Samsung’s London Galaxy Unpacked: every foldable and watch announced

Samsung’s latest Galaxy Unpacked event was built around a familiar idea with a more ambitious twist: the phone is no longer just the center of its product lineup, but the control room for an AI-powered personal ecosystem. The company introduced three foldables – the Galaxy Z Fold8 Ultra, Galaxy Z Fold8 and Galaxy Z Flip8 – alongside the Galaxy Watch9 and adventure-focused Galaxy Watch Ultra2, all set to arrive on August 7.

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The most striking change is not a single new camera or processor. It is Samsung’s effort to make foldables feel less like specialist devices and more like distinct choices for different kinds of everyday lives. There is the expensive, no-compromise Fold8 Ultra for people who want a pocketable work-and-creative machine; a lighter Fold8 positioned as an entertainment and reading device; and a much slimmer Flip8 that doubles down on the usefulness of its outer display. Samsung is also making a clear bet that its Galaxy AI tools, tied closely to Google’s Gemini, are now important enough to shape the hardware itself.

The Galaxy Z Fold8 Ultra is the headline act, and it brings the word “Ultra” to Samsung’s book-style foldable for the first time. It starts at $2,099 in the US, which makes it one of the most expensive mainstream phones on the market, but the spec sheet shows where Samsung is trying to justify that price.

Samsung says the Fold8 Ultra is its thinnest Galaxy Fold yet, built around a new “Flex Titanium” display structure. The company has replaced parts of the conventional polymer display stack with a titanium-alloy film and a flexible titanium plate beneath the OLED panel, a combination designed to reduce the visible crease while improving durability. It has also redesigned the hinge, calling it the Armor FlexHinge.

The more practical upgrades may matter more than the materials science. Samsung has fitted a 5,000mAh battery, its largest ever in a Galaxy Z Fold, and says a new charging arrangement can bring the device from empty to 67% in 30 minutes. The Fold8 Ultra’s screens can reach 3,000 nits of peak brightness and have a low-reflection finish – welcome changes for anyone who has tried to read a large foldable display outdoors.

Performance comes from Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 for Galaxy chip, while Samsung is leaning heavily on AI for everyday tasks. Its new Now Nudge feature is designed to surface contextual prompts, such as pulling up calendar details after a colleague mentions a meeting. Gemini Notebook, meanwhile, can analyze collections of photos and documents dropped into it and turn them into consolidated visual material. The broader premise is that the phone should understand context across apps, rather than wait for users to manually jump between them.

Camera claims are equally flagship-minded. Samsung is promising stronger low-light photography, an ultra-wide camera, the ProVisual Engine for image processing, and 8K video recording with the APV codec. As always, those claims will need real-world testing, especially because foldable cameras have historically lagged behind Samsung’s conventional Galaxy S Ultra phones. Still, Samsung is clearly trying to erase the idea that choosing a foldable means accepting a compromised camera system.

For buyers who want the Fold experience without stepping all the way up to Ultra pricing, Samsung has the Galaxy Z Fold8. It starts at $1,899 and is also available August 7. Samsung calls it the world’s lightest Fold, and its pitch is noticeably less corporate than the Ultra’s: this is the model for reading, streaming, editing photos, and moving between portrait and landscape without treating the device like a miniature laptop.

The Fold8 keeps the new Flex Titanium display approach and a widened hinge, but takes a different route on battery capacity. It has a 4,800mAh battery and Samsung claims more than 26 hours of video playback. Its inner display uses a 4:3 layout for landscape content and a 3:4 layout in portrait, which Samsung argues makes the device feel more natural for everything from YouTube and Netflix to articles, magazines, and web browsing.

That reading-focused message is worth noting. The smartphone industry tends to explain large screens through productivity and multitasking, but Samsung’s Fold8 presentation made a stronger case for the quieter use cases: keeping comments open beside a video, reading a long feature with less scrolling, or reviewing and editing an image at a size that does not feel cramped. For publishers and creators, that is probably the more believable foldable story.

The Fold8 has dual 50-megapixel wide and ultra-wide cameras, with the cover display acting as a viewfinder when the phone is opened. Samsung also highlighted Photo Assist for prompt-based image editing and My FanCam, an AI feature that can reframe a person in a group recording for sharing in different aspect ratios.

Then there is the Galaxy Z Flip8, the most accessible of the new foldables at $1,199. Samsung has made the clamshell model 6.1mm thin when unfolded and 180 grams in weight, while putting more attention on the outer FlexWindow than ever before. It is the company’s thinnest Flip yet, but the important point is that Samsung wants users to avoid opening it quite so often.

The Flip8 runs One UI 9 on Android 17, and its edge-to-edge cover display now supports familiar phone-like gestures: notifications from one side, quick settings from the other, widgets with a horizontal swipe, and apps with an upward swipe. Samsung says everyday apps can run full-screen on the FlexWindow, allowing users to check calendars, reply to messages, browse a gallery, and use customized widgets without unfolding the device.

