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Hello and welcome to the Vergecast flagship podcastpic ratios. I'm your friend David Pierce and today on the show we're going to talk to the Vis Dom Preston about potentially the most interesting phone so far of 2026. I of course mean the Samsung Galaxy Zfold 8. Bonkers name. Fascinating phone. This is the new wide passport-shaped foldable phone. It came out last week and almost everyone I know or have seen or have watched or have listened to who has even held the thing had a really positive reaction to it. Dom's been testing the phone. He's got a review and I just need to know, have we finally figured out foldables? We're going to get into that. But first, here's everything else happening on The
Verge today. This is 90 seconds on the Verge for Wednesday, July 29th, 2026. We continue to learn new details about OpenAI's recent hack of hugging face, including the fact that OpenAI's agent actually autonomously attacked a bunch of other services on the web just by finding login credentials on the internet for them. This whole thing is a low stakes problem this time with super high stakes potential for next time. And even within Open AI, there seems to be a sense that this hack was a big deal and that maybe it's time to rethink how we approach AI safety in general, even if that means slowing down the pace of AI improvement for a while. Maybe, as some have suggested, this is all just hype
for OpenAI's models. But that looks less likely to me all the time. Meanwhile, the US government announced an import ban on, among other things, humanoid robots. It bans any foreignade machine larger than 4.4 lb with a sensor that perceives the world and is capable of, and I'm quoting, locomotion, obstacle avoidance, navigation, or movement on the ground. By my math, that's basically everything, including a lot of like robot vacuums. As with other bands like this, there will be exceptions. It's all very messy and complicated and dealmaking. But I guess if you're in the market for a robot, maybe go buy it now. And finally, Door Dash is hitting the skies. It launched a new service called
Door Dash Air and said that it won FAA approval to start flying drones in the near future. Obviously, Door Dash is not the first company to invest in drone delivery, but it turns out drone delivery is hard. Like literally, where do you drop things? But it turns out that the logistical inconvenience upside here is apparently just too tantalizing. So, you might actually get your airto ground sweet green one of these days. You can read more about all this at the verge.com. That is 90 seconds on the verge for Wednesday, July 29th. All right, let's talk foldables. The Vist Dominic Preston is here. Hi, Dom. Hi.
You have the foldables. You have the ZFold 8. You have the ZFold 8 Ultra. You've been testing them. I will be honest. I mostly just want to talk about the ZFold 8. Um, I guess this is your first chance to correct me if I'm wrong, but I think the ZFold 8 at this point is vastly more interesting a device for a bunch of reasons, starting with the actual size and shape of the thing than the ZFold 8 Ultra. Do you agree with that? Oh, absolutely. Yeah. I mean, the Z the ZFold 8, I'm going to try and say that Zfold 8 just rolls more naturally off my tongue, I would say.
Uh, the ZFold 8 uh obviously it's this whole new shape. It's squatter. It's wider. It's very different. It's something new from Samsung when they've had basically the same two shapes for six or seven years. Um, and also we kind of think maybe we're going to see another big company make a foldable phone in a shape a little bit like this in a couple months. Yeah, there are some rumors about that you can say. So, for that reason, actually, I want to start with your first experience with the thing. Like I I confess I mostly hate an unboxing video, but I actually want your sense of what it felt like to hold the size and shape of the thing because the overarching reaction on the internet has been it doesn't quite look right in
pictures, but then you hold it and there is something about it that immediately makes you go, "Oh, this is the shape my phone should be." So tell me about your first experience with this kind of wide foldable. Yeah, I mean I kind of had the exact feeling you just described. I'd been really skeptical of all of the, you know, we'd had these rumors for months that Samsung and that maybe eventually Apple were going to adopt this wide form factor. We'd seen Huawei do it. They already released a phone a couple months ago in basically this exact same shape as well. And every time I'd seen these images, I'd seen Huawei's phone.
