Samsung just announced three new foldable phones, the most expensive of which will run you $2,100, and the company's senior vice president is already doing the awkward verbal shuffle that executives do when they're terrified of a competitor but can't say so out loud. Apple's first foldable iPhone is expected to drop in September. Seven years of Samsung's head start, and it all comes down to this fall.
Three Phones, One Very Thin Excuse to Charge More
Samsung announced three new devices Wednesday: the Galaxy Z Fold 8, the Galaxy Z Fold 8 Ultra, and the Galaxy Z Flip 8. As NBC News chief tech analyst Joanna Stern reports, the Fold 8 starts at $1,900, the Ultra at $2,100, and the Flip at $1,200. They all ship August 7.
The actual differentiator here is shape. The new Fold 8 opens like a children's book, wide and horizontal, giving you a 4:3 aspect ratio display that Samsung apparently designed for watching video. The Fold 8 Ultra keeps the older, taller pamphlet-style design for people who use their phone for actual work. The Flip 8 folds vertically, because some people just want to feel like they're in an early 2000s music video.
The price increases on the Ultra and Flip are $100 more than their predecessors. Samsung's Drew Blackard, the company's senior vice president of mobile product management, told NBC News that rising RAM and storage costs are a 'big driver' of those increases. So yes, the tariff-adjacent RAM pricing chaos that has been rattling the consumer electronics market all year is now officially your problem too, wrapped in a sleek folding package.
The Wide Fold Is the Interesting One, and Apple Might Already Be Copying It
Look, the Fold 8 Ultra is fine. Bigger battery, same form factor, same productivity pitch. But the standard Fold 8 is the one that actually matters right now, because it represents a genuine design shift toward a wider, more tablet-like screen experience.
Here's why that's significant: Apple's first foldable iPhone is rumored to have a nearly identical form factor. According to NBC News, Stern specifically flagged this overlap, and when she asked Blackard whether Apple's reported design influenced Samsung's redesign, he pivoted to talking about how media consumption habits have changed since 2019. Which is a perfectly reasonable answer that also sidesteps the question completely.
Samsung spent seven years iterating on the tall, narrow foldable design, and now, right as Apple is about to walk into the room, they've introduced a wide format that looks a lot like what Apple is reportedly building. You can call that great minds thinking alike. You can also call it competitive panic dressed up in press release language. Both things can be true.
Samsung's Seven-Year Head Start Is Real, and It Might Not Be Enough
To Samsung's credit, seven years is not nothing. The company has genuinely improved foldable durability, hinge design, and software integration in ways that weren't possible when the first Fold launched in 2019. Blackard told NBC News that Samsung is 'excited to be offering three form factors' while Apple will 'probably have one.'
That's a fair point. Samsung has range. But Apple has something Samsung has never quite cracked: the ability to make people feel like they were wrong to want something until Apple tells them they can have it. Apple didn't invent the smartphone, the tablet, or the smartwatch. They just showed up later and made everyone forget the other options existed.
As Stern noted in her NBC News piece, it's probably only a matter of time before Apple gives us the iPhone Fold, Fold Pro, and Fold Pro Max anyway. So enjoy Samsung's three-option advantage while it lasts.
The RAM Problem Is Real and Nobody Wants to Say It Plainly
Buried in the product announcement is something worth understanding. Blackard confirmed to NBC News that rising RAM and storage costs were a major factor in the price increases, calling it 'the big challenge right now.' He also suggested that U.S. buyers might not feel the full pain because carriers will offer deals that effectively hide the cost in installment plans and trade-in credits.
Let's be clear about what that means. The price is going up. The carrier deals are structured to make you feel like it isn't. This is not a Samsung-specific sin. It is the universal language of consumer electronics retail. But it's worth naming plainly, especially when the devices in question already start at four figures.
The broader RAM pricing crisis, which NBC News has been tracking as 'RAM-ageddon,' is squeezing the entire consumer electronics market. Foldables, which already use more RAM and storage than standard phones to power their expanded displays, are getting hit harder than most. The $2,100 Fold 8 Ultra is what happens when premium hardware meets a supply chain under pressure.
The Dingo Take
Here's the actual story underneath the product specs. Samsung has spent seven years building a market that most consumers still consider too expensive, too fragile, and too complicated for everyday use. Foldables have devoted fans and genuine utility, but they have never gone mainstream. Apple is about to attempt to do in one product cycle what Samsung has spent nearly a decade trying to do incrementally. History suggests Apple is going to pull it off.
That doesn't make Samsung's phones bad. The Fold 8's wider display is a genuinely smart design move, and having three distinct form factors in the market at once gives consumers real choices. What it does mean is that the next twelve months are going to define whether foldables become a real product category or remain a high-end curiosity, and Samsung knows it. The executive talking points Blackard gave NBC News were careful, controlled, and ever so slightly defensive in the way that only a market leader who just heard footsteps can manage.
Also, you are going to spend at least $1,200 on a phone that folds, and there is a meaningful chance you will drop it within the first six months. That's not editorial opinion. That's just the foldable phone experience. Good luck out there.
