Apple iPhone Duo vs Samsung Galaxy Z Fold8: battle of the passport-shaped foldables

After months, possibly even years of speculation, Apple has finally thrown its hat into the foldable phone ring. The Apple iPhone Duo has been officially revealed and will shortly be going on sale to do battle with the Android-powered competition – which have, until now, had the class to themselves.

Rather than do the traditional tall and thin thing, however, Apple has gone for a wider style of fold. That puts it squarely up against one major name: Samsung. While Asian audiences have a little more choice here, the Galaxy Z Fold8 is the only wide foldable currently on sale in Europe and the USA.

Samsung has been in the foldable game for seven years at this point, whereas Apple is coming to it entirely fresh. Will experience win out, or has Cupertino been doing its homework and brought out a banger at the first time of asking? I can’t say for definite until I’ve fully tested the iPhone Duo, so consider this a strictly on-paper comparison – but it could be a much closer fight than many were expecting.

Price and availability

The Galaxy Z Fold8 launched in mid-July and went on sale worldwide just a week or two later. The base model officially retails for $1899/£1699/€2000, but climbs to $2500/£2120/€2600 for the top-end version with 16GB of RAM and 1TB of storage. While pre-order demand was very high, there’s now plenty of stock to go around.

Apple, meanwhile, has kicked off pricing for the iPhone Duo at $2000/£2000/€2200 – and won’t start shipping devices for at least another month. Pre-orders open from October 16 and devices will start shipping on October 23. Demand is expected to be sky-high, despite the high price, so if you don’t get a pre-order in early expect to be waiting a while before you get your hands on one.

Design and screens

Samsung had already established its foldable design language with its taller, skinnier Galaxy Z Fold7, launched in 2025. The Fold8 sticks closely to that template, just trading a narrow profile for a shorter, wider one. The passport-sized handset otherwise has the same angular sides and pointy corners as its Galaxy Z Fold8 Ultra stablemate. The offset rear camera lenses are similar as well, though you only get two of them here.

It’s a slender 9.7mm when folded, an even skinnier 4.5mm per side when opened, and weighs 201g. Up front you’ll find a 5.5in AMOLED display with a 10:16 aspect ratio that’s protected by Gorilla Glass Victus Ceramic 3 glass. Opening it up reveals a 7.6in inner screen with a 4:3 aspect ratio. Neither panel plays nicely with the firm’s S Pen stylus.

The central frame is made from Samsung’s Armor Aluminium alloy and holds the volume keys, power button (which doubles as a fingerprint sensor for biometric security), SIM tray, USB-C charging port and a set of stereo speakers, which are both built into the left half of the handset. The rear panel is protected by Gorilla Glass Victus 2. You can get one in Graphite, Cream or Lavender colours, while a fourth Pistachio hue is exclusive to Samsung’s online store.

Apple doesn’t have multiple foldable generations to take inspiration from, so has instead taken elements from its non-folding flagship – namely the more rounded corners. The rear camera island is its own thing, sitting horizontally in the top left corner rather than spanning the whole phone like the iPhone 17 Pro, or stacking vertically like the iPhone 17. Unfolded it’s the thinnest iPhone ever, with a polished titanium frame and Ceramic Shield rear glass. It’s significantly heavier than the Galaxy at 254g, and thicker too at 5.2mm when opened or 11.3mm folded shut.

Up front sits a 5.4in screen with a punch-hole camera lens in the top-right corner. FaceID has been removed in favour of a Touch ID home button at the side. The volume buttons have been placed on the top edge, possibly so you don’t get them confused for the power button when the phone it folded. Open it up and you’ll find a 7.6in screen with the same aspect ratio as an iPad. Apple has used a Nano‑texture finish to minimise crease visibility. It also supports the Apple Pencil.

Hardware

Samsung has tapped up Qualcomm for the Z Fold8’s Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 For Galaxy chipset, which can be had with either 12 or 16GB of memory and as much as 1TB of storage. It’s among the fastest phones available in the Android world right now, although limited room for cooling means games can struggle to hit the same high frame rates as the non-folding Galaxy S26 Ultra. It’ll still play most titles just fine though.

