From 253 Grams to 201 Grams: The Engineering Behind the World’s Lightest Fold

Manal Saleh

Since introducing the first Galaxy Fold at 276 grams in 2019, Samsung Electronics has continued to expand what a foldable smartphone can be, advancing hinge and display design, durability and usability with every generation.

As those technologies evolved, Samsung focused on another challenge: making a large-screen foldable easier to carry every day, without losing the experiences that make the form factor unique.

And through that pursuit, Galaxy Z Fold5 weighed 253 grams, and Galaxy Z Fold6 reduced its weight further to 239 grams.

With Galaxy Z Fold7 came an even more ambitious goal:

“Could a foldable be lighter than a bar-type flagship smartphone?”

At the time, Galaxy S25 Ultra — one of Samsung’s flagship bar-type smartphones — weighed 218 grams. So, the development team set an even lighter weight target for Galaxy Z Fold7: 215 grams.

Galaxy Z Fold7 reached that goal. And now, building on years of foldable innovation, Galaxy Z Fold8 combines a new form factor with advances in core technologies, materials and internal architecture to weigh just 201 grams — 52 grams lighter than Galaxy Z Fold5. At 201 grams, Galaxy Z Fold8 is the world’s lightest fold.[1]

Galaxy Z Fold’s weight and thickness evolution by generation, from 276 grams and 17.1 millimeters with the first Galaxy Fold to Galaxy Z Fold8 at 201 grams and 9.7 millimeters, the world’s lightest foldable, alongside Galaxy Z Fold8 Ultra at 8.9 millimeters thick.

But consumers expected more than just a lighter foldable.

A 2024 YouGov survey[2] found that a bulky or heavy design remained a concern among consumers not planning to purchase foldables, while battery life, durability and display quality ranked as top priorities for those considering them.

This insight shaped a core engineering goal for Samsung: make foldables thinner and lighter, while maintaining the core experiences users value most.

Battery life, camera performance, thermal management and durability still had to advance.

That could not be achieved by changing a single component. Samsung engineers had to reimagine the entire device — advancing fundamental foldable technologies, introducing new materials and revisiting hundreds of components and auxiliary parts to the fraction-of-a-gram level.

From 253 grams to 201 grams. Three engineering innovations enabled that transformation.

From Galaxy Z Fold5 to Galaxy Z Fold8, Samsung reduced 52 grams to deliver the world's lightest foldable.

The Thinner and Lighter a Foldable Gets, the More Precise the Engineering Must Become

Making a foldable thinner and lighter brings a new set of engineering challenges.

The layers inside the display need to become thinner while still meeting Samsung’s durability and reliability requirements. The metal plate supporting the display needs to stay extremely flat even as it becomes thinner. And the hinge has to manage the forces created every time the device folds and unfolds, while being designed around the size and structure of each product.

Across generations, Samsung has continued to advance the display layers, ultra-thin metal precision machining and hinge technologies central to its foldable devices.

One example is Flex Titanium.

The displays in Galaxy Z Fold8 and Galaxy Z Fold8 Ultra use Flex Titanium technology featuring a Titanium Alloy Film designed for the foldable display structure.

The film is just tens of micrometers thick — roughly one-third the width of a human hair. Its material and structure work together to maintain performance at this extreme thickness.

The metal plate that supports the display presents a different challenge.

Some metal plates are machined to approximately 0.2 millimeters thick, with the thinnest sections reaching 0.15 millimeters. At that level, simply making the metal thinner is not enough. Thin metal can bend or warp more easily during machining, and even a small change in shape can affect assembly precision or the surface quality of the display.

What matters is the ability to machine ultra-thin metal at around 0.2 millimeters while consistently achieving the required shape and flatness.

Samsung refined the machining sequence, tooling, cooling conditions and process parameters, breaking the process into multiple stages to maintain precision.

The hinge requires the same level of care.

Beyond simply opening and closing the phone, it must distribute the forces created by repeated folding and unfolding across the device while maintaining structural stability.

And these requirements vary by product size and architecture.

Samsung engineers the hinge for each form factor, carefully balancing load distribution, strength, durability, internal space and weight rather than just scaling it down from one generation to the next.

Creating a thinner and lighter foldable requires more than downsizing individual parts.

It comes from greater precision in how materials are machined, how forces are managed and how structures are designed within a limited space.

Lighter, Built for Strength — Starting With the Materials

The second area is materials innovation.

Different parts of a foldable have very different jobs. Some demand high rigidity. Some must withstand repeated movement. Others need to spread heat efficiently.

Samsung selects and develops materials around those specific needs, delivering the performance each requires while optimizing weight and space.

In Galaxy Z Fold8 and Galaxy Z Fold8 Ultra, Flex Titanium incorporates a Titanium Alloy Film to support the foldable display structure.