I'd seen these prototypes and dummies and mock-ups and renders. I'd always thought just looks weird. Like why is that phone so short? Why is it so fat? That can't be comfortable to hold. It's going to be a stretch. It's just clearly going to feel wrong. you just look at it and you know it's going to feel wrong. Mhm. And then I picked it up and like you said you just kind of go, "Oh, that kind of works." And you know, holding it closed, like using it just as the kind of, you know, regular closed, this is my normal smartphone experience. It's definitely a little odd. It took me a little getting used to. But when I say a little, I really mean a minute or two at Samsung's hand on session. This is not like days of testing the thing,
and now it finally feels about right. I played around this thing for an hour ahead of Samsung's launch, and I thought, "Cool. Yeah, that's a very normal size for a phone to be. Actually, it turns out that works. I don't know that I came away like, bam, all phones should be this shape. I want to, you know, throw my current tall phone in the trash and grab this short little fat one. But it does work. Um, I think there are a few like weird exceptions. I've run into a couple apps that render a little oddly and places where maybe the shortness of the display ends up feeling awkward rather than an intuitive, but for the most part, it works. And then obviously you open it up and you get this basically tablet
shape and size screen. It's it's 4x3 on the inside which is pretty much the shape of an iPad. Um so that obviously just quickly feels intuitive in a way that the older Zfolds or Zfolds that you know that kind of squareish taller thing always took a bit getting used to. That's like two phones taped together. This is just a tablet. I so I agree completely about the internal screen and I think even in photos side by side you can see how it makes more sense, right? Because I think the thing with the taller ones for me has been that there are fairly clearly right and wrong ways to hold it. And I think even on the ZFold 8 Ultra and its predecessors, it feels too tall on the outside and then you open it up and it feels just right in
landscape open, but it's too tall again in portrait open. And so it's like, okay, we've made a bunch of sacrifices in order to get this one big wide screen. And I just don't I have I am not a believer in that form factor. This one seems like it works internally in landscape. It works internally in portrait. And the one I have actually been most curious about is does it work closed? Uh and I'm I'm curious to know where you've run into some edges with this because everything on every phone for so many years now has been built for essentially a 169 portrait screen. um what have you noticed whether it's in Android itself or in One UI or in apps that you've been trying where does it not quite feel adapted to this new screen size?
Okay, so the first one I think a lot of people are going to run into and this is absolutely Samsung's fault and I can't believe they didn't fix this and ship this with a slightly tweaked version going in. Uh but the moment you pull down on the uh the quick settings tray in default one UI. I've not changed any of the settings here. it just doesn't actually all fit. You have to scroll down a bit to get all of your quick settings which no longer feel quite so quick. Um, and that's a tiny little thing, right? It's just that there's one row more than can fit on the screen and they could just remove a row. You can obviously go in and edit all this and take a row off, but it's one of
those bits that just shows, yeah, okay, some of the default ways Android and apps are going to run are just going to feel a little bit awkward here. Um, the things that have gone actually wrong, I've seen a couple apps. I use Winnings. I have a Wings watch and I use that for health tracking and sort of one time I opened that and all of the app icons at the top of the screen had just kind of crunched together and were laid over the top of each other as it was trying to render everything. This makes me think of like do you remember when the iPhone first went to the notch and all of a sudden there were things in apps that would just be bumped up into that top part of the screen that weren't supposed to be. And it's like
yes, everybody can fix this. Yes, everybody eventually will. Um, but you can just see how even these tiny little changes to the screen actually can jumble up a lot of things that have been very specifically placed. Exactly. That these small changes just screw things up in a lot of ways. And Google has been working on this problem. It's been really working with developers and pushing the idea that Android should be more reactive, should be able to be more flexible around screen sizes. This has been to make it better on tablets whereas has it has kind of always played second fiddle to iPad OS, but also for foldables obviously. Um, but it's still the case that because there has been such a
default set of foldable shapes and sizes, there are still edge cases as soon as someone goes, "Oh, here's a new size and shape we can do." And it turns out developers just haven't made things reactive in quite the right perfect ways for it to all come together. Um, the other one I've seen kind of going the other way. I've seen a couple places where stuff at the top of the screen crunches because it's short. Um, the other one I've seen is Instagram. This has happened sporadically to me. It's not every time or anything. Um, but sometimes I'll I'll open Instagram on the uh on the closed screen and there'll just be a white bar running down the right hand side of the
screen kind of where the extra width is and clearly the app just runs into that width and doesn't know what to do with it. So it fills it with white. So it's not quite hitting another responsive break point, but it's not designed to fill that space. So it's just like I don't know, we'll just end right here. Yeah, something like that. It just kind of gives up in rendering partway through. I feel like you just described every single one of my complaints with the Android design system right there. Um, so the biggest upside I would think of this slightly wider screen on the outside is potentially that it would be better for typing with two thumbs. I would assume it's worse for typing with one thumb.
