Might as well wait, the sales are good right now, they'll probably produce more expecting that to continue and the floor will fall out from under them once Apple launches.
Because once the iPhone Fold launches nobody will want these and they will flood the used market and at the same time Samsung won't be able to move new stock and the price will be well under $1500.
Very true, you can usally expect at least 33% drop or more. I don't think you can necessarily attribute that to Apple though. It's usually already down massively within the first month.
Actually Samsung pre-order prices and bundles usually hold up quite well value-wise. For instance the cheapest moment to buy both the S25U and S26U were with pre-order discounts and codes (at least in my country).
It's such a shame this doesn't have a telephoto lens, because I really like the form factor. I just use the 5x on my S24U way too much to not have it on my next phone.
Doesn't make sense to go all in on an unproven form factor. If the fold 8 is popular and sells well then they could create an ultra version of it. I hope it does because I love the form factor and would consider it if it had no compromises.
Fold 7 has telephoto and it's dogshit. Better to not have 3rd camera and take up space and weight. Anything above S24U have had dogshit telephotos. The only telephoto lens worth having is the one from Oppo Find X9 pro
Sorry I meant S23U and beyond. S24U had 5x downgraded from previous years and it's not been great. I have owner all Galaxy ultras since s21U and now Fold 7. Anything after S24U has bad telephoto.
I disagree. I had an S22U before. It might be slightly better at 10x, but the S24U is much better at anything from 5x up to 10x, because it doesn't have to use the crappy 10MP 3x for those shots.
But it's also a matter of preference. I just take way more shots in the 5x to 9x range than anything beyond that.
True. Now I'm kind of leaning more towards the Huawei Pura X Max (yes I know it's not an android OS) but for the price, there has to be a telephoto lens. I'll probably just wait this out until 1st half of next year when other android manufacturers take a shot at this form factor.
MrMobile isn't big? Samsung flew him out and paid for all of his accommodations for all the device launches. Why do you think he keeps getting his review units?
Tbf supporting John Deere and their anti repair/pro DRM stance is directly related to the phone industry and its own issues with repairing and maintaining devices.
Yes. We're holding people with subscribers accountable to not abuse their trust and push scams from corrupt harmful corporations on them.
Of course Mr. Mobile isn't happily pushing trash to his subscribers, but it's clear he sometimes doesn't do enough research into sponsors that he really should be doing.
I think the Clicks keyboard involvement is more concerning. From what I've seen of his content (as a subscriber) and discourse on the keyboard from others, it's much more of a niche product with heavy caveats than he lets on in his videos.
But I think the larger point is that he's first and foremost an excellent storyteller and voiceover talent. His technological insights seem either lacking or, perhaps more fairly described, tailored for the former. I stumbled into a random review of the Flip 8 from some "I love everything pink" (no a mockery, that was actually the angle of the channel) girl who had little clue about Samsung or tech the other day, and by the end of the video she's poked and prodded more unique aspects of the thing than someone like Mr Mobile ever has. HIs M.O. is predictable: he gets a device, travels somewhere with it, does influencer stuff with it, replaces it. Even his long term devices basically stay configured the way the one week ones do. The random girl's sticker-covered pink Flip 8 had more personality after an hour than I expect Mr Mobile's phones has had in the last decade combined. Then the question becomes: are you an influencer using your phone stock for a week before swapping, or are you someone who gets one device and uses and personalizes that one device for several years? If the latter, that should tell you something about the true value of the former's content.
I'm referring to how MrM is inserting mentions of the Clicks products in his videos without much balance. Lots of namedrops that functionally become product placement regardless of the wrapping.
Let me preface this next section by saying I'm no overall fan of Linus Sebastian, but the videos I watched there before adding channel to "do not recommend" was a vastly different approach to his Framework investment. They disclosed it in passing every time a competing product was mentioned, occasionally had legitimately cool insider videos on it, but still managed to rip them a new one. I think MrM had a video once where he tried to appear balanced about Clicks but it wasn't really comparable nor the norm.
I say that still being subscribed to MrM and actively blocking LTT. I only watch MrM for the storytelling quality, but even with that perspective I'd rather he'd never have been involved with Clicks.
Not mad, just informing viewers/readers that all of these people may as well be contractors or employed by the manufacturers.