Samsung is also bringing Now Brief to the outer display. The feature is meant to deliver a personalized daily snapshot, mixing things like traffic, weather, health data, and reminders. That sounds useful in the right moments, although it also raises the usual question around proactive AI: whether the prompts will feel genuinely helpful or simply become another layer of notifications demanding attention.

On the imaging side, the Flip8 gets a 50-megapixel camera and Samsung’s ProVisual Engine from its Galaxy S26 series. There is also an upgraded Super Steady mode for video, which uses real-time motion data to correct major tilts. Samsung’s marketing puts this in the language of vlogging and spontaneous group videos, but the practical appeal is simpler: the Flip remains a phone that can stand on its own and frame a shot without a tripod.

The new foldables arrive with six months of Google AI Pro included. Google said Gemini Notebook will come preinstalled on the Fold8 and Flip8 family, while Gemini’s multi-step automation is expanding to more than 40 apps across categories including retail, restaurant bookings, travel, and event tickets. The promise is that a user can describe a task in plain language and Gemini can navigate the relevant apps behind the scenes, leaving the user to review and confirm the final details.

That is a bigger claim than a simple chatbot shortcut. It positions Samsung’s foldables as early hardware for agentic AI – software that does not merely answer questions, but attempts to carry out tasks. Samsung says Android-verified agents must receive app-by-app permissions before accessing information or taking action. That kind of control will be essential if these features are to feel trustworthy rather than intrusive.

Samsung’s health ambitions took the stage next with the Galaxy Watch9, starting at $379, and the Galaxy Watch Ultra2, starting at $699. Both are available for preorder now and go on sale August 7.

The Galaxy Watch9 is the everyday model, with Samsung emphasizing preventative health rather than just step counts and workout rings. A new Vitals feature tracks five biometric measures while the wearer sleeps, establishes a personal baseline, and flags meaningful deviations in data such as heart rate and heart-rate variability. Samsung also introduced a Heart Health Score that combines activity and vascular-load data into a daily view intended to show how routine behavior may be affecting cardiovascular health.

The company is adding a Fitness Index that evaluates readiness across five dimensions, including endurance and body composition, then suggests workouts and weekly challenges. Samsung is also expanding its relationship with iFIT and says Strava subscribers will be able to bring saved routes into Samsung Health later this fall. Advanced running metrics will assess stride and posture after a run, aiming to provide feedback beyond the usual distance-and-pace summary.

Samsung’s most consequential health announcement may be the planned upgrade to its sleep apnea feature. Later this summer, the company says it will introduce an FDA-cleared capability that offers deeper insight into breathing disruption during sleep. Samsung was careful to frame the feature as a way to identify potential signs and guide people toward a medical professional, rather than as a replacement for clinical diagnosis.

The Galaxy Watch Ultra2, by contrast, is Samsung’s answer for people who treat a smartwatch as outdoor equipment. It uses the Snapdragon Wear Elite platform, has a battery that is 35% larger than before, and is rated for up to 60 hours on a single charge. Its titanium build carries IP69K and 10ATM ratings, and Samsung says it can reach 5,000 nits of peak brightness.

The genuinely distinctive feature is diving. Samsung says the Watch Ultra2 meets the EN13319 standard for diving accessories and, through a partnership with Mares, can function as a decompression dive computer. It can show depth, water temperature, and dive time, while offering no-decompression-limit guidance, real-time nitrogen absorption monitoring, and adjustable gradient factors for more experienced divers. Some premium Mares features will require a subscription later this year, but Samsung says they will be exclusive to the Watch Ultra2 among Wear OS smartwatches for two years after launch.

On land, the Watch Ultra2 adds trail-running support, including route previews, terrain and climb information, turn-by-turn navigation, checkpoint distance, and hydration guidance based on estimated sweat loss. It is an unusually specific attempt to compete not just with mainstream smartwatches, but with dedicated sports and outdoor wearables.

Samsung’s product event also carried a message about the larger ecosystem. The company showed new intelligent eyewear developed with Google, Gentle Monster, and Warby Parker, though the glasses will not arrive until this fall. It announced plans for Quick Share to work across Android and iOS, while Samsung Wallet is gaining a US Galaxy Card through a partnership with Barclays and Visa.

But the central message remained clear: Samsung thinks the future of its device business will be shaped by screens that change size, watches that collect more meaningful health information, and AI that follows users from phone to wrist and beyond. Whether all of those AI services will prove indispensable is still an open question. The hardware, however, is making a more grounded case. Samsung’s latest foldables are thinner, lighter and more clearly divided by purpose, while the new watches move beyond general wellness into areas like running coaching, sleep monitoring, trail navigation, and dive computing.