Um, and as a person who resolutely holds my phone in my hand with a popsocket and tries to type with one thumb and you have to do that kind of like reachy thing all the way across, even that sucks. And I am assuming it's far worse on the full 8, but I would also think that even just a little tiny bit of extra width would make typing on this thing really nice on the external screen. Am I right or am I wrong? Yeah, the extra width feels really comfortable. I am a default two-handed typer. I hate trying to type one-handed. I think because the experience sucks. I used to always do the kind of swipy keyboard stuff and then I got fed up
of how many errors it kind of brought in and I've just gone back to I will use two thumbs like a Neanderthal and deal with it. And it is a little more comfortable with this. I think, you know, if you look at the size and shape, it's a little bit like a BlackBerry almost. Um, and obviously you're not getting the keyboard, but I think just that extra kind of squatness does just give a bit more space for you to get two hands side by side on the back of the phone and space for the two thumbs to not be sort of tripping over each other as you try and type. That goes a long way. That feels like just little bits of input thing like that to me are the things where it's like, okay, you've made this a functionally more usable phone for me.
Just tiny bits of little increases like that. and we have a little more space. They maybe it can be a little taller. Uh there's just little things on all of these devices that you can play with that I feel like for me at least go a super long way in making the thing feel actually pleasant to use. Yeah, it feels pleasant and it just kind of feels a bit more fun. I mean, I'll say uh I when I go to the gym, I have to scan a barcode for my app to get in. Uh and the other day, the guy at the front desk was like, "Whoa, cool phone. What is that?" And wanted to know about it. And this was before I'd opened it up. cuz I then went to show him and he was like, "Wo, it folds." But he didn't realize it was a foldable. He
didn't know it was a Samsung. He just saw this little squareish form factor and thought, "That's cool. I want one." So, okay, tease that out for me actually cuz I think that is another reaction people have had. And I can't decide if it's just novel or if there is actually something about this shape even absent the unfolding, which I want to get to. But it does seem like there's something about a phone that looks like this that just it just scratches some itch that people have. And I can't again I can't it might just be that it's a different looking phone and people are excited about different looking phones. But is there something about it even closed that feels better in some way to
you? Yeah, there's there's definitely a chunk of this that is pure novelty and that is true for me and I'm trying to sort of rationalize the bit of me that enjoys this because it's different and phones can be boring and the bit of me that's like does this form factor really work for me? Um, one thing that I think does is actually as much as the extra width um gives benefits but also kind of makes it say awkward to stretch your thumb across the phone horizontally. The shortness makes it much easier to stretch my thumb up the phone to the top to swipe down for my notifications. I don't have to do that kind of shuffle of my the grip up the phone to reach the top and swipe down. It's just within
reach all the time. And one of the things I've kind of realized as I've been testing this is if you set aside the extra width. This is just a small phone and everyone wants small phones except that no one buys small phones. But you know this has been the thing. Everyone's complains that we don't have small phones anymore. And there are many literally many dimensions of which a phone could be small but one of them is height. And that's actually the ones that's been the most neglected. We've seen people trying to make phones thinner, but it's been a long time since anyone's made one shorter. And I do think for some people lamenting the death of the small phone. This might scratch that itch because it is just a
shorter display. It's much easier to reach the whole height of the display with one hand or with two hands without needing to adjust them too much. Um, so that's definitely part of what I think makes it more comfortable and more pleasant. You just made me realize why I'm excited about this device. I have always been on the side of flip phones over foldable phones because I think big phone that turns into bigger phone is not that useful. Like iPhone Pro that folds out into an iPad I actually don't think is all that much a utility gain for most things.
