The display crease on Samsung foldables has seemingly gone from tolerable to nearly nonexistent with the recently released Galaxy Z Fold 8 and Galaxy Z Fold 8 Ultra.

For years, the majority of Samsung’s new foldables have come with marginal improvements to what might be the main drawback of foldables, beyond cost. The inner display crease has always been an issue, and on the eighth generation of foldable phones, Samsung finally got it right.

It’s genuinely a sort of shock coming from the Galaxy Z Fold, which had a dip running down the display. That dip looks like a canyon, now. The Galaxy Z Fold 8 Ultra barely has a faint deviation down the center of the internal 8-inch display. Even in the harshest lighting conditions with the display off, the line is hard to make out.

Galaxy Z Fold 7 (left) Galaxy Z Fold 8 Ultra (right)

The benefit really shows in off-angle viewing, which is something the Galaxy Z Fold series is supposed to be able to do well. Its size makes it an excellent mobile monitor, in some ways, and that big display crease often becomes a huge distraction. For those of us who use these displays regularly, the crease fades away after a time if you’re used to looking at it head-on. But that’s an excuse for what’s actually a pretty big downside.

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Samsung attributes the improvement to adding a “Flex Titanium” display backing to both Galaxy Z Fold 8 models. Instead of a foundation made with plastic parts, the new titanium alloy film and plate strengthen the display’s support. Samsung says it changes hinge mechanics and display tension, which effectively reduces crease visibility. The new component choice makes the device thinner, even if just by 0.1mm.

Limited hands-on with the devices means observing how the display crease evolves over hundreds of folds isn’t feasible, but even folding and unfolding these new devices resulted in little change. That’s not something that can be said for the Galaxy Z Fold 7, which shows its inner nature almost immediately.

Samsung seems confident that the Galaxy Z Fold 8’s crease will remain nearly invisible. This is what it said in reference to the new hinge system:

The biggest advantage of this is that as the number of fold[s] increases, the crease gets worse and worse… We were able to leverage this material in order to minimize the permanent deformation. But one thing I can tell you is that this time it has been improved so much that we expect the crease will not get worse.

In any case, the improvement year-over-year is astonishing. If the pronounced display crease prevented you from buying the Galaxy Z Fold 7, it might be worth considering the Galaxy Z Fold 8 or Fold 8 Ultra. They’re slightly more expensive than they’ve been in the past, thanks to RAMaggeddon, but Samsung’s foldables have historically been top-tier. With this improvement to the display, it’s hard to suggest any other foldable unless they follow suit.

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