The Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 8 Enterprise Edition is the reel deal for scrolling socials – even if you only ever use the cover display
It's revitalized the foldable category with a new shape and aspect ratio, but there are compromises
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Refreshed design
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Long battery life
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Great displays
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Extensive aftercare with Samsung Knox
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Expensive
Does the Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 8 work as a business phone? The South Korean electronics giant clearly believes so because it has released an Enterprise Edition of its revitalized foldable smartphone.
To be clear, there's nothing new on the device, which launched midway through the summer. There isn't a specific capability or feature that's been added for enterprise workloads. It's more about the way you can purchase it and what it has to offer thereafter.
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You get a Knox Suite enterprise plan, which is a single platform to manage your devices, from deployment through to individual device security. You get a guarantee of seven years of updates. And you also get Samsung's Quickstart service, which handles the setup of all your devices, including the Knox Suite.
It's also very expensive, regardless of whether you buy it as a consumer or a business. It's £1,709 in the UK, and $1,900 in the US – though that's the consumer option, as the Enterprise Editions are not available across the pond.
Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 8: Design
At launch, the audience let out an audible gasp when the Z Fold 8 was first revealed, because it isn't your standard foldable. It isn't long and tall; it's short and square, almost like a mini passport when folded. And it's thinner than ever. Unfolded, it's like a sheet at just 4.5mm. And oh so light at just 201g. This makes it both pretty and delicate.
And that slight change in form factor gives you what you really need from a foldable display: an optimal aspect ratio for reels and social content. By default, the Z Fold 8 is set to 4:3 – or 3:4 for portrait – and that is even the case when it's folded. Which, as I have quickly learned from my time with the device, is perfect for reels and scrolling socials. The 120Hz refresh rate also helps here.
That being said, however, one thing that became quite apparent early on is that I didn't really like to open the screen up. Part of that was the fear that someone might call me and force me to answer with a tablet on the side of my face, which looks ridiculous. But the main reason is that I simply don't need the bigger screen when I am out and about.
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In fact, I really like the mini display. I found its passport-shaped form very handy; I took my photos with it, I recorded video with it, and I generally accessed all my apps without opening it fully and had no issues. Essentially, this is the form factor for me: a shorter, squarer device.
Another issue, maybe too specific to me, is finding the orientation when you pull it out of your pocket. Often when I did use the main display, I would either have it upside down, so the cameras were at the bottom, or I would lose the position of the volume controls – I had a similar issue with the Motorola Razr – which is probably the biggest reason I wouldn't have a folding phone.
Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 8: Displays
Both the main and external displays on the Z Fold 8 are Dynamic AMOLED's with a 1972 x 1248 resolution, and they both also have a 120Hz refresh rate. The smaller display is 5.5in while the main one is 7.6in.
For our colorimeter tests, we focused on the main display, with the 'Standard' settings. Its brightness peaked at 374.55cd/m2 and it scored 98.4% for sRGB color coverage and 101.6% for volume. The scores are comparable to the S26 Ultra, or the Honor Magic V6 if you want a foldable comparison.
The only negative was a low Adobe score (69.7%), which pretty much rules out editing photos to a professional level. The more mobile editing software we have, the more we really need mobile devices with higher scores here.
As mentioned, I have a preference for the outer display, particularly when out and about. I attended Logi Work 2026 earlier in the week, and the majority of my images and work messaging were done with the 5.5in display. Perhaps more seasoned foldable users (someone who has it as a daily driver) would use the main display more, but for me, the short display is king.
The only other issue, certainly from a business perspective, is the lack of the Privacy Display on either screen. For now, it appears to be just for the S26 Ultra.
Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 8: Specs and Performance
Inside the Z Fold 8 is a 3nm developed Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 processor, which is paired with 12GB of RAM and 265GB of storage. The 8 Elite Gen 5 is a snappy chip, performing much better than its predecessor in our tests, making our experience of the Fold 8 very smooth.
In Geekbench, it notched 3,117 for single-core workloads and 10,716 for multi-threaded. These were far better than the previous Fold, though both were slightly under the Honor Magic V6, which we tested at the start of the year.