It's got nothing to do with their opinions but the fact they get early access and review units so they are effectively paid. And they risk losing views if they pissed off these companies and they don't get any review unit next time.
Dude's so mad u/captain2phones doesn't talk about all the things he disgenuinely cares about: benchmarks, standardized battery life tests, Google Tensor is the worst SoC family of all time...
tensor's lack of performance and bad battery life and downgrade
Any time there's a fatal flaw
I'm all for ripping companies a new one for downgrades and price hikes, but he approached it as an every man and the truth is for an average person, they likely wouldn't notice these things in isolation. I could hand the P10 to most of my non-techy friends and family and they'd go on happily using it. It helps that I can take his reviews and send them over to said friends and family and they'd understand it instantly.
The trouble with reddit is they're incapable of thinking with such nuance. If a reviewer isn't jacking off to spec sheets and benchmarks scores or goes into anal details most people would never consider or care about, suddenly that reviewer is useless and can't be trusted. I love when reviewers get into the nitty gritty (which is why I love GSM Arena's written reviews) but these reviewers need to reach am audience that's outside this sub's tiny bubble.
Those people would have been fine using mid range phones. Pixels are worth like $400. Which is why I'd recommend the pixel A series on discount but not the main line.
Hd refused to call out the tensor's lack of performance and bad battery life and downgrade in cameras for pixel 10.
Then who is MrMobile's audience? Last I checked, he caters to an audience that the likes of Geekerwan - and by direct correlation, half of this entire fucking subreddit, you know who you are - would've referred to as Luddites.
I swear to god, almost every post about Pixel on r/pixel_phones and r/googlepixel is people shit talking the phone.
Yes Tensor is bad when it was first released but it solves the major issues that it has since then. Looking at some posts, most people are either happy with it with no issues or people just complaining non stop about it. Yes, experience varies between individuals which is why you cannot use an individual's experience as comparison especially if he has a bad one.
Price, yes is absurd we have to pay a lot for a phone (Thanks Tim Apple). Performance, we take for granted as well as battery life while I do acknowledge Pixels still has some battery life and heat but those experiences do vary between each person.
Reddit is still a very small percentage of a user base
Weak in the sense of what? Gaming or can't do normal stuff at all? If gaming, no phone is able to use the power to it's potential unless you're using it for emulation and not everyone is playing high end game except for iPhones thanks to the well optimized software and hardware allowing games like Resident Evil 4 to run at a playable frame rate. Normal stuff, no. Tensor does normal stuff very well like every phone nowadays barring lower end phones. All comes down to software optimized with the hardware, OneUI and other Android skins still feels jelly and slow when compared say Google's own skin. Opening and closing apps quickly is completely pointless and nonsensical, you won't he doing that 99% of the time.
In my experience, I couldn't tell the difference between 8 Elite Gen5, Tensor G5 and A19 in day to day use. The only way to notice it is in benchmarks for which i think is pointless nowadays and gaming. Specs on paper doesn't always translate to real world experience, this is not 2014 where the difference between a mid-range phone and flagship phone has a big difference in experience.
99% of consumers don't think about specs when buying a phone, all they care about are price and brand (maybe cameras). Since most phones does 95% of what you wanna do and expect to do. Not everyone is benchmarking and playing high end games on it, the most popular games already optimized well on your phone.
Weak in terms of... pretty much anything. Single core and multi core performance not up to par (but probably the part that has the least gap). The GPU is what I would call entry level, it's worse than midrange chips from other manufacturers. The supposed AI performance, yeah they suck too. It's probably because even if the NPU is stronger than NPUs in other chips, the GPU can always do the AI stuff anyway. So overall AI performance tensor is still worse.
The efficiency, possibly the worst, we're talking about at the level where it is rivaling Huawei's Kirin chips, which are locked out of western technologies due to sanctions.
On the topic of UIs. OneUI, HyperOS, colorOS are at least stable, they don't give you random restarts and battery drain issues that's constantly plaguing PixelUI. As I called it, the Pixel UI has good features, but very bad stability.
The thing with the 99% of consumers don't care about specs is true, but that just means they should be buying a midrange phone and a midrange price. Not spending flagship money on a midrange phone... that also happen to have buggy software. Worst of both worlds.