Yeah. But I'm a big believer in phone that folds into smaller thing, right? Like watch that unfolds into phone I think is a very cool idea. It changes the way you interact with the device. It lets you use it in different ways for different contexts. And this is actually maybe the closest thing to the perfect sweet spot that we've seen. It is a small phone, but it is still a fully functional phone, even when it's closed. And then when you open it, it is now somewhere between big phone and tablet. So, you're getting it. The downside would be it's it's sort of an awkward tweener that is a little bit bad at everything. But it sounds like in reality this form factor might actually be something much closer
to the best of both worlds that it is small and big in one package but it's not so big or so small that it becomes useless. Does that make sense? This feels like it might have hit that middle space really nicely. Yeah, totally. I've seen I think it was 9 to5 Google ran a piece around Samsung's launch kind of making the case that this feels like this might be the last harrah for the flip series because the flip 8 was a kind of small subtle upgrade. It didn't change a whole lot other than some software stuff for the outside screen mostly ironically to make it bigger. They just made more outside screen now.
Yeah, exactly. But this phone kind of feels like it could serve that space because like you say, it's it's it's the small tablet that folds down to a small phone. And that is that was always kind of the pitch of the Z Flip series for me was like you say, you just want your phone to get smaller in your pocket. And this does that. This is a smaller phone in my pocket than most other phones are. It's that bit bigger than the Flip phones though, so that suddenly it really is a fully usable total phone without compromise while it's closed. And you know, obviously they're getting better at what they can do with the flips. That was a big part of Samsung's focus here. That's been what Motorola's been pushing on its
razors for a long time. But there feels like there's a bit of a recognition of like, oh, if we just make the closed version of this like a little bigger, suddenly it is a real phone. We don't have to work so hard to make it feel like one and we can just move on with our lives and say it's a slightly bigger version of a flip that opens up and gives you a slightly bigger phone on the inside. Yeah. What is your uh experience so far with what makes you actually open the screen? I feel like everyone I talk to who gets a foldable phone ends up surprised at how rarely they open the phone.
Uh, has that been your experience so far, too? I have definitely noticed a shift in how I'm using this compared to how I've used previous foldables. And that is to say, I am opening it more. I kind of hate reviewing foldable phones because I am not the target market for a big foldable. Uh, when I review them, I never open them. I kind of have to make myself. I have to remind myself, oh, open this thing. try and do some multitasking. Open emails and Blue Sky at the same time for some reason. Just find something to do with all that screen space. And I think that's how actually a lot of these users experience these devices, right? Which means all you've actually done is bought a needlessly thick,
needlessly problematic, needlessly expensive version of your phone. And that is it's been one of the things that has talked me out of these devices for a long time is that there aren't a lot of compelling moments where you have to immediately open your giant foldable phone to be the other thing that it is supposed to be. But you're saying this one maybe is a little more naturally flowing between the two. It is. And I think you could probably cast that in both a good way and a bad way. I open it more specifically for reading. If I'm reading a longer article um or anything like that, um I really feel that instinct to open the phone, turn it into a kind of portrait orientation in
the tablet mode and read like that. And it feels like a really natural screen size and aspect ratio. It's kind of like having an e-reader or something. Obviously, it's not e- in, but it's that kind of size and shape. And it feels very natural to read that. I'm I don't really do ebooks that often, but if I did, I bet I would kind of enjoy this again with the caveats that eink is better. Um, I think part of that though is also that squished down smaller outer screen is not great for reading. Like it's good for a lot of things, but actually everything does feel a bit squashed and small and you don't have very much
vertical space and you're scrolling all the times you're trying to read something. So there's sort of good and bad. Like you open it because it's a really nice experience to read on the inside, but you also do it a little bit because it's a slightly worse experience than you're used to trying to read on the outside, right? Um, I have used it a bit for watching stuff. I'm not really a movie watcher on my phone. Um even on a tablet. I do that when I'm flying and that's about it. Um but I have tried that a bit while reviewing this. And again, I can see that will work very well for some people cuz you do get that extra screen space. the kind of the shape of it means you get a little bit more um screen in
