Foldable phone makers have declared war on the display crease, and this year could be the year a bunch of them make real progress. Samsung, in particular, has been slowly reducing the visibility of the crease over the past few years, but the recent launch of the Galaxy Z 8 series marks the most significant reduction to date.
Rumors suggested that Samsung had managed to eliminate the crease, but I can promise you that this isn't the case based on my experience with the Galaxy Z Fold 8 Ultra over the past day. Samsung has made a lot of progress in making the crease less visible, but it hasn't managed to hide it from view completely.
I should make it very clear from the get-go that the crease on the Z Fold 8 Ultra is rather difficult to see at a glance. Especially when you compare it to the Galaxy Z Fold 7, which, despite its own screen refinements, still has a rather prominent crease down the middle of its foldable screen.
That being said, the visibility of the crease all depends on what the phone is doing and what the lighting conditions are like. For instance, having the screen switched on makes the crease a lot harder to notice than when it's switched off.
Bright, direct light is the worst offender for this. Which means that even though the Z Fold 8 Ultra has a new anti-reflective coating and a 3,000-nit display to aid performance in bright conditions, there's no hiding the prominent dip and warp running down the center of the screen.
That said, switch your location to a spot without bright and direct light, and the crease practically vanishes before your eyes. So long as the screen is switched on, that is.
Similarly, bright environments really highlight the warping around the center of the phone. However, it's not even close to as bad as the warping visible on the Z Fold 7. That level of warping is enough to visibly ruin whatever is on your screen, and is particularly pronounced in bright environments.
Tilting the screen around ruins the illusion too, but as long as you're avoiding direct light, it's still a bit of a struggle to see the crease on the Fold 8 Ultra.
Looking at the Z Fold 8 Ultra is only one part of the equation when it comes to the crease, though. Samsung doesn't seem to have made any headway in reducing the way the crease feels when you slide over it with your finger.
There's a noticeable bump, followed by a dip and another bump. It's not subtle, and the feeling is almost identical to that of the Galaxy Z Fold 7. That suggests to me that the hinge design hasn't changed since last year, and the Flex titanium display doesn't seem to be doing much, if anything, to cushion everything underneath the display panel.
How this affects you is going to depend on how you use your Z Fold 8 or 8 Ultra. I've been using the larger screen in landscape mode, with the crease running from left to right, and that naturally means my thumb rolls over the crease quite a lot. Obviously, if I held the phone the other way, with the crease running from top to bottom, things would be totally different.
Obviously this is something prospective Galaxy Z Fold 8 owners need to be aware of. Just because Samsung has reduced the visibility of the Z Fold 8's crease by a considerable amount, it doesn't mean that you won't notice it. Whether that's because you're in a bright environment, or because you can't stop sliding over it while doing basic, everyday things on the larger screen.
Still, credit where credit is due, Samsung has done a lot to improve the look of the Galaxy Z Fold 8 Ultra's display. Though now the real question is how it will compare to the upcoming foldable iPhone Ultra.
After all, Apple has reportedly been especially particular about the crease to the point where it apparently delayed the phone until it could be eliminated. But we'll have to wait until mid-to-late September to find out for sure.
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