Samsung hosted Galaxy Unpacked on Wednesday simultaneously in Brooklyn, N.Y., where I attended, and London. The event was about more than just unveiling another generation of smartphones. It was a chance for the company to reinforce its leadership in foldable devices just weeks ahead of Apple's expected unveiling of its first foldable iPhone.
With the Galaxy Z Fold8 Ultra, Galaxy Z Fold8, Galaxy Z Flip8, Galaxy Watch Ultra2 and Galaxy Watch9, Samsung has assembled its most mature and comprehensive foldable portfolio to date, while reinforcing its broader vision of AI becoming the foundation of the Galaxy ecosystem.
Samsung largely achieved its goals. The hardware is thinner, lighter, and more refined than ever. Galaxy AI is becoming more integrated across the product lineup, and Qualcomm continues to play a key role in enabling many of Samsung’s newest AI experiences. But the announcements also raised several strategic questions that Samsung will need to answer as foldables competition heats up significantly.
After almost eight years of iterative updates, Samsung’s foldable lineup no longer feels like an experimental category but a complete family of premium smartphones. Rather than offering every customer essentially the same device, Samsung now offers three differentiated experiences.
Galaxy Z Fold8 Ultra is designed for professionals and creators who want the largest screen, the most advanced camera system, and maximum multitasking ability. The Galaxy Z Fold8 is for users who want many of the benefits of a book-style foldable but don’t want to step all the way into Ultra territory. Most notably, its user-friendly aspect ratio (particularly for streaming content) may make it more appealing to a broader audience than the larger Fold8 Ultra.
The Galaxy Z Flip8, meanwhile, continues to appeal to consumers who value portability, fashion and social content creation over maximum productivity. Samsung says this wider portfolio is a natural evolution and recognizes the fact that there is no one foldable experience that works for all consumers.
Samsung deserves credit for continuing to improve the fundamentals that matter most to buyers. The devices are thinner, lighter, more durable, brighter and better optimized for multitasking than in past generations. By themselves, those changes might seem incremental, but together they make today’s foldables feel considerably more refined than the products Samsung was putting out just a few years ago.
While much of the attention was on Samsung’s hardware, one of the biggest was Qualcomm. The partnership between the two companies continues to deepen with Qualcomm’s Snapdragon platforms powering almost every flagship product Samsung introduced.
The Galaxy Z Fold8 Ultra, Galaxy Z Fold8 and some models of Galaxy Z Flip8 will be powered by Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 for Galaxy. Snapdragon Wear Elite debuts in both new Galaxy smartwatches. Qualcomm’s Snapdragon AR1 Gen 1 will also serve as the silicon foundation for Samsung’s upcoming smart eyewear effort with Google.
This partnership extends well beyond a traditional processor supplier relationship. Snapdragon is the computing platform that powers Samsung’s broader AI strategy across smartphones, wearables and future XR devices.
Cristiano Amon, president and CEO of Qualcomm, said, "We are entering a new age of AI, where intelligence is embedded into the personal devices people depend on throughout the day. Qualcomm is powering the latest Galaxy smart…