iPhone Duo vs. Galaxy Z Fold 8 Ultra: Apple’s and Samsung’s Premium Foldables Compared

For months, rumors advised Apple would title its first foldable the iPhone Ultra. But on Wednesday, the corporate unveiled its extremely anticipated gadget with a special title: the iPhone Duo.

Skipping the Ultra title feels becoming for a foldable that doesn’t fairly provide Apple’s highest-end options. The Duo remains to be a premium gadget, however it lacks a telephoto digicam and has a barely extra modest battery than the iPhone 18 Pro Max.

In that respect, the iPhone Duo is extra akin to Samsung’s equally palm-size Galaxy Z Fold 8. The Galaxy Z Fold 8 Ultra, in the meantime, takes issues a step additional with Samsung’s top-tier digicam and battery specs.

The Duo is designed to be compact and versatile, permitting you to simply watch horizontal movies in panorama mode and vertical content material in portrait. On the opposite hand, the Z Fold 8 Ultra feels just like a slab telephone when closed, due to its slim design and extra commonplace dimensions. (Meanwhile, the smaller Galaxy Z Fold 8 shares design parts with the iPhone Duo. You can learn extra about how these telephones examine right here.)

The Duo and Z Fold 8 Ultra share the commonality of a excessive price ticket. The iPhone Duo begins at $1,999 for 256GB, whereas the Galaxy Z Fold 8 Ultra begins at $2,100 for a similar storage stage.

Preorders for the iPhone Duo kick off Oct. 16 for an Oct. 23 launch. The Galaxy Z Fold 8 Ultra is on the market now.

Here’s how the 2 foldable telephones examine.

iPhone Duo vs. Galaxy Z Fold 8 Ultra design and shows

The key distinction between the iPhone Duo and the Galaxy Z Fold 8 Ultra is of their designs.

The iPhone Duo is palm-size with a squat, 5.4-inch cowl display and a 7.6-inch inside show. The Z Fold 8 Ultra has a extra standard book-style foldable design, with a taller, 6.5-inch cowl display and a bigger 8-inch inside show.

A novel characteristic of the iPhone Duo is its matte, nano-texture inside show that helps to scale back reflections and decrease the crease. The Galaxy Z Fold 8 Ultra has an anti-reflective coating that additionally helps to scale back these distractions, however the Duo’s matte end does a greater job at that.

The Z Fold 8 Ultra stands out for its exceptionally skinny construct, measuring 4.1mm when open and eight.9mm when closed. The iPhone Duo can be pretty skinny, measuring 5.2mm when open and 11.3mm when closed.

The Z Fold 8 Ultra is slightly lighter, weighing 215 grams, whereas the Duo weighs 254 grams. It’s a small distinction that’s barely perceptible.

When multitasking, the Duo can solely run as much as two apps concurrently, whereas the Z Fold 8 Ultra helps multitasking with as much as three apps. This is aided by the Ultra’s bigger most important show that stops apps from feeling cramped.

Perhaps some of the spectacular options of the Duo is its IP68 score: it could face up to submersion in as much as 6 meters of water for half-hour and is dust-resistant. The Z Fold 8 Ultra has a extra limiting IP48 score, which means it may be submerged in as much as 1.5 meters of water for half-hour and is protected in opposition to strong objects bigger than 1mm, however not mud or sand. The Duo’s mud resistance is a rarity on the planet of foldables and is shared with Google’s Pixel 11 Pro Fold.

If you worth sturdiness and compactness, the iPhone Duo is usually a good match. If you desire a foldable telephone that feels extra just like a slab telephone when closed and a pill when open, the Galaxy Z Fold 8 Ultra is an effective decide.

iPhone Duo vs. Galaxy Z Fold 8 Ultra cameras

Because the iPhone Duo is compact, it makes some compromises with the cameras. There’s a 48-megapixel most important digicam and a 48-megapixel ultrawide digicam, however no telephoto lens. The cowl show has a 12-megapixel selfie digicam, whereas an “under-display FaceTime digicam” sits on the within display.

The Galaxy Z Fold 8 Ultra has a triple rear-camera system, which features a 200-megapixel wide-angle, 50-megapixel ultrawide and 10-megapixel telephoto digicam. There’s a 10-megapixel selfie digicam on every show.

We’ll need to see how the iPhone Duo performs in our digicam checks, however the Galaxy Z Fold 8 Ultra shares rear digicam optics with the top-of-the-line Galaxy S26 Ultra (therefore the shared moniker), and has carried out properly in our digicam checks.

iPhone Duo vs. Galaxy Z Fold 8 Ultra processor and battery life

The iPhone Duo is powered by the identical in-house A20 Pro chip because the iPhone 18 Pro fashions. The Galaxy Z Fold 8 Ultra has Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 chip for Galaxy.

Apple doesn’t share particular battery specs, however says the iPhone Duo will provide you with as much as 31 hours of video playback on the inside show, and 44 hours when utilizing the outer display. When utilizing each screens equally, the corporate says you’ll be capable to go 24 hours earlier than needing to cost.

Samsung boosted battery capability on its book-style foldable this 12 months, going from 4,400 mAh on the Z Fold 7 to five,000 mAh on the Z Fold 8 Ultra. That ought to simply get you thru a day with out worrying about the place the closest charger is.

Apple says the iPhone Duo can cost as much as 50% in round 20 minutes with a 60-watt adapter or greater. The Z Fold 8 Ultra helps as much as 45-watt wired charging, going from empty to 63% in round half-hour in CNET’s testing.

The Duo has a key benefit in the case of wi-fi charging: it helps MagSafe, with Qi2 wi-fi charging as much as 25 watts. Meanwhile, the Z Fold 8 Ultra doesn’t have built-in magnets, however should you use a Qi2-compatible case, you may faucet into 20-watt wi-fi charging.

If you like having the ability to simply connect magnetic equipment with out a case, the iPhone Duo has the benefit right here. The Galaxy Z Fold 8 Ultra has a long-lasting battery that pulled its weight in our testing.

Which telephone must you decide?

Whether you go together with the iPhone Duo or the Galaxy Z Fold 8 Ultra in the end depends upon how you propose to make use of your foldable telephone.

The iPhone Duo is designed to higher accommodate each horizontal and vertical content material on the inside show, whereas the compact cowl is sweet for rapidly sending texts or checking notifications. If you end up viewing swaths of content material and desire a telephone that feels slightly totally different — or are deep in Apple’s ecosystem — the Duo could possibly be the fitting match for you.

Meanwhile, the Z Fold 8 Ultra operates as extra of a standard-feeling telephone when closed, opening to a large, conventional tablet-like show. If you don’t need to stray too removed from the design of slab telephones but additionally desire a extra expansive display generally, the Z Fold 8 Ultra is likely to be a greater decide.

Stay tuned for CNET’s assessment of the iPhone Duo for extra particulars on the expertise. For now, you may learn our hands-on with Apple’s new foldable, and take a look at the spec chart beneath for extra on how the telephones examine.

Abrar Al-Heeti

Senior Technology Reporter

Abrar’s pursuits embody telephones, streaming, autonomous automobiles, web tendencies, leisure, popular culture and digital accessibility. In addition to her present function, she’s labored for CNET’s video, tradition and information groups. She graduated with bachelor’s and grasp’s levels in journalism from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Though Illinois is residence, she now loves San Francisco — steep inclines and all.

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