen as previous Z Fold phones and a similar triple rear camera. The name feels like a sly trick to get around this year’s inevitable price hikes: Samsung slapped “Ultra” on the box of its highest-end model to help cover for pricing the phone at $2,099.99, up $100 from the Z Fold 7.

I don’t have much interest in Samsung phones but nevertheless have been linking to Samsung Unpacked news for years now. What’s more intriguing to me is this new form factor, which is widely speculated to be the same as that of the folding iPhone due in about six weeks. The first generation of folding smartphones, beginning with the Galaxy Fold in 2019, had long, narrow front screens and square inner screens. This aspect ratio made both screens less than ideal to use: the front screen was too narrow, and the inner screen wasn’t wide enough to be used as a tablet. This new “squat” form factor sacrifices vertical length for width, making the inner screen much more useful while sacrificing day-to-day use of the front screen.

I think this is the way to go, and I remember saying so when the Pixel Fold was first announced in 2023. The entire point of a folding phone is the inner display, which should be large enough to eliminate the need for a tablet. But this great aspect ratio debate of the 2020s has proven something more important: folding phones are inherently full of compromises. The front screen — which most people will use most of the time — must be sacrificed to make the inner screen useful. This is still better than the old design, where both screens weren’t ideal to use, but it’s still a compromise. For the best experience, people will open up the phone like a book. This style of folding phones ought to be called “tablets with front screens as an afterthought.”

This brings me to the foldable iPhone. I’m positive the software will be world-class. App developers will be there Day 1 to ensure their apps work well on both displays; Apple will make the front display useful and practical. But this device is rumored to cost upward of $2,000, while forgoing the professional-grade cameras of the iPhones Pro, the pocketable yet useful display size of the standard iPhones, and the battery life of the iPhones Pro Max. (Just compare the specifications of the Galaxy Z Fold 8 with the Galaxy S26 Ultra.) I’m almost positive I won’t want to carry two displays around in my pocket, especially because I’ll have to open the phone up when I truly want a good experience. I’m almost positive I don’t want to spend $2,000 for worse cameras and battery life. And I’m almost positive I’m in the overwhelming majority.

I’ll refrain from passing judgment on the foldable iPhone until it’s announced, but I can judge the Galaxy Z Fold 8 — and I think it exposes too many compromises with this device class. None of this is Samsung’s fault, of course, but it does a great job illustrating why foldable phones will probably never be ready for primetime. There was a time many years ago when I was bullish on the folding phone, hoping technology would progress far enough that they’d be equivalent in price and features to their non-folding counterparts. That time has not come yet, and I’m not confident it ever will. Samsung and Apple have tried addressing the biggest drawback to folding phones, the form factor, this year. But the Galaxy Z Fold 8 proves that it’s just not enough.