This is where the Fold8’s positioning for its price gets uncomfortable. You get a 50MP main sensor with OIS and a 50MP ultrawide with a 120-degree field of view, plus 10MP selfie cameras on both the cover screen and inside the inner display. What you do not get is a telephoto lens of any kind. The 2x crop zoom from the main sensor is genuinely close to optical quality, and 4x results are usable in good light, but 10x is a stretch and anything beyond that is not worth attempting.
In daily shooting, the main camera is reliable. Colours lean towards Samsung’s familiar punchy tuning, though HDR is handled with more restraint than before, and daylight shots have the kind of consistency you expect from a Samsung flagship. The ultrawide is a welcome and capable second lens with minimal distortion at the edges, and it holds colour and exposure close to the main sensor, which is not something every dual-camera phone manages.
Portraits are a pleasant surprise given there is no dedicated telephoto to lean on. The 2x crop from the main sensor is the default portrait focal length, and edge detection around hair, spectacles and busy backgrounds is handled cleanly most of the time. Skin tones stay natural rather than over-brightened, which matters for Indian complexions where aggressive processing often goes wrong. Push to 4x portraits and the software does a respectable job in good light, though you can see the digital stretching if you look closely.
Night photography is where the missing hardware shows up more honestly. The main sensor with OIS pulls in impressive detail after dark, night mode shots of streets and buildings come out clean with well-controlled highlights from streetlights and signage, and noise is kept in check. The ultrawide is noticeably weaker at night, with softer detail and more noise creeping into the shadows, and any zoom beyond 2x after sunset is best avoided. For social media and casual low-light shooting, the Fold8 delivers without hesitation. For serious night photography, the S26 Ultra remains a class apart.
Video is arguably stronger than stills. Recording goes up to 8K at 30fps, though 4K at 60fps is the sweet spot for most people, with excellent stabilisation from the super steady mode and a horizon lock feature that keeps footage level even when you are walking. Dual recording from front and rear cameras simultaneously is genuinely useful for events and vlogging-style content, and the auto-tracking FanCam mode, which follows a subject and reframes on its own, works better than I expected at concerts and family functions. Audio capture is clean, and the big inner screen doubles as the best video monitoring experience on any phone. The inner hole-punch camera occasionally sits over a menu button or subtitle while shooting or reviewing footage, which you learn to live with.
But context matters. At Rs 1,79,999, this phone costs more than a Galaxy S26 Ultra and shoots worse than one. If your buying decision is weighted towards photography, particularly zoom photography for weddings, events and travel, the Fold8 is not the right phone, and Samsung knows it, which is why the Fold8 Ultra with its 200MP main sensor and 3x optical telephoto exists Rs 20,000 above this.
