One of Samsung’s standout Galaxy S26 Ultra features, the privacy screen, won’t be making it to the Galaxy Z Fold 8 this year according to a highly reliable Samsung tipster. There’s also bad news on S Pen support for the foldable phone, which suggests the Galaxy Z Fold 8’s display will be an iterative update on its predecessor, the Galaxy Z Fold 7. The real innovation, it seems, is being saved for the Galaxy Z Fold 8 Wide.
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Ice Universe Reveals No Privacy Screen For Galaxy Z Fold 8
Reliable Samsung tipster Ice Universe posted on X today that the Galaxy Z Fold 8 won’t feature Samsung’s new privacy screen that debuted on the Galaxy S26 Ultra.
The privacy screen works by using a polarised filter layer built directly into the display hardware that restricts the viewing angle of the screen. At its most aggressive setting the display blacks out sharply when viewed from the side, making it difficult for someone sitting next to you to read your screen.
The strength of the effect can be adjusted to suit the user’s needs too, and it can also be set to activate only for specific apps or when a password is entered. Check out my video of it in action here.
But it won’t make it to the Galaxy Z Fold 8, according to Ice Universe. Foldable displays are fundamentally different to standard smartphone screens. They use ultra-thin glass rather than standard rigid glass, which needs to flex repeatedly without cracking. That flexibility requirement means the display stack, the layers of materials that make up the screen, has to be engineered differently to a fixed panel.
Adding a privacy polariser layer to an ultra-thin flexible display increases both the thickness and the complexity of that screen stack, which can affect how smoothly the display folds and how durable it is over time. Samsung spent five years developing the privacy screen for the Galaxy S26 Ultra’s fixed display, so adapting it for a folding panel is likely a different engineering challenge entirely.
The cover display on a foldable phone operates like a normal fixed screen, so it’s not clear whether Samsung will bring the privacy screen technology there instead.
Perhaps higher manufacturing costs mean keeping prices flat for the Galaxy Z Fold 8, which I suspect Samsung will do, is part of the reason to forgo the privacy screen. Or maybe it’s a useful Galaxy S26 Ultra exclusive that sells phones and puts some daylight between other flagships. It’s unique enough and works well enough to do precisely that.
No S Pen Support And Bad Crease News For The Galaxy Z Fold 8
Ice Universe also claims that the Galaxy Z Fold 8 won’t have S Pen support and the foldable crease “doesn’t improve much.”
The S Pen situation on Samsung’s foldable phones has had a complicated history. Samsung first introduced S Pen support to the Galaxy Z Fold series with the Galaxy Z Fold 3 in 2021. It wasn’t built into the phone, but supported via an optional case with a stylus slot. The Galaxy Z Fold 4 and Fold 5 continued with that before Samsung eventually axed S Pen support in the Fold 7.
The Galaxy Z Fold 8 is expected to be marginally thicker than the Fold 7, and tipsters had suggested that extra space might create room for S Pen compatibility to return. But Ice Universe poured cold water on that today.
The crease news is also disappointing because Samsung had demoed a crease-free foldable display design at CES in January. It’s not uncommon for the company to show off experimental new tech at trade shows, it has done that for years.
But given the prototype’s similarity to the Galaxy Z Fold range, I expected it to make its way to the Fold 8 this summer. What will be interesting to see is if this prototype display technology makes its way to the iPhone Fold later this year, but not the Galaxy Z Fold 8, which would be a major win for the Apple device and mitigate some of Samsung’s early software advantage.
Update: Samsung May Be Forced To Raise Galaxy Z Fold 8 Price, Report Claims
Update May 21st 11:33am: The Galaxy Z Fold 8’s display disappointments now come with a potential price sting too. Korean financial news publication Newspim reports that Samsung may hold the base Galaxy Z Fold 8 model price steady while pushing costs onto higher storage tiers. The 512GB Galaxy Z Fold 8 is expected to hit 3 million Korean won ($1,988)when it launches in July.
Samsung already raised prices for the Galaxy Z Fold 7 in the U.S by $100 last month, hiking the 512GB model to $2,199, while the foldable phone’s price in Korea also rose by a similar amount. That could be the new standard price for the Galaxy Z Fold 8 512GB and an indication of how Samsung manages price rises for future Galaxy launches.
The culprit, of course, is the ongoing memory chip crisis. According to Samsung’s own Q1 2026 earnings data, cited by Newspim, the cost of selling phones has risen 23% for Samsung in the first quarter of this year compared to the previous year. That cost is spread across higher mobile memory prices, but also camera modules and processors. AI data centres vacuuming up memory is part of the problem, but so are higher costs associated with transitioning to advanced manufacturing processes.
Because of that, price rises for the Galaxy Z Fold 8 may be unavoidable for Samsung. Leaving out headline features like the privacy screen, or Samsung’s latest crease-free display technology, may be one way of mitigating those higher manufacturing costs. Whether that’s the right trade-off for a phone that could cost $2000 for a meaningful storage option is the question every Galaxy Z Fold 8 buyer will have to answer in July.
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