Apple has produced its silicon in-house for several years now, so it’s no surprise to see an Apple A20 Pro chipset at the heart of the iPhone Duo. It can be paired with up to 2TB of storage, putting it on par with the new iPhone 18 Pro and Pro Max for outright performance.

Both manufacturers are more reserved when it comes to battery capacity than rival Chinese brands, which have been a lot faster to push big batteries using silicon-carbon chemistry. The Galaxy Z Fold8’s 4800mAh cell can make it through a full day, though. Apple is claiming 24 hours of typical use including both screens but has yet to reveal the iPhone Duo’s exact capacity.

Below I’ve made a more detailed breakdown of how the two phones differ on hardware:

Cameras

Both phones have gone for a dual camera approach, ditching the dedicated telephoto in favour of cropping a higher pixel count main sensor for modest amounts of zoom.

The Galaxy Z Fold8 has two 50MP snappers – one 1/1.56in wide-angle with dual pixel phase-detect autofocus and optical image stabilisation, one 1/2.51in ultrawide with multi-directional PDAF. There’s also a 10MP selfie cam up front, primarily for video calls. Samsung has invested more effort into image processing than sensor improvements in recent years, with big promises about low light performance, but I thought it merely put in a decent showing considering how expensive the phone is.

Apple’s lead sensor is of unknown size, but has a 48MP pixel count, wider f/1.6 aperture and sensor‑shift optical image stabilisation. The ultrawide is a matching 48MP but the sensor size is also a mystery. It has a 13mm/120-degree field of view, f/2.2 aperture and what Apple calls Hybrid Focus Pixels – essentially a similar approach to PDAF. The 12MP Centre Stage camera up front sits to one side, while an under-display inner camera stays hidden until you need it for Facetime calls.

The two sound evenly matched on the hardware side, but which delivers the superior snap will boil down to image processing.

Software

Neither Apple nor Samsung are all that concerned about having the best spec sheets, so software is ultimately where the two will feel the most different.

Samsung has worked closely with Google on Android 17’s foldable features, while also pushing its own One UI skin. A floating app bar, revealed with a swipe from the bottom of the screen, lets you drag apps into split view very quickly. A three-finger swipe in from the side of the inner display is just as effective. Being able to pin regularly used app pairs and adjust the split from 50:50 all the way to 90:10 is genuinely very handy.

Like all Android phones the Fold8 has access to Google’s increasingly clever Gemini virtual assistant, Circle to Search and Gemini Live conversational AI. Samsung then adds a whole heap of Galaxy AI features on top, from image editing, automatic voice recording transcribing and foreign language translation, to writing assistance and web page summaries.

Apple is coming to foldables for the first time, but obviously has years of big-screen experience with iPad OS. It also has complete control over iOS, with no need to work around another company’s software like Samsung. That’s why it has completely shifted the interface to one side, making things easier to reach when using the outer display one-handed and ensuring content is given the maximum amount of vertical room to cut down on scrolling. Split view, seamless handover between screens and app pairs are all promised. Big name third party apps have already been updated, including Zoom and Slack. Siri AI and Apple Intelligence are of course on board too, with a more potent processor available to churn through Apple’s most advanced on-device models.

Initial verdict

The Galaxy Fold8 quickly became my favourite Samsung foldable thanks to its palm-friendly form factor, comfortable outer display and an inner aspect ratio that made it ideal for multimedia. It was plenty powerful, took a decent enough photo and could be relied on to get through all but the most intense days of use on a single charge. It wasn’t outlandish money for what was on offer, either.

Apple’s hardware may not be quite as slim but it bests Samsung by including MagSafe magnetic wireless charging. Its own-brand chipset promises plenty of power and the dual rear cameras should be very capable.

The Galaxy has price on its side but both are very expensive handsets.

How well iOS handles switching between the inner and outer screens away from tightly controlled demos remains to be seen, but the firm’s iron grip over the app store should have developers working overtime to make sure their apps work as intended. That could ultimately make the daily user experience a bit smoother on the iPhone Duo, even before you get into the minutiae of Android vs iOS.

There can be no outright winner until we’ve reviewed both phones – but right now things are looking very good for those in the Apple camp.