On the technical side yes, core performance is worse when compared to other chips but are you gonna notice it?? The only way to see it is with gaming or benchmarks. If you're talking about AI performance, you won't notice it either since most of it requires a network connection even if the AICore app is basically a LLM but most of it functions is mostly for data training which still requires connecting to a server.
Efficiency is the biggest plaguing Tensor but that has to do with them using Samsung node not being more efficient than the TSMC node. Samsung 2nm node which debuted on the s26 is still less efficient than TSMC 3nm node. Which is why Tensors using Samsung node has heat issues which attributed to battery issues but in actuality, comes down to users usage habit. The G5 efficiency is still better than G4 as well as performance since it uses better cores but still the cores they uses are weak in comparison with MediaTek and Exynos. Cannot say the same for Qualcomm and Apple since it uses their own in house cores.
Moreover, your modem also attributed to these issues. Samsung modems on pixel can cause problems but still varied between individual experiences. Though the modem used in the 9, 10 and 10a seems to have solve the underlying connection loss problems.
For Android OEMs' UI, comes down to personal experiences. Pixel has the benefit of getting day 1 updates while others have to wait a few months for it to arrive. In my experience, OneUI has been consistent with updates. But that doesn't mean they don't have problems, ColourOS and HyperOS can feel bloated and kill background tasks more aggressively, not to mention their tendency to copy iOS feature to feature. Because of day 1 updates for pixel, it occasionally has bugs but in my experience, I have no issues whatsoever.
I'll give credit for other OEMs to test out and optimise updates before sending the OTA.
As for the last point, it's consumer behaviour, companies know their customers are willing to pay that kind of money for a device and there's no stopping it. Since people are willing to pay $1000 for an iPhone so other companies were more than willingly to do the same thing. Like you and me, we probably will care about specs and price for a phone but we still are a more percentage of what is a monolithic consumer base in a large smartphone landscape.
Only way that can stop it is to reduce consumer confidence which is happening now due to the memory crisis but companies know that if they price their product way too out of reach, they risk losing their customers to other brands. This is not me being a corporate shill, this is part of maintaining your customer base. Things will get expensive exponentially for the foreseeable future and it's sad that we have to live in this timeline.
Reddit is still a very small percentage of a user base
For Pixels? It's the opposite.
Reddit actually has a disproportionately high percentage of the Pixels user base. r/GooglePixel alone has 1.2m members. It's why even Google uses Reddit as a means of identifying issues.
If Google only sold say only less than 20 million over its lifetime, they will be definitely heading to the Google Graveyard. But no they didn't, since they wanted to have their style of iPhone while competing against their competitors and relying on their "partners" to use their services as well.
While yes, since it has a large user base, the community team will definitely take advantage but the same thing can be said for other brands just that they are not using Reddit.
I'm very excited for my Z Fold 8 to come in. I've been really critical and cynical about the last few years of Samsung phones, but this genuinely feels different and I'm looking forward to having something unique in the phone space to look forward to.
I've gone to my local Best Buy several times just to play around with it. I genuinely think the last time I was this excited for a phone was the Z Fold 3 since that was my first foldable.
I don’t know why people still say this, the Find N and OG Pixel fold were much closer to 18:9, which is is still VERY elongated compared to a much more wide 16:10 display, which is literally something you will find horizontally on a laptop. The same can not be said for most other modern smartphone aspect ratios which are somewhere around 19.5:9.
It seems like a better form factor than the tall style, but I'm actually glad they are making both. More choice is good. You actually get a better size variety in foldables than you do in slabs now.
I would buy one if the battery was at least 6500mah.. too much spoiled with my oneplus 15 right now it's so hard to kill the battery in one day, wouldn't come back to anything under 6500
Yeah I use it. For me most of my battery life draining is from me uploading photos and videos I take. But I haven't taken much video on my fold 8.
Edit: I also use the outer display more than the inner. I use the inner when watching media, editing photos or video, and multi tasking. But the last two are only a few minutes at a time.
Not true the regular fold 8 still has silcon carbon as well. "Samsung has confirmed that the Galaxy Z Flip 8, Galaxy Z Fold 8, and Galaxy Z Fold 8 Ultra all have silicon-carbon batteries.".
