Why Samsung Gave Its Next Folding Phone a New Shape

Think “folding phone,” and Samsung probably comes to mind. The company has led the charge in the category since it debuted the first Galaxy Fold in 2019. It has refined the hardware of its Fold and Flip devices ever since, making them thinner, lighter, and stronger.

So what’s next? A new shape, apparently. On Wednesday, at its second Galaxy Unpacked event of the year, Samsung revealed a brand-new design for the Galaxy Fold8—a passport-shaped, book-like fold—which sits in between the now-rebranded Galaxy Z Fold8 Ultra and the compact Galaxy Z Flip8.

Drew Blackard, Samsung’s senior vice president of Mobile Product Management, says it’s all about expanding the portfolio. The larger, heavier, big-screen Galaxy Z Fold8 Ultra caters to productivity-oriented folks, and the Flip8 satisfies anyone prioritizing portability, but the new Fold8 is all around consuming content.

“One of the things we’re seeing, in the past few years, is an explosive growth in mobile video watching,” Blackard tells WIRED. “Consumers watch 80 percent of their video on mobile devices now, not in front of a TV screen or tablet. The actual shape of the content has changed—you’ve gone from landscape view format for things like Netflix to vertical orientation for a lot of social media.”

The new Fold8 has a 10:16 aspect ratio for the front cover screen, and when opened, reveals a 4:3 inner display, both of which play well with all kinds of videos, whether that’s clips on YouTube or Instagram Reels. Also, the unfolded 7.6-inch inner screen is ideal for reading websites or ebooks when the phone is held in vertical orientation. That makes it more familiar and comfortable for consuming content, which is the lion’s share of what people use smartphones for these days, than the taller, narrower Galaxy Z Fold8 Ultra.