To say that the cat’s out of the bag when it comes to this summer’s Samsung foldable launches might be a bit of an understatement. The Galaxy Z Fold 8, Fold 8 Ultra, and Flip 8 have been the subject of so many early leaks that it practically feels like they’re already here.
The latest comes from renowned leaker Evan Blass, who dropped a gallery of official-looking Samsung marketing materials that leaves nothing to the imagination.
Galaxy Z Fold 8
Easily the star of this year’s event, Samsung’s new shape for its foldable lineup already has plenty of fans excited. The images confirm the short-and-wide form factor that’s been rumored for months, with lifestyle shots showing how apps will take advantage of the interesting screen geometry.
Galaxy Z Fold 8 Ultra
The Ultra variant gets its own gallery showing off slightly longer battery life, with a 5,000 mAh cell promising up to 27 hours of video playback. The camera system supports 8K filming at 30fps, and the profile shots reveal just how thin this thing looks when closed.
Galaxy Z Flip 8
Of all three new foldables, the Flip 8 arguably gets the most detailed treatment in this leak. It’s also the one with the most conservative hardware changes relative to last year’s model — including that same 4,300 mAh battery.
If you feel like you’re drowning by this point in all things Samsung foldables, we don’t blame you. This has been a leak-heavy season, and there’s no sign of that pace slowing down with launch day almost upon us.
While we wait for the Pixel 11 launch, rumors about the Pixel 11a and even the Pixel 12a are already emerging.
According to Mystic Leaks, the Pixel 11a — codenamed “Formosan” — will be powered by the latest Tensor G6 chip. That’s notable after the Pixel 10a used the same chip as its predecessor, with rumors suggesting G5 was too expensive.
The 11a will be paired with a Titan M3 security chip, PowerVR C-Series GPU, and MediaTek M90 modem. RAM stays at 8 GB.
The 6.3-inch display remains 1080×2424, with a slight brightness bump to 2,250 nits HDR and 3,350 nits peak. There’s a slight downgrade in minimum battery capacity to 4,870 mAh from 5,000 mAh on the 10a.
In terms of colors: Obsidian (black), Fog (silver), Olive (green), and Frost (purple).
Google has reportedly improved Face Unlock on the Pixel 11. A source claims the experience will be “faster, more secure, and accurate in low-light.”
While the smartphone market as a whole is struggling right now, there are some bright spots. Google Pixel is managing to grow on the global market, but India in particular is doing well, with Pixel and Nothing as the two fastest-growing brands in the region.
A new report from Counterpoint Research details Q2 2026 smartphone shipments in India, with an overall decline of 10% year-over-year. Vivo and iQOO both lost market share, while Samsung was the only top brand to grow in shipments — and even then, by a mere 2%.
Nothing was India’s fastest-growing smartphone brand overall, seeing 105% growth year-over-year. Counterpoint attributes that to interest in the Nothing Phone (4a) series and Nothing’s title sponsorship with the RCB cricket team.
Google Pixel, meanwhile, was the fastest-growing brand in the “ultra-premium” space (phones priced over INR 45,000). Pixel managed 68% growth in Q2 in India, attributed to marketing, a push into offline retail sales, and no price hikes on its products.
The Indian market is shifting. Chinese brands are losing ground, and consumers are gravitating toward alternatives that offer something different.
As expected, Samsung is switching its new Galaxy Watch 9 over to a Qualcomm chip, the Snapdragon Wear Elite, as some new images confirm.
Qualcomm announced Snapdragon Wear Elite as its latest smartwatch chipset earlier this year, with the 3nm chip promising faster overall performance and a ton of additional power for AI tasks. It was also teased that Samsung would be adopting the chip.
That’s big news. The Galaxy Watch series has exclusively used Exynos chipsets over the years, which was actually to their benefit during the several-year-run where Qualcomm’s chips were… underwhelming, we’ll say. The only question left was whether Samsung would ditch Exynos altogether.
It seems the answer is yes.
Evan Blass poked out of retirement again through his “Leakmail” newsletter, with a batch of images including one that explicitly shows the Galaxy Watch 9 — not the Ultra 2 — as “Powered by Snapdragon Wear Elite.”
What Samsung might do with the added horsepower remains to be seen. The Galaxy Watch 9 drops next week alongside Samsung’s new foldables.
Samsung is no stranger to wild foldable ideas. The company has previously filed patents for a phone that looks like a brick and unfolds into a tablet, and has experimented with rollable phone concepts. Now, Samsung has filed yet another patent for a foldable phone that folds both ways.
The patent shows a phone that looks fairly similar to a Galaxy Z Flip, but with curves near the hinge. Those curves are presumably there to prevent the display from colliding with itself when folded inwards or outwards.
Two ways to fold
When folded inwards (closed position), the patent describes the curved edges still being used to display images to the user. Remember the Galaxy S7 Edge with its “Edge UX”? This sounds very similar — and could actually be a good idea.
When folded outward, the display is fully exposed and offers a more immersive screen.
As always, the usual disclaimers apply: Just because Samsung filed a patent doesn’t mean it’s working on a device like this. It doesn’t even mean it ever will. But it’s an interesting idea, and one Samsung has clearly given some thought to.