landscape open for watching video or playing a game I guess than you would if you use the kind of classic tall uh Zfold and now ultra shape. Um it's not loads more though. It is just kind of a little better than what you got before. That's interesting. And that actually tracks fairly closely to the way Samsung has pitched this thing. even in that launch event, right? They're talking about the outer screen being for sort of quick hits, scrolling and typing and responding to text messages and whatever. And then when you want to really dive into something, you open up the screen and the way they talk about it is very like I am a YouTuber and I watch a short and then I decide
to do at the short so I open up the screen and do at the short and I think all of that is kind of contrived and ridiculous but that's also the experience you want, right? that it does sort of naturally move from one screen to the other where you're like, "Okay, I can do a bunch of stuff on this screen." And this is the problem people have with flip phones is I think you run out of the list of things that are fun to do on the outer screen too quickly. Even on the, you know, on the Razer, you go to respond to a text message and you pull up the keyboard and it takes up the whole screen so that you can't see the message you're replying to. Like now it has fallen apart and I have to open up
the screen. You hit that threshold too quickly on a flip phone. Whereas on this one, it sounds like it has there that threshold still exists. Mhm. But you hit it a little more seamlessly where it's like, okay, yes, there is stuff I can and want to do on the outer screen, but then there is a natural set of things that makes me open the display and that's that's the right list. Whereas like you go to the Ultra and you never hit that thing because you have a fullyfledged gigantic screen phone on the outside. So there's no reason to open it up unless you really want to. I think like this all might be me just,
you know, being nice to a phone that kind of sucks on the outside for some things, but that division of labor actually makes some sense to me in terms of how you're supposed to use this thing. Yeah, I definitely feel like anytime I want to kind of engage with a task or some hashtag content for more than 20 seconds or so, it feels very natural to say, "Oh, I'll treat myself to the big screen. I'll open it up." Um, and yeah, that makes more sense to me than that other shape. That other shape and certainly the way Samsung's now pitching the Ultra this year is really that is the productivity device and the Fold 8 is the content consumption device. Um, and you know, I
could quibble with elements of that, but I think it basically makes sense. I mean, I think there's then that big question of how many people, as you said, really want a foldable for productivity. How many people really do use that multitasking that they're pitching the Ultra for? Um, I think it is better for that. I think, you know, that the extra height you get on the Ultra and Samsung classic form factor here, Samsung basically says when you open up the Ultra, you're getting the equivalent of two 6.5 in smartphones side by side. And that means it really feels natural to pull an app on each one and do stuff with that. I don't use my phone that way. I haven't figured out where why that would ever make sense for me in my
job, but maybe it does for someone out there, and that's great. People say they use it that way. And so the Ultra definitely feels better for that. As soon as you try and do that with this, you're going to feel weirdly compromised because you're going to pull an app in each one and you're like, "Oh, cool. I've just got the same slightly short and sturby apps I had on the outer screen." And that's great for some things. That's great for messaging. That's it's great for a little web browsing, but it's kind of annoying if I'm actually trying to, I don't know, open a spreadsheet or check my stocks or whatever business people do. Um, this phone doesn't feel right for that. So this is also why I think you may have
just explained why Apple would be interested in this form factor, right? Because I always think about the very first iPad demo being Steve Jobs sitting in a comfy chair just casually browsing on his device. And I think that was the original conception of the iPad, right? Is that it is bigger, it's more immersive, but it's very casual. It is not like a capital P productivity device. Uh, and I think in a way Apple has kind of lost its mind about what the iPad is supposed to be. And to the extent that this gives you both the sort of super productive everything in your fingertips phone, but then opens up into something a little calmer and a little more casual and a little a little more roomy.
