Samsung's wider Galaxy Z Fold 8 could be most familiar when unfolded

Samsung is thought to be working on a third folding phone to launch alongside the Galaxy Z Fold 8 and the Galaxy Z Flip 8. It's a wide folding design and new details have revealed a little more about the expected device's specifics. There's something familiar about these details, too.

Samsung's new wider fold – which some are calling the Galaxy Z Fold 8 Wide – could bring about a shift in Samsung's folding phone design. It will reportedly move from a taller type of phone, which we have seen from the Z Fold in the past, to something that is shorter and wider.

It's thought that the new phone is designed to compete with the iPhone Fold (or iPhone Ultra, as some call it), also thought to be adopting this format. That's where the familiarity comes in.

Apple does everything by design, so it's no surprise that its first foldable is expected to adopt an internal screen aspect similar to iPad models. The iPhone Fold could open up to be a 4:3 device, which has been used on many iPads in the past.

Why does Apple do this? Because if a decision was right before, the same justification now applies – and the 4:3 aspect is nicer for reading (when rotated into portrait) and because it's less square than existing folding phones, so could be better for watching movies without the sort of letterboxing that current book-type folding phones use.

Returning to the Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 8 Wide and the details from leaker UniverseIce suggest that the display will have a 4:3 aspect on the inner display. That's also similar to the Huawei Pura X Max that has already been teased, which has a 4.24:3 aspect inner display.

There are a couple of other interesting dimensions to leak: the Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 8 Wide is expected to be 4.3mm thick when unfolded and 9.8mm thick when closed. It's also said to be 82.2mm wide (folded), with a height of 123.9. When unfolded it will be 161.4mm wide.

The details suggest that Samsung's phone will be slightly wider and less tall than Huawei's device, but crucially it will be thinner too.

If Samsung is going to move to offer a wider folding phone, we'd expect that to appear in late July 2026 at a Galaxy Unpacked event in London. If Apple is going to launch its own folding phone, that will likely appear alongside the iPhone 18 Pro models in September.