Samsung's Galaxy Z Flip 8 Thinner, Lighter, and Smarter on Cover Screen

Samsung's latest flip phone arrives at a higher price than its predecessor, but the company has made meaningful moves to justify the jump. The Galaxy Z Flip 8 starts at $1,200—a hundred dollars more than last year's Z Flip 7 for the same storage capacity—and it lands with a design that feels genuinely refined and software improvements that address one of the device's most persistent frustration points: actually using it when it's folded.

The phone itself is noticeably lighter and thinner than what came before. At 180 grams, Samsung claims it's now the lightest flip-style foldable on the market. When opened, it measures just 6.1 millimeters thick, a meaningful reduction from the Z Flip 7's 6.8 millimeters and notably slimmer than Motorola's competing Razr Ultra at 7.2 millimeters. These aren't dramatic differences in isolation, but they accumulate into a device that feels more refined in hand—less like a compromise and more like an actual product.

The real story, though, lives in the cover screen. This is the small display on the outside of the phone, and historically it's been something of a second-class citizen in Samsung's design—useful for glancing at notifications, but frustratingly limited when you actually wanted to do something. That's changing. You can now add any app from your phone directly to the cover screen by scrolling up in the app drawer and tapping an "Add apps" option. Previously, this required digging through settings menus. It's a small thing, but it mirrors what Motorola has already figured out with its Razr line, and it makes the cover screen feel less like a novelty and more like a genuine second interface.

Equally important is a new "Recent apps" shortcut button on the cover screen—a feature so basic it's almost embarrassing it took this long to arrive. When you're using the phone folded, you're often juggling multiple tasks: checking maps for directions while playing music and texting. That button means you can now switch between these without flipping the phone open or returning to the lock screen. It's the kind of friction reduction that compounds throughout a day of actual use.

The camera system carries forward several features from Samsung's flagship S26 line, including Super Steady with horizontal lock for smoother video recording. There's also a new feature called My Fan Cam, which uses the company's Galaxy AI to identify and track a specific person in video, creating a crop that follows them throughout the recording as if the camera is locked onto them exclusively. It's the kind of computational photography trick that sounds gimmicky until you actually try it.

Under the hood sits Qualcomm's Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 for Galaxy, the same custom processor found in the S26 phones and Samsung's larger foldables, the Z Fold 8 and Z Fold 8 Ultra. Everything else carries over from the Z Flip 7: the 6.9-inch internal display, the 4.1-inch cover screen, the camera setup (50-megapixel main, 12-megapixel ultrawide, 10-megapixel selfie), and the 4,300-milliamp-hour battery with 25-watt wired and 15-watt wireless charging. The real question mark is whether the newer processor is efficient enough to meaningfully extend battery life—something we'll only know after real-world testing.

The phone launches in four colors: pink, graphite, cream, and mint as an online exclusive. Preorders begin today, with the device hitting shelves on August 7. The hundred-dollar price increase is real, and whether it feels justified will depend largely on how much those cover screen improvements matter to you in daily use.