For the exterior, Samsung uses Advanced Armor Aluminum, helping provide the strength and durability needed in a thin and lightweight frame.

Materials also play an important role in thermal management.

As a device gets thinner, there is less room to manage the heat generated inside. Samsung uses graphite with improved thermal performance, while tailoring the overall thermal structure to the size and performance requirements of each product.

In Galaxy Z Fold8 Ultra, which has similar overall dimensions to Galaxy Z Fold7, the volume of the graphite heat-dissipation layer was increased by approximately 7% to help support its enhanced performance.

Samsung also applies Clad Metal inside the rear of the device. By combining the characteristics of different metals, the material helps reduce weight while providing the thermal performance required within a thin structure.

Materials innovation is therefore not just about choosing lighter options, but about using the right material in the right place to deliver the performance each part needs with less weight and space.

Looking Again at the Entire Device — Down to 0.001 Grams

Only so much can be achieved through core technologies and new materials alone.

In a foldable already packed with highly integrated components, finding the next few grams means looking again at almost everything inside the device.

Samsung engineers reviewed approximately 270 components and more than 180 types of auxiliary parts.

This spanned everything from the display, hinge and cameras to circuit boards, antennas, brackets, tapes and fasteners.

The precision extended to reductions of 0.1 grams and 0.1 millimeters, and in some auxiliary parts, as little as 0.001 grams.

The printed circuit board, or PCB, was redesigned to remove unnecessary circuits, improve component layout and minimize its footprint.

The MFC (Magnetic Flux Channel) antenna was also reimagined to reduce unnecessary overlap and interference with surrounding components, allowing the limited internal space to be used more efficiently.

Every auxiliary part, no matter how small, was examined.

Of the more than 180 types previously used, approximately 15 were eliminated.

Engineers then reviewed the remaining 170 types, trimming oversized areas, refining shapes and optimizing dimensions. Multiple parts were consolidated into single structures where possible.

In some cases, the savings were measured in increments as small as 0.001 grams.

Each change seems minor in isolation, but repeated across the device, fractions of a gram become tenths of a gram, then whole grams.

The weight savings on a finished device result from hundreds of small engineering decisions.

Finding 6 Grams Again to Make Room for More

The goal was to reinvest the weight and space recovered through engineering into the capabilities people actually experience — including the battery, cameras and thermal system.

Galaxy Z Fold8 Ultra provides a separate example of how this approach can be applied.

Galaxy Z Fold8 Ultra and Galaxy Z Fold7 have similar overall dimensions and both weigh 215 grams. But within that same weight, Galaxy Z Fold8 Ultra increases battery capacity from 4,400 mAh to 5,000 mAh.

That larger battery brought its own challenge: the battery itself added approximately 6 grams.

So the development team faced a new question:

“Where could we find those 6 grams again?”

There was no single component that could provide the answer.

Instead, engineers applied the same systematic approach across the entire device — materials and structures, circuit layouts and component placement, down to the smallest auxiliary parts — identifying weight savings across all components.

This strategy extended to internal space optimization.

By reducing unnecessary overlap between the display, circuits, antennas and surrounding components, and by improving packaging efficiency, Samsung created room for a larger battery and enhanced thermal and camera systems.

As a result, Galaxy Z Fold8 Ultra accommodates a 5,000 mAh battery while increasing the volume of its graphite heat-dissipation layer by approximately 7% compared with the similarly sized Galaxy Z Fold7.

Galaxy Z Fold8 Ultra features a 200 MP main camera and introduces the first 50 MP Ultra-Wide camera on a Galaxy Z Fold device.

Samsung's approach to a thinner and lighter foldable is therefore not about removing capabilities.

It is about redirecting weight and space savings toward the flagship experiences users value most.

From 253 Grams to 201 Grams: Redefining the Weight Standard for Foldables

The journey began with the first Galaxy Fold at 276 grams in 2019. Across eight generations, Samsung has continued to advance the technologies, materials and internal architecture behind the foldable experience.

In recent generations, that progress accelerated — from 253 grams with Galaxy Z Fold5 to 201 grams with Galaxy Z Fold8.

But the story isn’t just about reducing weight.

Samsung’s goal has been to make a large-screen foldable easier to carry without giving up the qualities users expect from a flagship smartphone.

The weight and space recovered through advances in core technologies, materials and component design were put back into the battery, cameras, thermal system and other flagship experiences users value most.

From 253 grams to 201 grams.

No single material or component made that transformation possible.

Eight generations of engineering enabled this, advancing core technologies, introducing new materials and rethinking the entire device to make Galaxy Z Fold easier to carry without compromising the flagship experience.

Galaxy Z Fold Series: A Thinner, Lighter Journey in Numbers