Apple's first foldable and Samsung's new passport-style Fold share a 7.6-inch screen and almost the same price. Weight, toughness and waiting times split them.
The iPhone Duo and Galaxy Z Fold 8 are surprisingly similar: both open into a 7.6-inch screen, both use a wide passport shape and both unlock with a fingerprint in the power button. Samsung even builds the Duo's folding display.
The Duo starts at $1,999 and the Fold 8 at $1,899.99. Samsung's phone is far lighter at 201 grams against 254 grams, and thinner when folded. Apple's phone is tougher with an IP68 rating against IP48, and offers up to 2TB of storage.
For the first time, Apple and Samsung are selling folding phones that look almost like twins. The iPhone Duo goes on sale Friday at $1,999, and Samsung’s Galaxy Z Fold 8 has been in stores since August at $1,899.99. Both open like a book into a 7.6-inch screen, and both use the wider, shorter “passport” shape. There’s even a twist: Samsung made the Duo’s folding screen.
So if you’ve decided this is the year you go foldable, which one deserves your money? The answer comes down to a handful of things that spec sheets don’t make obvious: how heavy the phone feels in your pocket, how it copes with sand and dust, which ecosystem you live in, and how long you’re willing to wait.
The Galaxy Z Fold 8 is the better pick for most people who want a foldable right now. It’s lighter, slimmer, cheaper and actually in stock. The iPhone Duo makes more sense if you already use an iPhone, Mac and Apple Watch, you want the toughest folding phone around, or you need huge storage, and you can handle a long wait.
Here’s the quick scorecard:
The iPhone Duo starts at $1,999 in the US for 256GB and climbs to $3,199 for 2TB. In Canada it starts at $2,999 CAD. The Galaxy Z Fold 8 starts at $1,899.99 and tops out at 1TB of storage.
Across the storage sizes both phones offer, the Duo works out about $100 more. That’s not a big gap on a phone this expensive, but Samsung has offered trade-in credit and a Google AI Pro trial with the Fold 8, which can widen it.
If you’re shopping Samsung, there’s a second option to know about. The Galaxy Z Fold 8 Ultra costs $200 more than the Fold 8 and keeps the older tall, narrow design with a bigger 8-inch inner screen, a larger 5,000mAh battery and the only telephoto camera in this group. If zoom photos matter to you, that’s the Samsung to look at.
This is the gap you’ll notice most. No iPhone has ever been heavier than the Duo, which tips the scale at 254 grams (about 8.96 ounces). Samsung went the other way: at 201 grams (about 7.09 ounces), the Fold 8 is its lightest Z Fold yet. That 53-gram difference is easy to feel in a jacket pocket and when reading one-handed.
Samsung’s phone is slimmer too:
Both use a titanium plate under the folding layers for strength, and the Duo has a grade 5 titanium frame. Colors are limited on Apple’s side, with just star white and night sky. Samsung sells the Fold 8 in white, gray, green and purple.
On the screens themselves, it’s close. Both inner displays are 7.6 inches with refresh rates up to 120Hz and up to 3,000 nits of peak brightness, so both are bright enough for sunny days. The outer screens are nearly the same size, 5.4 inches on the Duo and 5.5 inches on the Fold 8.
The differences are in the details. Apple uses a matte nano-texture coating that cuts glare and is meant to make the crease, the line where the screen bends, harder to see. The Duo also hides its inner selfie camera under the screen, so there’s no hole punched in the display. The Fold 8 uses a hole-punch camera and Corning Gorilla Glass Ceramic 3 on the front, though its anti-reflective coating also earned praise.
Durability is the Duo’s clearest win. It has an IP68 rating, and Apple says it survives being underwater at 6 meters for up to 30 minutes. The Fold 8 is rated IP48. The second number, water resistance, is the same, but the first number shows far weaker protection against dust and grit. For a phone with a hinge, that matters if you carry it to the beach, a building site or a dusty commute.
Both phones are among the fastest you can buy. The Duo runs Apple’s A20 Pro chip, the same one in the iPhone 18 Pro, built on a newer 2nm process. Apple says it has 50 percent more memory bandwidth and a 40 percent faster graphics chip than last year’s A19 Pro, which on paper puts it ahead of Qualcomm’s best chip for both work and games. The Fold 8 uses a custom Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 for Galaxy and comes with 12GB of memory, or 16GB on the top 1TB model. Apple doesn’t publish memory figures for the Duo.
Cameras are a near tie, and neither is built for zoom. Each has two rear cameras with no telephoto lens:
Battery claims are harder to compare. Samsung lists a 4,800mAh battery with 45W wired charging and 20W wireless. Apple doesn’t give a battery size, only that the Duo lasts up to 31 hours of video on the inner screen or 44 on the outer screen, with 25W MagSafe charging.
One thing they share: both unlock with a fingerprint sensor in the power button. That’s normal on Android foldables but new for iPhone owners used to Face ID, and reports say Apple is already testing Face ID for a second-generation Duo.
Your phone choice usually comes down to the rest of your gear, so start there.
Timing is the final factor. Duo preorders sold out minutes after they opened on Oct. 16, and within about 30 minutes Apple’s US online store was quoting delivery dates of Jan. 25, 2027. Canadian delivery estimates have slipped into February 2027. Store stock on launch day is expected to be thin. The Fold 8, by contrast, has been on sale since August 7 and is easy to find.
Not across the board. The Duo is tougher and has more storage options, while the Fold 8 is lighter, thinner, a little cheaper and available now.
The iPhone Duo starts at $1,999 and the Galaxy Z Fold 8 at $1,899.99 in the US, so the Duo costs about $100 more at matching storage sizes.
The iPhone Duo, at 254 grams, against 201 grams for the Galaxy Z Fold 8.
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