Samsung held its highly anticipated Galaxy Unpacked event in London on Wednesday morning.
The showcase featured three new foldable phones and two new smartwatches, plus more. Spider-Man even made an appearance. Here's everything you need to know from the latest Galaxy Unpacked livestream, plus a first look at the devices.
Samsung Galaxy Z Flip 8 is the cheapest and most fashionable new foldable
The most affordable foldable Samsung's new lineup is also undeniably the cutest. The Samsung Galaxy Z Flip 8 is a fairly straightforward successor to last year's Z Flip 8; it's still a clamshell-style foldable with a small 4.1-inch outer display that mostly exists for checking notifications, and a bigger 6.9-inch inner display where you'll do most of your serious business. It starts at $1,199. The color options are pink, cream, graphite, and mint.
Most of the changes from last year are fairly modest. The new Z Flip is about 12 percent smaller than the Z Flip 7 was, and 8g lighter. All three of these new foldables feature Flex Titanium technology, which is intended to make the folding hinges both more durable and less visible to the naked eye.
Samsung kept most of the core specs, like RAM, storage, battery size, and camera megapixel counts the same this year. Perhaps the biggest improvement is the presence of a Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 for Galaxy chipset, the same as the other two new foldables. The Z Flip 7 ran on a comparatively weaker Exynos chip, so you can expect better performance and maybe even more efficient battery usage out of the Z Flip 8.
Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 8 is not actually a follow-up to Z Fold 7
Pre-event rumors had us a little confused about Samsung's device naming scheme this year, but all has been clarified as of Wednesday. Yes, there is a device called the Galaxy Z Fold 8. No, it is not a true successor to the Z Fold 7. Instead, it's a brand new device, and it starts at $1,899. It comes in lavender, cream, graphite, and pistachio colors.
This device sits at a midway point between the Z Flip 8 and the new Z Fold 8 Ultra (more on that in a bit) in terms of price and specs. It has a 5.5-inch outer display and a 7.6-inch inner display with a 4:3 aspect ratio, thought to be analogous to that of the upcoming iPhone Fold. At 201g, Samsung is calling it the "world's lightest Fold." With a 4,800mAh battery, it promises 26 hours of video playback on a single charge.
Camera-wise, it's closer to the Flip, with only two rear lenses rather than three. That means no telephoto lens, unfortunately. The 50MP main and 50MP ultra-wide lenses should allow for decent social media photos.
Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 8 UItra is the most premium device of the bunch
Remember how I said the Z Fold 8 does not actually exist as a sequel to the Z Fold 7? That's because the Z Fold 8 Ultra does, instead. Yes, Samsung gave an old name to a new phone and a new name to an old phone this year. Don't worry about it. The new one starts at $2,099, and its color options are violet shadow, green shadow, cream, and graphite.
Despite the new moniker, the Z Fold 8 Ultra is arguably the most similar to its predecessor. It's still a very light, thin phone, but its dimensions are almost identical to those of the Z Fold 7. RAM and storage counts haven't changed, but one major thing has: the battery size. Samsung went all the way up from 4,400mAh to 5,000mAh, the biggest battery in any Samsung foldable to date. The company is promising 27 hours of battery life, which would be a big improvement over last year.
Lastly, it has a new 50MP ultra-wide lens, up from 12MP a year ago. That's on top of the 200MP main lens and 10MP telephoto lens it already had. This will easily be the best camera array on any of these phones.
Galaxy Watch 9 and Watch 2 Ultra have plenty of AI health tracking features
Moving on from phones, Samsung also spent some time talking about the latest additions to its smartwatch portfolio. Meet the Galaxy Watch 9 and Galaxy Watch Ultra 2.
The former comes in 40mm and 44mm sizes, and starts at $379. The latter, meanwhile, is 47mm and starts at a staggering $699. Both, of course, come with way too many band options and colors to write down in one place, but rest assured you can customize the look about as much as you want.
As usual, most of the upgrades this year deal with exercise and health tracking. The Ultra 2, in particular, has a lot of tracking features for outdoors activities. Trail Run will track elevation and terrain impact for hikes, Nutrition Alert will give you hydration advice in conjunction with the existing Sweat Loss feature, and an upcoming Diving app will offer detailed dive tracking because this phone is waterproof enough to actually go on dives with you.
Both phones will also benefit from a cornucopia of new AI health guidance features. A new Vitals feature will track deviations in your basic vitals, while the devices can also offer personalized insights regarding disruptions to sleep, daily cardio load, and loud noise alerts to protect your hearing.
As for hardware, the upgrades are more modest, but the Ultra 2 comes with an exceptionally bright 5,000 nits of peak brightness, making it great for outdoor use. Both Watch 9 models have larger batteries than before, and the Ultra 2 has a very big (by watch standards) 800mAh cell inside it. The Ultra 2 is definitely the one to get if you're all about endurance.
More info about upcoming Samsung smart glasses
Last but not least, Samsung gave us a little bit of information about its upcoming Galaxy Glasses effort, with a short on-stage presentation that confirmed some rumors from ahead of the event. The upcoming smart glasses, which were previously announced, will be designed in collaboration with brands like Warby Parker and Gentle Monster, with at least four designs to come. They'll run on the new Android XR platform and will launch this fall, but we don't know how much they'll cost yet.
The glasses don't contain displays, but have speakers, microphones, and cameras on them, similar to other competitors. You can use it to talk to Gemini hands-free while connected to an Android phone or Wear OS watch. Battery life is supposedly around nine hours, with an additional seven charges in the charging case. It seems like we'll have to wait a little bit to hear more, though.