What Samsung is really selling us with the Galaxy Z Flip8

With the Galaxy Z Flip8, Samsung is bringing out the eighth generation of its flip phone. While reading the press release, I asked myself why this is happening at this frequency, when flip phones are a niche product and the differences between versions are even smaller than with regular smartphones. On top of that, everyone on TikTok and across social media is talking about flip phones again as if it were 2003.

What is new on the Z Flip8?

• Chip: The Z Flip 7 had the Exynos 2500, and the Z Flip8 gets the Exynos 2600, the same as the Galaxy S26. It hardly gets noticeably faster, as the benchmarks are almost on par.
• Dimensions and weight: 180 g, around 8 g lighter than its predecessor. Folded it is about 0.6 mm thinner, and unfolded it is under 6.2 mm. You notice that in everyday use.
• Material: The back is made of glass fiber composite, the frame of Advanced Armor aluminum. The edges are slightly more rounded, which makes the device easier to open with one hand.
• Display: Both screens now light up with up to 3,000 nits. The inside is 6.9 inches and the outside 4.1 inches, with no change in size.
• Price: €1,299 RRP for the 256 GB version, so €100 more than the Z Flip 7 at launch.

The price increase is especially unpleasant because the battery and camera have stayed completely identical. There is still no optical zoom in the camera. Compared with non-foldable smartphones in this price class, the Z Flip8 clearly lags behind. All in all, this is a price increase without much to show for it: €100 more for slightly more performance and a few grams less weight.

The cover display is the real star

With the Z Flip 7, the cover display was my biggest criticism. There were only a few preinstalled apps, and for everything else you needed workarounds via Good Lock. On the Z Flip8, 16 apps now run natively on the outer display, including Google Maps, Calendar and Calculator. That is great, even if 16 apps are still not all apps, as there are on Motorola, for example.

More pluses:

• Body: The slimmer, lighter body sounds like a small thing, but it feels significantly more premium when held in one hand.
• Display crease: The crease in the main display is hardly visible or noticeable anymore. Samsung worked on this across all foldables this year.
• Battery life: Even though the battery size stayed the same, the Z Flip8 lasts around 3 hours longer than the Z Flip 7 in everyday testing thanks to software optimization. So the biggest leap is not the hardware but the software.

How Z Flip sales have developed

Why does Samsung still bring a new version every year? The sales history of the Z Flip is a roller coaster.

• 2020: At launch with the first Z Flip, Samsung was cautious and internally aimed for only 2.5 million units sold for the whole year.
• 2021: The breakthrough. Samsung sold almost 10 million foldable phones, around 300% more than the year before. At that time 70% of foldable buyers chose a Flip over a Fold, mainly because of the lower price and the form factor of the first Fold devices, which was still barely usable then.
• Z Flip 3 to Z Flip 5: the golden era of the series. The Z Flip 5 even broke sales records in South Korea, driven by the larger outer display.
• Z Flip 6: Sales dropped by almost 15% year over year. An industry outlet wrote at the time that the Flip was turning into a flop. The S24 series grew by almost 18% in the same period.

Overall, foldables remain a niche product: worldwide their market share is around 2.5% of all devices sold. In Europe, the Motorola Razr now leads the foldable charts, ahead of the Samsung models. The reason is clear from my perspective: when the jump from the predecessor is big, as with the Z Flip 5 and its new outer display, people buy. When mainly the processor changes, as with the Z Flip 6 and now the Z Flip8, the incentive to buy drops. On top of that comes the high price compared with classic flagships, which usually bring a lot more.

The retro trend: flip phones are cool again

There is another aspect. On TikTok and Instagram, flip phones are trending again, in two different ways. On one side are premium foldables like the Z Flip8 or the Motorola Razr, which put modern technology into a retro form factor. On the other side there is a boom in simple, inexpensive feature phones in the style of the 2000s, without smart features but with a keypad and nostalgia, all the way to Barbie flip phones.

Both movements feed on the same longing: phone use used to be simpler. Add to that the Y2K aesthetic, which is extremely popular with Gen Z and millennials. The satisfying click when you close the Z Flip8, the look and the feeling of not holding a doomscrolling device are hitting a nerve right now.

Verdict

For me, the matter is clear: you do not buy a Z Flip8 to have a technically cutting-edge smartphone. You buy it because it is one of the best-equipped retro smartphones you can get. You buy it for the Samsung ecosystem and because the cover display is so absurdly practical: you take shots with the main camera and see yourself in the display while doing it.

The only pity is that the Z Flip8 competes with a growing market of much cheaper, deliberately simple retro phones and with flip phones from other manufacturers like Motorola. But I think what you are buying here is not primarily tech, but above all a feeling.