The Galaxy Z Fold 8 Ultra’s dedicated telephoto lens provides improved zoom capabilities in real-world testing, but the standard Fold 8 remains competitive and offers other advantages such as a more compact design and longer battery life.
Samsung’s latest foldable flagship pair, the Galaxy Z Fold 8 and the Fold 8 Ultra, both arrive with serious camera hardware, but only the Ultra model includes a dedicated telephoto lens for optical zoom. To test how much that matters in real-world use, technology reviewer Mark Spoonauer compared the two phones’ cameras in an article for Tom’s Guide.
At 4x zoom, the differences were modest. In Spoonauer’s shots of an ice-cream truck, the Fold 8 Ultra produced the sharper image, with text around the words “Cups” and “Shakes” standing out more clearly. Even so, the standard Fold 8 was not far behind, suggesting that Samsung’s non-Ultra foldable still handles close-range zoom better than its missing telephoto lens might imply.
The gap narrowed further at 10x in some scenes, where both devices struggled to make out text beneath the ice-cream graphics. Spoonauer also compared the Ultra’s true 3x optical zoom with the Fold 8’s 3x digital crop on a street scene, and said the cheaper model held up surprisingly well, even if he preferred its slightly brighter exposure. But once he pushed both phones to 10x, the Fold 8 Ultra clearly moved ahead, preserving more detail on a statue while the Fold 8 image became softer and lost some shadow detail.
A final comparison using a road sign again favoured the Ultra, especially at 30x, where the dedicated zoom lens kept letters more legible. Spoonauer concluded that a separate telephoto camera does improve results, but the difference was not as dramatic as he expected and, in his view, was not worth the extra $200 on camera performance alone. That said, the Fold 8 Ultra still offers other advantages, including a larger display and longer battery life, while the regular Fold 8 has the appeal of a newer, more compact design.
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