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We ran our two-day battery test of Samsung's new foldable phones, testing everything from calls and messages to web browsing and gaming, effectively condensing weeks of testing into one video to answer the question: have Samsung's foldable phones finally caught up with the rest in terms of battery life? Because on paper, everything looks quite promising. The Fold 8 Ultra now has a 5,000mAh battery, up from the 4,400 they've stubbornly stuck with for years. The brand new Fold 8 is not far behind it with a figure of 4800 mAh, and this despite its relatively compact dimensions. And while the Flip 8 didn't actually get a battery upgrade, at least in countries like the US and Canada (and like the model we have here), it did switch from a
Samsung Exynos processor to a Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5, which, in theory, could make it more efficient. But, you know, do these changes bring foldable phones closer to the Galaxy S26 Ultra-well, there's only one way to find out. This episode is sponsored by WhisperFlow Notetaker, which uses the same accurate voice recognition technology as WhisperFlow Dictation, but for your meetings. It works very seamlessly with any meeting platform like Google Meet: when you start a meeting, it automatically detects it and offers to launch Notetaker, so you don't have to do it manually.
Once you do this, a window will appear with a live transcription of everything that was said. What I like about it is not only that it has a transcript, but also that if you get distracted, which sometimes happens, you can ask him a question to quickly catch up without having to repeat what was said. After the meeting, Notetaker improves the transcription with a more powerful model and even automatically adds speaker tags. So you will know exactly who said what. In the example of our meeting, you can see how he correctly labeled each of us and easily recognized technical terms like BIOS, Fedora, Ubuntu, and RAM. This is important because any output you get from transcription, whether through Notetaker's own resume or through connecting to a large language
model, will only be as good as the quality of the input you provide, and with Whisper it's remarkably clear. You can try Whisper Flow Notepad for free on Mac, and if you use my promo code PhoneBuff in your subscription settings on your computer, you'll also get 1 month of Whisper Pro for free. Just follow the first link below. Okay, let's start with a call test, where all four devices are on a one- hour call, and after that hour they all show good results. The Fold 8, 8 Ultra, and S26 Ultra only lost two percent of their battery, while the Flip 8 lost a little more, three percent. Of course, during that call test, the screens were off most of the time, but here, in messengers, they are on all the time. And this is where I expect the Fold 8 and Fold 8
Ultra to have an advantage over the other two, as we're using their external displays, which not only have lower resolutions, at least compared to the S26 Ultra, but also smaller screen sizes. But after an hour, strangely enough, it didn't seem to matter: the Fold was on par with the S26 Ultra, despite having almost the same battery size, which, frankly, doesn't give me any confidence when we move on to email now that we're opening these displays. Well, now the situation is reversed: the Fold 8's internal display is significantly larger-27 square inches, while the Fold 8 Ultra's is even larger-almost 32 square inches.
Plus, at least on the Fold 8 Ultra, it also needs to process a million more pixels. However, after an hour of working with mail, the result was not so bad: both Folds were discharged only one percent more compared to the S26 Ultra. And Flip 8, surprisingly, shows the best result among all. Of course, this could simply be a measurement error when estimating battery charge. But at the same time, I think the Flip's smaller screen and its lower resolution at least partially compensate for the smaller battery capacity. However, in the browser test, this may not be enough, as this time we are putting a much greater strain on the chipsets by randomly browsing the same set of websites. And after an hour, yes, the Flip 8 was one of the worst performers,
losing 9 percent, effectively matching the Fold 8 Ultra, despite that phone obviously having a much larger display. On Instagram, we don't do anything too cumbersome, because we just scroll through our news feed like you would in normal life. After an hour of such use, the S26 Ultra shows the best result again with a drop of 5 points. The Flip 8 shows the second result with a drop of only 6 points, while both Folds lose a little more-7 points each. So, before the 16 -hour standby time, the results are much closer than I expected, with only the S26 Ultra really standing out from the rest. After running them with their screens off for 16 hours straight, it once again shows the best result along with the Flip 8-they lost only six points each,
while the Fold 8 and 8 Ultra lost seven and eight points, respectively. But let's see how phones will fare on YouTube. It is worth noting that we not only calibrate the screens to 200 nits of brightness, but also equalize the speaker volume to the same decibel level. After an hour of watching Fun Buff, Fold, as expected, shows the worst result, but, to be honest, it's not that bad-a drop of nine points. The Flip 8 loses eight points, while the S26 Ultra continues its streak and shows the best result with a drop of seven points. Now, in Alto's Adventure, I'm curious to see how the Fold 8 compares to the Fold 8 Ultra, because unlike the YouTube test, the 8 Ultra won't benefit from black bars here, as we're using the entire display, burdening the GPU with
processing additional pixels. So theoretically, the Fold 8 Ultra should perform a little worse. And in practice we see exactly this. The standard Fold 8 now has a four- point advantage over the 8 Ultra. As for the S26 Ultra, it now has a double-digit advantage over them. So, we're definitely starting to see some patterns. Unless something drastic changes, it looks like the S26 Ultra will definitely give you the best battery life. The Flip 8 holds up surprisingly well, falling behind the S26 Ultra by just four points, while the standard Fold 8 confidently outstrips the more expensive Fold 8 Ultra. And this despite a slightly smaller battery. Of course, this is largely due to the fact that its screens are also smaller. Because when we put
the phones back together, like here in Maps, both devices work identically. So, to me, it seems like the 200 mAh larger battery in the 8 Ultra more than makes up for its larger external display, but when you unfold the devices, that's where it loses ground a bit. And another hour on Spotify almost completely confirms this. But here at Snapchat, things can change a bit because we stress the phones harder than in any other test. We use cameras and microphones, we use speakers and even a Wi-Fi chip while we upload each of these clips to Snap's servers. Where after an hour of this grueling task, oh my god, the Flip 8 actually takes the biggest hit with a 17-point drop. The Fold 8 Ultra follows suit with a 16- point drop, and then, somewhat
unexpectedly, the S26 Ultra actually loses out, dropping 15 points compared to just 14 points for the standard Fold 8; which means as we move into the final stage of the app cycle, the standard Fold 8 is not second to the S26 Ultra. Now the Flip 8 is hot on its heels, just one point behind, while the Fold 8 Ultra has clearly fallen behind the pack. And unfortunately, after 54 minutes of app cycling, it's also the first to run out, at which point the standard Fold 8 still has 7%, as does the Flip 8, while the S26 Ultra is far ahead with 17%. As for which phone came in second place, well, it's actually a tie between the Fold 8 and the Flip 8, where technically the Flip 8 ran out of battery first after 1 hour and 22 minutes of app cycling, while the Fold 8
lasted just 2 minutes longer. But honestly, they're so close that I'd just call it a draw for both. But the S26 Ultra, on the other hand, well, it's clearly on another level, easily outlasting all other Samsung flagships, running for 2 hours and 22 minutes in an app loop before finally shutting down. So, if battery life is your main concern, the S26 Ultra will still be the one to provide the best performance. But the Flip 8 is actually not as bad as you might think looking at that 4,300mAh battery. Although the 5000mAh battery in the Fold 8 Ultra also doesn't translate into better battery life than the smaller 4800mAh battery in the Fold 8. But, anyway, that's all from me in this video.
Thanks for watching, and as always, see you in the next episode.