Samsung is very pushy when it comes to on-device AI, and has made lots of tools available, particularly for camera and video enhancement. But there's also been more use of contextual AI, with the 'Now Nudge' feature. It took me a while to get going with it, you need to turn it on in the AI settings and agree to let it use your data. And you also need the right apps and use cases for it, but essentially it reads your screen and offers tips and shortcuts. So for example, if a date or location is mentioned in an email, it will pop up on the screen with the calendar info. It's quite good at showing conflicting meeting times, in my experience.
You might see the 4,800mAh battery as a compromise, considering the Ultra model has a 500mAh battery, but it doesn't actually equate to better battery performance. The Fold 8 lasted just under 25 hours in our looped video test, which is very impressive for a foldable phone.
Even more impressive, running the same test on the cover display produced even better results – over 30 hours. By the end of this review, I may have a solid argument for using the cover display entirely.
Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 8: Cameras
You get four cameras on the Z Fold 8: two 50MP lenses on the rear – these are the main cameras – and two 10MP cameras housed in the two displays. Essentially, it's two selfie and two rear cameras. The rear cameras are wide and ultrawide, and the cover camera is also ultrawide. However, none of them are telephoto lenses, but that's arguably why it's so thin and light.
I captured a fair amount of decent images on the main cameras. The lackluster zoom made it hard to get enough detail from subjects at a distance, such as someone on stage. And I also noticed lots of visual noise around the edges. But it captures color that's true to life, and the two selfie cams produce nice warm images.
Due to the shape, you can get a little lost in aspect ratios; I certainly did, going by how many of my images ended up being square. But the camera interface does a great job of simplifying all of its options and controls.
One issue I have with the cameras is actually the folding aspect: unlike previous models, or the Z Fold 8 Ultra, I couldn't get the display to stay fixed in a folded position. So you can't really capture yourself with the timer or a video hands-free. I managed it a few times, but it wasn't very long before the device snapped open.
Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 8: Is it worth it?
As a foldable device, the Galaxy Z Fold 8 is truly game-changing. And that's just the shape of it. It's the 'reel deal', if you excuse the terrible pun. Both displays are buttery smooth, colorful, and well optimized for battery usage.
However, there are a few nagging issues, such as the lack of a telephoto lens, and there isn't really enough on the device to make it a proper business phone. The Enterprise Edition extras at purchase are great value, but we would have liked more from its on-device capabilities, like Now Nudge. That being said, it's the most interesting foldable device there has ever been.
Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 8 specifications
CPU |
Qualcomm SM8850-1-AD Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 (3nm) |
Row 0 - Cell 2 |
RAM |
12GB |
Row 1 - Cell 2 |
Storage |
265GB |
Row 2 - Cell 2 |
Displays |
External display: 5.5in Dynamic AMOLED 2X, 1972 x 1248 (WUXGA+). Internal display: 7.6in Dynamic AMOLED 2X, 1972 x 1248 (WUXGA+), 120Hz |
Row 3 - Cell 2 |
Cameras |
Rear: 50PM, 50MP, Front: 10MP, Cover: 10 MP |
Row 4 - Cell 2 |
Connectivity |
Wi-Fi 802.11a, Bluetooth 6.0 |
Row 5 - Cell 2 |
Dimensions |
123.9 x 161.4 x 4.5mm |
Row 6 - Cell 2 |
Weight |
201g |
Row 7 - Cell 2 |
Operating system |
Android 17 with Samsung's One UI 9 |
Row 8 - Cell 2 |
Battery |
4800mAh |
Row 9 - Cell 2 |
Bobby Hellard is ITPro's Reviews Editor and has worked on CloudPro and ChannelPro since 2018. In his time at ITPro, Bobby has covered stories for all the major technology companies, such as Apple, Microsoft, Amazon and Facebook, and regularly attends industry-leading events such as AWS Re:Invent and Google Cloud Next.
Bobby mainly covers hardware reviews, but you will also recognize him as the face of many of our video reviews of laptops and smartphones.
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