Samsung added this week 3 new phones to its foldable phone family: the Galaxy Z Fold 8, Galaxy Z Fold 8 Ultra, and Galaxy Z Flip 7. However, the first stole the spotlight and caught everyone's attention, as it marks the Korean company's first entry into the foldable smartphone market with a passport-style design (Passport Device).

After Samsung's launch, the foldable phone market now has 3 main devices: the Galaxy Z Fold 8, the Find N6 from OPPO, and the Pura X Max from Huawei.

The differences between them are not limited to screen size or processor power; each device offers a different vision of the purpose of a foldable phone.

While Samsung bets on a compact, lightweight device that balances phone and tablet, OPPO offers a portable workstation with a large screen and huge battery, while Huawei adopts a bolder approach making the device closer to a wide digital notebook, designed primarily for reading, drawing, and handling horizontal content.

Foldable phone screens

The Galaxy Z Fold 8 represents the most different model in the comparison, as it does not aim to offer the largest possible screen, but rather to achieve the best balance between portability and display area.

The phone comes with a 5.5-inch Dynamic AMOLED external screen, resolution 1248×1972 pixels, and refresh rate up to 120 Hz. The internal screen measures 7.6 inches, resolution 1848×2448 pixels, and refresh rate up to 120 Hz.

Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 8 - Samsung

The phone's dimensions reveal Samsung's philosophy more clearly: when folded, the phone is only 123.9 mm long, 81.9 mm wide, and 9.7 mm thick, weighing 201 grams. When unfolded, its width reaches 161.4 mm, offering a screen close to a square aspect ratio, but within a short and light body compared to most foldable phones.

These dimensions make the external screen suitable for quick one-handed use, replying to messages, reading notifications, making calls, taking photos, and browsing social networks. However, its 5.5-inch size means it is not intended to be the primary screen all the time as the larger OPPO screen does.

The value of Samsung's internal screen appears when the user needs to combine two apps, read a document alongside email, follow a meeting while taking notes, or edit a file while referencing a web page. It is smaller than the Find N6's screen, but it gives the device more lightness and flexibility, reducing the feeling of carrying a tablet all day.

As for the OPPO Find N6, it offers the largest conventional display area among the three devices. The external screen size is 6.62 inches, with a variable refresh rate between 1 and 120 Hz, and a peak local brightness of up to 3600 nits.

The internal screen size is 8.12 inches, with an adaptive refresh rate between 1 and 120 Hz, and a peak local brightness of 2500 nits. Both screens can reduce brightness to 1 nit, with PWM dimming at 2160 Hz and eye protection features.

The external screen can become a real alternative to a traditional phone, not just a secondary screen. The 6.62-inch size allows using a full and comfortable keyboard, writing long messages, editing text, following maps, watching video, and managing email without needing to open the phone.

When opening the Find N6, the 'portable workstation' philosophy emerges. The 8.12-inch screen accommodates larger windows and more interface elements, offering better space for working on spreadsheets, reading web pages in desktop mode, reviewing presentations, editing photos, and running two or more apps side by side.

The ColorOS 16 interface supports the Free-Flow Window feature, which allows opening multiple apps in free windows, resizing them, and switching between window mode and split screen with a 4-finger gesture. Thus, the advantage of the large screen is not limited to size but extends to the system's ability to treat it as a space closer to a small desktop.

The Find N6 has a thickness of about 8.93 mm when folded and weighs 225 grams, despite having a larger internal screen and a 6000 mAh battery. It uses the second-generation Titanium Flexion hinge and flexible glass that OPPO says helps gradually reduce the appearance of the crease after opening the phone, emphasizing that the term 'Zero-Feel Crease' describes reduced crease visibility, not its complete physical disappearance.

In contrast, the Huawei Pura X Max adopts a different vision of the wide screen. Its external screen size is 5.4 inches, with a peak brightness of 3500 nits, and an internal LTPO OLED screen measuring 7.7 inches, resolution 1828×2584 pixels, 120 Hz refresh rate, with a peak brightness of up to 3000 nits according to the specifications announced by the company.

The phone's uniqueness lies not only in its size but in its aspect ratio inspired by A4 paper. When opened, the screen does not appear as a magnified version of a phone screen but as a wide digital page suitable for reading documents, browsing magazines, drawing, taking notes, and reviewing pages that combine text and images.

Thus, the Pura X Max seems more suitable for the user who uses the phone as a digital notebook. Journalists, writers, designers, students, and users who read a lot benefit from the wide aspect ratio more than users focused on running traditional phone apps.

The phone supports the M-Pen 3 Mini stylus, which offers a writing button, Air Mouse button, gesture recognition, and pen scrolling, along with a dedicated drawing app within HarmonyOS 6.1. Here, the wide screen becomes part of a complete input experience, not just a larger area for content viewing.

Foldable phones in terms of use

In terms of use, it can be said that the Galaxy Z Fold 8 is best for those who want a small, light device that opens when extra space is needed, while the Find N6 excels in multi-window work and prolonged use of the external screen. The Pura X Max offers the best vision for reading, drawing, and handling pages and horizontal content.

Performance and memory of foldable phones

The Galaxy Z Fold 8 is powered by the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 for Galaxy processor, a customized version of Qualcomm's latest flagship platform. The phone comes with 12 GB of RAM in the 256 GB and 512 GB versions, while the RAM increases to 16 GB in the 1 TB internal storage version.

This configuration gives the phone strong ability to run multiple apps, switch between tasks, edit video, play games, and execute AI features. However, the core value does not come from the processor alone but from its integration with Android 17 and the One UI interface, which has accumulated experience in managing foldable screens.

Samsung offers flexibility and practicality when switching between the external and internal screens, with the app continuing in the same state when opening the device, pinning apps to a taskbar, running more than one app, and dragging content from one window to another. It also benefits from integration with Galaxy devices and Windows computers.