Z Fold8 vs perangkat lipat Samsung sebelumnya: bagaimana performa baterai, efisiensi, dan pengalaman layar telah berkembang

With the annual releases of each new Samsung phone, it’s easy to lose sight of just how far things have come since the earliest foldables. As this year’s Galaxy Z Fold 8 and Ultra offer us their thinnest and lightest foldables yet, we thought it would be a good time to take a trip down memory lane and remind ourselves of just how far things have come.

POWER

Compared to previous iterations, charging devices from this range is something of a new experience. Despite having much higher capacity batteries these days (not a bad thing in itself, of course!), the upgrade to 45W wired fast charging (up from 15W) means you can now get up to 50% charge around a third faster, and a full charge in just over an hour, compared to almost two back in 2019. This is in part due to the switch from Lithium-Ion to Silicon-Carbon tech, which allows higher charging speeds without overheating, all packed within a thinner frame that helps keep things pocket-sized despite so much more on the inside.

DISPLAY

The original Samsung Galaxy Fold arrived seven years ago in September 2019 with a 4.6” external screen, and a 7.3” internal. By contrast, today’s Z Fold8 Ultra offers the biggest ever 8” internal screen, but where it makes huge leaps is in its 40%+ bigger 6.5” external screen, thanks to a far better use of the handset’s real estate.

It’s not just a question of bigger is better though, as without improvements to resolution and pixel density these would be worth very little, but significant increases in both mean the phones of yesteryear can’t hold a candle to their modern day counterparts. Refresh rate has also doubled from 60 to 120Hz in the intervening years, offering far more fluid motion than before. In truth, those earliest handsets might have had 60Hz theoretically, but their ability to use it was limited in practice.

It’s also hard to overstate just how much brighter the displays have become. Even the largest luddite should be able to appreciate the original’s increase from 380 nits to this year’s three-THOUSAND nits is literally a night and day comparison.

GAMEPLAY

In terms of gameplay, there’s really no comparing 2019’s original and today’s behemoths. The first Fold’s Snapdragon 855 processor and Adreno 640 GPU would struggle with graphic-heavy contemporary titles, with choppy sub-30 framerates an uncomfortable reality. By contrast, today’s Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 for Galaxy and the Adreno 840 can comfortably handle modern 3D titles at a stable 60 to 120 FPS. Hardware-accelerated Ray Tracing and AI-powered upscaling are something you can take for granted now that would have seemed impossible back then.

PERFORMANCE

Performance has massively improved in this relatively short space of time, thanks to huge advancements in mobile chip technology. Improved thermal management means the phone can keep cool during heavy gaming sessions or multi-window work, avoiding any forced slowdown or stuttering to protect components. Huge advancements in AI have seen more and more squeezed out of the hardware too, with constant, iterative, and dynamic adjustments being made in the background to remove unnecessary workload from the phone and maximise performance.

It will come as no surprise to those who were there, that the original foldables were fragile and experimental. The visible crease on the main screen was the source of much derision but today’s models are virtually seamless thanks to titanium alloy film and the supporting flexible plate beneath. On the outside, there’s no more pocket lint getting stuck in the wedge shaped gap on your closed device and causing untold problems for longevity; the Z Fold8 folds completely flat.

AND THAT’S NOT ALL

If you got the 2019 model wet, it was almost certainly game over, whereas today’s handsets offer IP48 water resistance. If you were taking photos, you’d have to make do with 16MP, compared to 200MP today on the Fold8 Ultra. The latest foldables have also made the leap to 8K and HDR10+, unimaginable just seven years ago, whilst internal storage has doubled from 512GB to 1TB.

Whilst year-on-year iterations of Samsung phones can sometimes make it seem that improvements are marginal, it’s clear when you take a step back that the advances made in just a short period of time have revolutionised what we can expect from our foldables.