Feels like it is actually close to the original conception of what is the iPhone and what is the iPad. Support for Vergecast comes from Fetch Pet Insurance. Here's something that might surprise you. Every 6 seconds, a pet owner in the US gets hit with a vet bill over $1,000. Be prepared with Fetch Pet Insurance. Fetch is the most complete coverage for dogs and cats. According to consumer advocate.org, Fetch covers accidents, illnesses, diagnostics, and more. Every vet in the US and Canada is a network. You can build a plan that fits your budget, and once approved, claims are paid back in as little as 2 days. To learn more, go to fetchpet.com/save. That's fetchpet.com/save.
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landed in the right place? I think we've landed in a place that's probably more appealing to more people. Okay. I think as you said, I think the use case for this is a big screen productivity. I want a mini computer that folds up into my pocket thing kind of felt like it made sense and I don't know how many people actually could or would want to use their phone that way. Sure. I think those people exist. I just don't think there are very many of them. No, exactly. I think they're a niche. I mean, I think I was pulling up stats on this. Uh 2025, I think foldables made up 1.6% of all phone sales last year. And
that's counting the flips. That's not just the big ones. That's both types, right? Um and that was about 50% of the big size. So you're talking less than a percentage of all phone sales were book foldables last year. It is a niche. It remains a niche. Has been a niche for seven years and it's grown and it's continuing to grow, but it's not growing fast enough. Um, I think there's a reasonable case for saying part of that is just cost and if they could ever bring cost down that maybe that would flip. But I do think you can look and say maybe there is a cap to how many people want to use a phone this way and how appealing that vision of affordable is. It seems to me pretty intuitive that
if you say to people, hey, would you like your phone to be a little bit smaller and also when you open it up it's really good for Netflix on the train? That's a much stronger sales pitch to me. I think that's the way many more people would want a foldable phone to work. It is much closer to what I would want from affordable. Um I loved you using Huawei's trifold uh the other year because I was just immed like oh cool maybe I would watch TV on my phone if this was my phone. And this gives me the same feeling. It's obviously smaller because of the nature of it. But it's the same thing of opening up into a shape that is basically pretty natural for watching movies and watching TV. And
I'm like cool. Okay. Well, I own a tablet purely as a slightly portable Netflix and HBO Max device that I take on planes and that's it. That's the only time my tablet ever gets used. I think that's probably true for a bunch of people. And I would love to just get rid of that tablet and say my phone does that now. It can be a normal phone all the time and then on the rare occasions where I'm like great, I'm on the go. I'm going to be on this train for at least 45 minutes. I'm going to watch an episode of something. My phone is really good at that. That sounds great. Yeah, I think that is a compelling argument. Uh, I still think it probably doesn't get past the sheer cost of these things.