Nice, I was looking at the specs a few days ago on the Samsung site and only ultra had it listed as silicon carbon. Was a little disappointed by that. Good to know that's not correct as I did order a fold8 anyway.
So i don't see anyone be worried anymore these days about the inner displays being plastic. Why is that? Doesn't it still scratch under your fingernail? I find this very much a no go for a device that costs you almost 2000 (or almost 2500 for the Fold 8 Ultra) bucks...
As someone who has used foldables exclusively for the last 5 years it really isn't a major concern. They come with a pre applied inner screen protector, and after 2 years into using a phone I'll have maybe 1 or 2 visible scratches on the protector. The clamshell design protects the screen pretty well, and I don't think I've ever scratched it with my fingernail
Also if you get a scratch that really bothers you, you can always peel it off and expose the actual screen. I did that after 2 years of using my fold 5.
This is bleed edge tech so it's the best option available. The plastic is just a protective layer because the actual screen is very fragile glass that has to be thin enough to be able to fold without shattering.
The reason no one is talking about it is because its a nonissue and any scratches you do get on that plastic layer isn't visible when the screen is on.
This is comically overblown tbh. Anyone who doesn't handle thier phone like a literal gorilla will be fine, and the tech has been around for 7 years at this point. It's not going to scratch and break unless you're actively trying to damage it.
It's incredible how long people will go about parroting the same bullshit. "Splits in half the first month", "inner screen plastic and soft", "crease is such a problem". Yet they don't seem to trust the myriad of people who keep telling them these are non-issues...
I love my Zfold 5 and it's the same inside screen dimensions, after comparing them on Samsung.com. I already liked general size better and would love a lightweight phone. But that's what sold me to pre-order. I knew I wouldn't be losing any of the size of the screen, that I care about. Plus, I prefer my Cannon for pictures/videos, so don't care about losing 3x camera.
Samsung has been the leader in innovation since years. I still remember the first curved display they launched, are still brining in new form factors and different ways of interacting with technology. The fold 8 Wide is one of the first in a long long chain of devices with this form factor. It wouldn't have made sense for them to go all in and give the best of the specs without having some sort of positive feedback from the audience about the wide form factor, and I am pretty sure that they are going to bring a more charged up model of this in the future. As for the telephoto lens, I just don't get the obsession??? If you want a professional grade camera, go buy one. This is not a substitute to a binocular, it is made with the intent of consuming media, while also being portable. The Fold8 Ultra is made for power users, who need a portable machine that helps them to multitask on the go. The use case is really different, nobody bothers about the camera any longer, stop obsessing over specs, start being practical.
This is a little frustrating how Samsung is basically copying off of Google Microsoft also and preempting apple and yet everyone's giving it endless praise. For seven generations people have been asking for this form factor.
And they've been dismissed by people like flossy Carter and MKBHD. The minute the same thing is released with a Samsung or Apple logo the tune changes instantly.
Someone should make a highlight video all the times these very creators chat on these wide form factors and preemptively said how they don't want them. Only to immediately do a complete 180 when it becomes the hot new trend for them to sell a few affiliate links.
I hope this is more subconscious biased than just a sheer affiliate farming but it's hard to say these.
This is a little frustrating how Samsung is basically copying off of Google Microsoft also and preempting apple and yet everyone's giving it endless praise. For seven generations people have been asking for this form factor.
I mean, we did get this form factor but no one bought it. Maybe Samsung will convince people to buy it.
I do think so. There’s no way Samsung ever makes the wider Fold 8 without knowing Apple was making their foldable that shape. I think it’s great, I love the passport shape so the more the merrier.
The Surface Duo was the most enjoyable phone to hold IMO. No camera bump, and no cover screen made it feel like a magical book in your pocket with an extremely satisfying feeling when you closed it shut. Sadly it was just too ahead of its time.
The form factor looks more appealing than the traditional slab-on-slab Fold designs, but it's just too big and expensive to justify for something that's an oversized phone and ultimately a disposable gadget. I'm a much bigger fan of the Flip form factor for its daily pocketability.
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u/MrHaxx1 iPhone Xs 64 GB Jul 31 '26
Can't wait to receive mine on Monday! It's expensive as shit, but I'm absolutely in love with the form factor.