I almost forgot Samsung’s Z Flip 8 was a foldable

Samsung’s caller Galaxy Z Flip 8 feels much for illustration a regular telephone than ever. It’s thinner, lighter, and has a beforehand surface you tin do conscionable astir thing on. Whether that’s a bully aliases bad thing, I’m not rather judge yet.

I spent 3 hours pinch Samsung’s newest flip telephone past week, and it doesn’t look excessively different from past year’s Z Flip 7. It’s still sewage a 6.9-inch FHD+ AMOLED show connected the inside. It’s still sewage a 4.1-inch Super AMOLED screen surface connected the outside. It still starts astatine 12GB of RAM and 256GB of storage, and it still has a 4,300mAh battery. But this twelvemonth Samsung has added moreover much features that make this point a full-on telephone while it’s closed.

For starters, Samsung has added 3 caller gestures to the outer display. If you swipe down from the apical near of the screen, you’ll spot your notification tray. Swipe down from the apical right, and you’ll get speedy settings. Swipe up from the bottom, and you’ll get adjacent a full-blown app drawer. If you wanted to usage your closed telephone for practically everything, that’s what Samsung is offering here.

Previously, you had to usage Samsung’s Good Lock to motorboat apps connected the screen screen, and while it worked, it was fundamentally a workaround. Now this is simply a autochthonal feature. On first impression, it’s bully to person the option, but portion of the magic of a flip phone, for maine astatine least, has ever been the limitations. If the Flip 8 is simply a phone, but successful a small, quadrate facet ratio, will I still consciousness little motivated to doomscroll?

Samsung has besides shaved a fewer fractions of a millimeter disconnected this point to make what it says is the thinnest and lightest flip telephone connected the market. The Z Flip 8 is conscionable 13.1mm heavy folded and 6.1mm heavy unfolded, and weighs 180g. This is still thicker than Samsung’s ain Galaxy Z Fold 8 Ultra, which comes successful astatine conscionable 4.1mm unfolded, and it’s surely still thicker than a regular telephone while closed, but arsenic acold arsenic flip phones go, it’s presently the 1 to beat.

This year’s telephone has besides been made thinner utilizing Samsung’s caller Flex Titanium show technology, which is besides successful its caller Z Fold 8 and Z Fold 8 Ultra. Samsung says Flex Titanium shaves disconnected thickness by utilizing a thinner titanium movie nether the OLED, arsenic good arsenic a tighter bonding betwixt the guidelines sheet and show module. In practice, I’m not judge you’re going to announcement a fraction of a millimeter, but Samsung says this show is 20x much durable, which is sorely needed considering the magnitude of Z Flips pinch cracked soul displays I’ve seen while riding the subway.

New artillery exertion besides had a portion successful enabling a thinner and lighter phone. Samsung has yet made the modulation to silicon c — which allows for denser batteries than modular lithium ion — though it says it’s utilizing little silicon than competitors for information and longevity reasons. In the Flip 8, the capacity and charging velocity are the aforesaid arsenic the Flip 7, but it was capable to make the compartment physically smaller.

If you were hoping for a monolithic camera upgrade this year, you’re going to beryllium disappointed, arsenic the Flip 8 is sticking pinch the aforesaid camera hardware we saw successful past year’s Flip 7. You’re still getting a 50MP main and 12MP ultrawide, which are good enough, but don’t expect the 200MP main camera from the Z Fold 8 Ultra aliases moreover the 50MP ultrawide from the Z Fold 8. That said, Samsung has brought its awesome Super Steady Horizontal Lock characteristic to the phone.

Probably the coolest characteristic I tried during my 3 hours pinch the instrumentality was the caller “Now Brief” widget generator, which tin create Now Brief widgets to proactively show you accusation astir your day. During my clip pinch the device, Samsung demo’d asking the telephone to show the pollen levels each morning, and the Flip 8 generated a civilization UI showing the day’s pollen level. I’m eager to get my hands connected the telephone for a longer play to pressure-test this feature, arsenic Samsung made it look for illustration you could inquire for a immense assortment of widgets. This feels very akin to Google’s precocious announced Android 17 feature, but optimized for the beforehand show of the Flip.

The Flip 8 is much costly than past year. This year, it’s starting astatine $1,199.99, up from the Flip 7’s $1,099.99 starting price, for the aforesaid retention and RAM configurations. Just astir everything is taxable to the RAM apocalypse these days, but if you want a flip telephone that’s much telephone than ever successful its closed state, the Flip 8 mightiness beryllium the 1 to get.