No, totally. Because that's, you know, at that point you're still saying, well, do you want to spend double the price on your phone, make it like from a one grand phone to a two grand phone just so you can watch Netflix on it twice a year when the tablet you could buy to do that cost you 300 bucks? Right? Everything we know about all of these devices suggests that the foldable iPhone will probably be more expensive than an iPhone and an iPad. And that is that's just going to be a hard case to make. Even though in a vacuum combining them together might make a lot of sense. Um but we'll we'll have ample opportunity to get to that when the iPhone comes out. But uh the last thing I'm curious about on the ZFolds is
the cameras. Um because it seems like for the first time there is a world in which the actual best cameras Samsung makes are finally on its foldables and that it has really the Ultra is obviously better in that respect than the ZFold 8. But in general it seems like the these cameras have caught up in a way that takes away one of the biggest problems that Samsung's foldables have had. Uh how are the cameras so far? What are you finding? Yeah, I haven't been testing the Ultra very much yet. So, that's for me next week. That's what I'm going to switch to once I'm done with the regular Fold 8. On the Fold 8, I've been pleasantly surprised. Um, I mean, the big downside is there's only two cameras
on the back. You don't get a telephoto. I think particularly at a phone that's about 2 grand. I feel like maybe you want a telephoto, and it's kind of reasonable to expect a telephoto when you're dropping that much money on a phone. Wait, total diversion. Telephoto or ultra wide as a second camera? Which do you think is the right answer? Oh, for me, telephoto every time. I would always take the telephoto. I think so, too. Oh, I don't know why every everyone has decided that the next most important camera is the ultrawide, and I think that is dead wrong. I think it's the telephoto every time. I've seen people make the case that the
ultra wide, you know, lets you catch stuff the main camera doesn't, whereas the telephoto just gets you better versions of stuff the main camera can already catch. But no, the telephoto gets you different angles, different depth. You get the bokeh effect more naturally. I would always use it way more. I also find it is so much easier for me most of the time to step three steps backwards than to get closer to something like this one. Well, okay. But anyway, sorry. The ZFold 8 cameras, tell me. Yeah. So, I miss I do really miss having a telephoto. Um I have been pleasantly surprised by the other two cameras though. I had pretty low expectations. Samsung's fold cameras have not historically been great. I'm not a huge fan of Samsung's cameras in
general, but I'm spoiled by reviewing all of the like ultra camera flagships out of China, which are ridiculous. Um but no, the main camera on this phone is decent. I think it is clearly on a par with what you're going to get in Samsung's standard S26 phones in terms of main camera, in terms of the core iPhones in terms of main camera. It is definitely at that base flagship good enough level. I don't think it's at, you know, the pro or ultra flagship level necessarily. I still need to go through and kind of really do the deep pixel peeping into all my photos to form my final opinion on them. But in that just like taking shots as I go and checking it checking them, I've been pretty
happy. And I'm not used to that from reviewing Samsung foldables. I'm used to going that kind of sucks. Yeah. I mean, that's that is a victory in and of itself. The form factor is also supposed to be part of what makes these cameras great. Like there was that line in the launch event where they're like, when you use the ZFold 8, it feels nostalgic. And my immediate reaction was like, no, it won't. Uh but I am like this kind of foldable where you can both you can capture it open, you can capture it closed. Uh, do you like shooting with a foldable this size? I can't say I've noticed a huge difference in terms of the way I use it.
I mean, I've never tried to use the camera with the thing open. Um, and this doesn't have that fun because of the size and the shape. You don't get that flip series thing where you can kind of hold it sideways like a camcorder and that feels kind of weirdly natural and fun. I do agree with that. You don't get that. So, no. To me, I the form factor does not change the camera experience for me. It's still just like it's the camera. It's fine. Okay. Uh and battery life good so far. Battery life has been really good. So, battery life is a big deal with these phones actually because Samsung has switched to silicon carbon cells which is the first time they have adopted any
of them. It's new for the folds rather than being in the S26 series. Uh we've seen lots of the big Chinese manufacturers using silicon carbon for the past few years. It's much more energy dense. You get bigger batteries in smaller spaces which is really useful for foldables. Um, Samsung has been cautious in its adoption here. Uh, I think they are still, you know, wary from all of their Note issues in the past. Reasonably so, I would say. I can't blame them. Uh, and the briefing I had, they were really talking about like stability and reliability and longevity and all this kind of stuff.
