Physical Address
304 North Cardinal St.
Dorchester Center, MA 02124
Samsung has just revealed its best foldable devices yet, but they’ve all gotten price hikes over last year’s models. Foldable phones have always been the most premium devices – with prices to match – but this year’s crop is something else.
I was bummed when foldable devices first came out about 2,000 years ago, and they weren’t even affordable yet. Although the starting price has remained the same, these phones remain so It’s still out of reach for many phone buyersespecially in these financially difficult times.
These prices are only for the minimum storage of 256GB. If you want more space for photos, videos, and apps, expect to pay a lot: The price of a fully equipped Galaxy Z Fold 8 Ultra with a maximum of 1TB of storage is $2,700, which is astonishing, considering that Samsung Galaxy Z Tri-Fold It was released in January and was slightly more expensive at $2,900. For a few hundred dollars more than the top-tier Z Fold 8 Ultra, you get a 25% larger internal screen.
The Galaxy Z TriFold was on sale for less than three months in early 2026.
Patrick Holland/CNET
Or rather you could have, but Samsung I pulled the plug On TriFold phone sales in March. At the time, Samsung said the TriFold was a “premium, limited-run device.”
Personally, I’m betting that the Z Fold 8’s higher price has the same reason: Lack of RAMwhich makes every technology product seemingly more expensive. It is not difficult to draw conclusions from the high cost of memory, components and the closed product.
Under these circumstances, it’s not surprising that Samsung would follow other products (and even its predecessors, like the Galaxy S26 series) in raising prices by $100 or more compared to last year’s models. Samsung itself said the higher prices for the Z series phones reflected an increase in memory and component costs, which affected the larger technology industry. The company also pointed to improvements over last year’s devices, including new Titanium Flex displays, larger batteries, and 50-megapixel ultra-wide cameras on the Z Fold 8 and Z Fold 8 Ultra.
So how does a fully equipped Galaxy Z Fold 8 Ultra get you up to $2,700? Due to another typical practice, phone manufacturers increase prices for higher storage levels. In fact, last year’s Galaxy Z Fold 7 was priced at $2,500 for 1TB of storage.
That was still a lot of money, but there’s something grim about the rising cost of memory, driving up the prices of the most advanced phones on the market. Back in 2017, iPhone The price of the phone exceeded the Rubicon by launching at $1,000. In 2019, the original Samsung Galaxy Fold It debuted at just under $2,000.
The Galaxy Z Fold line has come a long way since then, with a series of durability, design, and feature improvements. You can still get the latest Z Fold 8 Ultra for $2,100 if you don’t mind the 256GB minimum storage without the ability to expand it with a microSD card. But with the maximum price hovering around $3,000 with little increase in functionality, the Z Fold 8 Ultra may be a harbinger of diminishing affordability at the upper end of the smartphone lineup.
As RAM shortages continue to drive up product prices, either everyone will have to live with much less on-board storage space — or luxury foldable devices will continue to be priced out of everyone’s hands.
See full bio
