5 Things You Need To Know Before Buying The Samsung Galaxy Z Flip 8

As part of recent product announcements from Samsung at Galaxy Unpacked in July 2026, Samsung unveiled the Galaxy Z Flip 8 foldable phone. This is the lightest (6.35 ounces) and thinnest (0.24 inches) Galaxy Z Flip model phone Samsung has created. Samsung began accepting pre-orders for the phone immediately after the announcement at its $1,199.99 starting MSRP, with the device becoming available August 7. Leading up to the official release date, multiple reviewers and other people had already had a chance to hold and test the Z Flip 8, and they have opinions.

If you're interested in potentially upgrading from the Samsung Galaxy Z Flip 7, which was released in July 2025, or an even older phone and want to purchase the Flip 8 right away, there are things you should understand before making the purchase. Some of the reviewers' opinions highlight negative aspects of the Galaxy Z Flip 8's design, including that it is only a minor upgrade to its Flip 7 predecessor. As a positive change, Samsung upgraded the cover display in the new phone, but it still may lag behind other brands of foldable phones. It appears the manufacturer also chose not to upgrade the cameras in the new device. Samsung did make the Flip 8 thinner and lighter while still upgrading the chipset, allowing for faster performance. Ultimately, some reviewers don't believe the Galaxy Z Flip 8's design is impressive enough to silence the rumors that Samsung may be mulling the discontinuation of this model.

While some reviewers believed the Samsung Galaxy Z Flip 7 hit the sweet spot last year, many reviews of the Flip 8 phone are less enthusiastic. The Flip 8 doesn't offer significant upgrades over what its predecessor offered, other than a slightly smaller design and a new chipset. One reviewer said they weren't sure whether they were holding a Galaxy Z Flip 7 or 8 when initially testing the new model. Another reviewer called the new model "boring." Even with only minor upgrades, the starting price for Samsung's new model is $100 higher than the initial offer price for the Flip 7 last year.

As one positive upgrade, it appears Samsung may be trying to make the Galaxy Z Flip 8 phone fit better in a pocket with some of its changes, including the thinner design and the enhancement of its beveled edges. Some new colors are available, too. The predecessor was available in coral red, jet black, blue shadow, and mint, while the new model offers pink, graphite, cream, and mint.

When your Samsung Galaxy Z Flip 8 phone is folded and locked, you can use the cover screen to check messages and notifications without having to fully open the phone. The cover screen is a more useful feature with the new model because of upgrades Samsung made to it.

You can personalize the Flip 8's cover screen, ensuring it displays items that are important to you. You can now add your favorite apps to the cover screen, giving you faster access to them than unlocking and opening the foldable phone. You'll also now see a button on the cover screen that provides access to the apps you've used most recently, which can be a time-saver compared to unfolding the phone.

The cover screen continues to measure 4.1 inches, just as it did with the Galaxy Z Flip 7, which will disappoint some people. Additionally, one reviewer said that the upgrades to the Flip 8's cover screen still lag well behind what's found with the Motorola Razr's design.

As numerous early reviewers have noted, it appears that Samsung chose not to upgrade the camera hardware with the Galaxy Z Flip 8 from what was available with its predecessor. It still has two rear cameras with the same core specs: a wide-angle shooter offering 50 MP resolution and optical image stabilization (OIS), and another at 12 MP resolution with ultra-wide capabilities. The front camera (for selfies) has 10 MP of resolution.

The Flip 8 does offer some improvements to the camera software. One upgrade is called MyFan, which allows you to select one person for the camera software to track while you're shooting video. Another key upgrade is the ProVisual Engine that's been added to the main 50 MP camera. It improves the quality of images the camera produces by ensuring realistic flesh tones and enhanced details in portraits and selfies. When using the front display screen, the Flip 8 includes an enhanced mirror mode. When you need to see your face in more detail before recording a video or photo, the mirror mode helps.

Perhaps the biggest upgrade found with the Samsung Galaxy Z Flip 8 phone compared to the Flip 7 is in its chipset. With the Flip 7, Samsung chose to use its own Exynos 2500 chipset. With the Flip 8, though, Samsung chose to upgrade to the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 chipset. 

Early reports said the Flip 8 would use the cheaper Exynos 2600 chipset. However, Samsung ultimately chose to provide the more powerful Snapdragon chipset, which is also used in the Galaxy Z Fold 8 phone, which is also a new product that's available for pre-order.

With its more powerful CPU, the Snapdragon chipset should help users manage multiple tasks or processor-intensive tasks like editing video. The Exynos chipsets reportedly generate more heat than options from other manufacturers, meaning Samsung may have chosen to make the switch because of the extremely thin design in the Flip 8. A thin design complicates heat dissipation. Poor heat dissipation can lead to reduced longevity for the phone and compromised performance.

Whether the Galaxy Z Flip 8 will represent the best Samsung phone for the way you want to use it will depend on your personal preferences. However, before you fall in love with the Flip's small and foldable phone design, you should be aware that Flip 8 could be the last one with this specific design. Some reviewers believe if Samsung was planning to continue making Flip models well into the future, it would've invested more in upgrades with this version and attempted to set the line apart — something similar to what the company did with the Z Flip's bigger sibling this year when it added the new Z Fold Ultra variant.

Going forward, it's possible that Samsung chooses to focus its design attention for foldable phones on the larger and pricier Galaxy Z Fold models. One reviewer said the combined announcement of the two new Fold models and the Flip 8 made it feel like Samsung wanted to shift attention onto the Fold models. Samsung might also want to focus on the Fold design going forward to give it a better chance of competing with Apple's expected upcoming entry into the foldable phone arena. Of course, all of this is entirely speculative at this point, but it's something you may want to know before going all-in on the Galaxy Z Flip 8.