Um, silicon, the silicon is a bit more reactive. So you kind of tend to get battery degra degradation more quickly from silicon carbon is the risk which isn't really a risk in terms of explosions but more just a risk that your battery will be bad in 3 years time. Uh so Samsung has said it's it's kind of gone with a lower silicon level and it's being very cautious. So this has a bigger battery but it's not at the way big levels we're seeing coming out of China yet. Um but I am going to bed with about 40% battery left on which is great. Yeah, I will absolutely take that. That's like to me the all I really need out of battery life is I need to be able to get to work the next morning and then charge it there. Like I just I can
forget to charge it overnight and get to work the next morning. That's as long as we can do that, we've we've mostly solved our battery problems for most people. I think the thing I look for in review is like do I get a day comfortably? Because if in the first week of using the phone I can get 24 hours with a buffer and 40% is definitely a buffer then that means I feel much more confident that if you own this thing for 5 years you might still be getting 24 hours out of it once the batteries degraded a bit. Yeah, that's a good one. So it seems like obviously the price is forever the giant wrench here and I feel like you sort of get to the point where it's like we can't I can't reasonably in good conscience tell you
to buy this phone. But it does feel like the if you want a foldable, this is going to be a pretty easy thing to steer people to, right? That like the list of caveats is maybe not zero, but it is vastly closer to zero than it has really ever been with a foldable. Yeah, I do think if I was in a kind of money is no object way, I would direct someone to this out of S Samsung's current line of foldables. unless someone really loves the flip form factor, which I get because I do like you. I've always preferred the flip phones. Um, if you really want that super small flip, um, that's great, but this is not that much bigger when it's closed. It's much more usable. Um, it's obviously a bunch more expensive
than the Flip. Um, but when I compare it to the Ultra, this just makes more sense. I mean, you get the telephoto in the Ultra and it's a little bit thinner. Um, but I still think ultimately if you're someone who cares that much about the cameras, you're probably not buying a foldable right now. If cameras are your focus in your phone, foldables are never quite going to be the thing for you. That's just never going to be where the focus is. So yeah, this is my pick out of the three right now. Having not used all of them extensively, obviously. Um, and cost is the thing, it's not a practical purchase, it remains deeply impractical. um buy a
phone and then buy a cheap tablet. You'll get basically the same experience. Um but if the cost isn't a barrier to you, then yeah, this seems pretty great. I'm excited about it. And I think you we have this we're going to get Pixels, we're going to get iPhones, and it feels like we are at least running at the idea of everybody figuring out what a foldable is supposed to be. And then the question is, can anyone make it for half the current price? And I do not know the answer to that. And I don't think any of them do either. But that to me is going to be a really fun race where not just what is this thing
supposed to be because I it actually feels like we're coalesing on that thing, but how do we make this even remotely affordable for people uh which is a much more fun and hopefully fastmoving game that it seems like we're headed towards. I'm excited about it. Yeah, I'm looking forward to see where we go with that. I really hope it happens. I've been saying that for the whole seven years we've had foldables to be fair and we've seen glimmers of it. Motorola and Samsung have both tried to do like cheaper flip phones, but they've basically mostly done it by being like, "Here's our flip phone from two years ago. We've rebranded it. Um, and now it's a cheap model, which kind of works,
but it's not really what I'm looking for from that." So, I hope we are beginning to hit that point of foldable phone maturity where we can still have the flagship line that trying to be best of the best and stay at two grand, but we get some more movement further down the price t. Yeah. Here's hoping. All right, Tom. Good to see you. Thanks for being here. Thanks. All right, that's it for the show. Thank you to Dom for being here. And thank you as always for watching and listening. If you have thoughts, questions, feedback, other things you want to know about the ZFold 8, other feelings about foldables, if there's anything on earth that could convince you to spend $2,000 on a foldable phone, I want to hear all about
it. Send us an email vergecasterge.com. Call the hotline 866 verge11. We love hearing from you. And as a reminder, if you want to support everything that we're up to here, the best thing you can do is to subscribe to The Verge.com/subscribe gets you all of our podcast adree, including this one. Gets you all of our exclusive newsletters. It gets you Dom's Samsung reviews. It gets you everything else, all the weird Chinese phones that Dom is obsessed with. All that at the verge.com/subscribe. Thanks in advance. The Vergecast is a Verge production and part of the Fox Media Podcast Network. The show is produced by Josh Kahas, Eric Gomez, Brandon Kefir, and Travis Lchuk. We'll see you tomorrow. Rock and roll.
