Samsung is now refining its eighth generation of foldables, with new shapes and screen ratios designed around how we actually use our phones.

This content was prepared by Samsung and is being published by The New Zealand Herald as Advertorial.

We’ve changed how we use our phones. So why haven’t our phones changed shape?

Think about everything you ask your phone to do in a day. You watch. Work. Shop. Read. Game. Edit photos. Compare restaurants while messaging friends. Sometimes all at once. Yet we’re still squeezing it onto essentially the same rectangular screen.

Research found 85% of Europeans have started a task on their smartphone, only to finish it later on a bigger device. And seven in 10 want the flexibility of an everyday phone that can unfold into a larger screen.

Maybe the answer isn’t carrying another device. Maybe your phone just needs to get bigger when you need it to.

While Apple is expected to enter the foldable market in 2026, Samsung is now refining its eighth generation of foldables, with new shapes and screen ratios designed around how we actually use our phones.

Galaxy Z Fold8 is shorter and wider than your everyday phone, with proportions inspired by familiar objects like books, notebooks and passports. Use it folded when you want a phone. Open it, and the 7.6-inch main display gives YouTube, Netflix, games and photos more room to breathe.

Galaxy Z Fold8 Ultra goes bigger, thinner and higher-spec. Built for serious multitaskers, split-screen functionality makes working across apps easier, while its flagship camera system includes a 200MP camera.

But the hardware is only half the story. Both phones feature the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 processor alongside Google Gemini and Galaxy AI - making that extra screen smarter, not just bigger.

You can summarise a long document before a meeting, turn rough notes into a polished email, compare restaurants or travel options across apps, or transform a photo into something ready to share in seconds.

My FanCam can identify and track someone in a video – from your kid scoring a goal to your favourite artist onstage – then let you reframe the footage afterwards into a social-ready clip. Now Nudge understands what’s on your screen and suggests what you might want to do next, cutting out the usual copying, pasting, searching and app-switching.

As Samsung New Zealand’s Madison Hill puts it: “Galaxy Z Fold8 is the natural ‘what’s next’ for smartphones. People are craving something genuinely new, and Fold8 delivers.”

Perhaps the question isn’t “why would I need a phone that folds?”, it’s “why are we still carrying phones that don’t?”