Nubia’s first foldable offers blueprint for potential Galaxy Z Fold 8 FE

A tempting new cut-price foldable alternative to the Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 7 has emerged in the shape of the Nubia Fold.

This new book-style foldable has been listed on the website of Japanese mobile operator Y!mobile, which is only one or two steps down from an official announcement and could hint at what a future Galaxy Z Fold model could be like.

It reveals a full-sized foldable phone with some impressive specifications. Those include a huge 6,560mAh battery, which rather highlights how weedy the 4,400mAh cell of the Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 7 is. There’s 55W charging, too.

You also get a solid 8-inch 120Hz external display with a 2,480 x 2,200 resolution. Again, that’s quite an upgrade (in sharpness at least) on the Fold 7’s 2184 x 1968 equivalent.

There’s a 6.5-inch 2,748 x 1,172 cover display, too, which again outguns the Fold 7 equivalent’s 2520 x 1080 pixel count.

Nubia Fold specs

It runs on the same Snapdragon 8 Elite chip as the Fold 7, too, along with 12GB of RAM, so it should be a similarly strong performer.

One thing Nubia’s foldable won’t do is match the Galaxy Z Fold 7’s slinky design. At 160 x 144 x 5.4mm, it’s quite a bit thicker than the Samsung phone’s 158.4 x 143.2 x 4.2mm. At 11.2mm thick when closed, it’s not going to be a breeze to use as a ‘normal’ phone either.

Especially not with a weight of 249g, which is way heavier than the Galaxy Z Fold 7’s 215g. An IP54 rating, meanwhile, means that the Nubia Fold is slightly more dust resistant than the IP48-rated Fold 7, but much less water resistant.

You don’t get a dedicated telephoto camera on the Nubia Fold, just a 50Mp main sensor, a 50Mp ultra-wide, and a 5Mp macro, along with a pair of 20Mp selfie cameras.

Nubia Fold pricing

But all of this needs to be taken within the context of the price. At ¥178,560, the Nubia Fold works out to around £864.

Of course, currency translations are rarely direct, but even allowing for a huge bump we’re looking at a full sized foldable that’s significantly cheaper than the £1,799 Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 7. Indeed, it could be a more direct rival to the rumoured Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 8 FE, which has been spotted in the GSMA database (via Smartprix).

Nubia has form when it comes to undercutting flagship phones. The Nubia Z80 Ultra offers Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra-beating performance for about half the price.

It seems the Nubia Fold is available in Japan from today, while it’ll be hitting more markets in 2026. We’d like to think that might include the UK and Europe, but we’re not holding our breath.