Galaxy Unpacked in London delivered the Z Fold 8 Ultra at $2,099, a new wide-format Z Fold 8, the Z Flip 8, and two pairs of Android XR smart glasses, a lineup that tests how much premium consumers will absorb before Apple enters the foldable market this fall.
Samsung held Galaxy Unpacked on July 22 in London, and the headline isn't just the hardware. It's the timing. The company pushed prices up $100 across its foldable line, unveiled AR glasses it's been building with Gentle Monster and Warby Parker, and opened preorders the same day, all with Apple's rumored iPhone Ultra still sitting somewhere on the September horizon. Shipping starts August 7. Samsung is deliberately putting distance between itself and a competitor that hasn't shipped a single foldable yet.
The Z Fold 8 Ultra is the showpiece. At 4.1mm when unfolded, Samsung is calling it the thinnest foldable ever made, and the specs back the ambition: a 200MP primary camera at f/1.7, an 8-inch inner display running at 3,000 nits, 16GB RAM, a 5,000mAh battery, and Qualcomm's new Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5. Starting price is $2,099.99 for the 12GB/256GB configuration, scaling to $2,699 for the 16GB/1TB top tier. That's $100 more than the Z Fold 7 cost at launch. According to CNBC's coverage of the event, Samsung confirmed preorders opened immediately after the presentation.
The plain Galaxy Z Fold 8 is something different and, frankly, more interesting. A genuinely new form factor: shorter and wider than any previous Galaxy Z Fold, with a squarer 4:3 main display. Samsung priced it at $1,899.99. The design is a direct answer to where Apple is reportedly headed: MacRumors has tracked rumors of a 7.8-inch inner display for the iPhone Ultra, and Samsung's new wide ratio makes its own foldable feel closer to a tablet without the tall, book-ish proportions that have always made the category feel slightly awkward in a pocket. The Z Flip 8 rounds out the trio at $1,199, also up $100 from its predecessor.
All three phones run on the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5. The AI features: live translation, call transcription, photo editing with Galaxy AI, are now deeply embedded rather than bolted on. Frankly, that's the real shift from a couple of years ago: on-device inference has become table stakes, not a selling point. No one at the Unpacked stage spent much time explaining what AI could do. They assumed you already know.
Galaxy Watch 9 and Watch Ultra 2 also debuted. The Watch Ultra 2's standout spec is its display: 5,000 nits peak brightness, which Samsung says makes it readable in direct sunlight in a way its predecessor wasn't. The battery grew 35% to 800mAh. The Watch 9 comes in 40mm and 44mm sizes and hits 3,000 nits. Both run Qualcomm's Snapdragon Wear Elite chip, which Samsung says should meaningfully improve battery management over the Exynos-based watches of recent years, though that claim will need real-world validation over the coming weeks.
The glasses question
The smart glasses are the wildcard. Samsung partnered with Gentle Monster on a slim black frame with a straight upper rim and softly rounded lower edges, and with Warby Parker on a brown, subtly upswept style, both designed to look like eyewear people would actually buy without the tech pitch. Neither pair looks like hardware. They run Android XR with Gemini handling live translation, navigation, and notification summaries, powered by Qualcomm's Snapdragon AR1 Gen 1 chip. Nine hours of active use per charge. The charging case tops up the battery seven times over to get you there. As GSMArena's hands-on noted, the audio experience is audio-only for now: no camera, no display, no passthrough, which is either an honest first step or a limitation, depending on what you were hoping for. Samsung hasn't confirmed a price for the Gentle Monster or Warby Parker frames yet, with a fall launch planned.
The comparison to Meta's Ray-Ban glasses is unavoidable. Meta has sold millions of Ray-Ban smart glasses and established that the category works when the hardware doesn't look like hardware. Samsung's approach is the same playbook with two advantages: the Android XR platform is more open than Meta's ecosystem, and Qualcomm's new AR1 Gen 1 chip is purpose-built for this form factor rather than adapted from phone silicon. Closing that head start is a real challenge. But the frames look good, and that has historically been the hardest part to get right.
The $100 price bump across the foldable line is the bet that deserves the most scrutiny. That's the number Apple is watching too. Analyst consensus, widely reported ahead of the fall launch, puts the iPhone Ultra around $1,999, which would place it directly below the Z Fold 8 Ultra's entry price. If you're comparing the two on paper, Samsung is leaning into being the premium incumbent: more cameras, thinner body, longer track record, rather than competing on price. If Apple's crease-free display and A20 Pro chip deliver what the rumors describe, Samsung's margin for error narrows considerably. For now, it ships first. August 7 is a long runway before September.
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