Samsung’s new Galaxy Z Fold 8 is getting a strong response in Japan, even though the country is known as a major iPhone market. The new foldable phone is attracting many young Japanese customers, mainly men in their 20s and 30s.

At Samsung’s Galaxy Harajuku store in Tokyo, many young people visited to try the new phone. They opened and closed it, checked its size and thickness, and watched videos on its large screen. Some young customers called the phone “kawaii,” meaning “cute.”

A store employee said sales of the Galaxy Z Fold 8 are about twice as high as sales of the previous Galaxy Z Fold 7. Pre-orders have also more than doubled. All models were sold out at the store, while some versions also became unavailable on Samsung’s Japanese online store. Lavender and Pistachio are among the most popular colors.

The phone is attracting new customers, including women and people moving from iPhones and Google Pixel phones. Foreign tourists are also buying the phone because it can be cheaper in Japan than in their home countries.

Apple is still the biggest smartphone company in Japan. It had a 51.6% share of the smartphone market in fiscal 2025. Samsung had an overall mobile-phone market share of 11%.

However, Samsung is much stronger in foldable phones. It held about 60.4% of Japan’s foldable-phone market in fiscal 2023. All four major Japanese mobile carriers now sell Samsung foldable phones. The Galaxy Fold 8 is also doing well worldwide, with pre-orders rising by more than 30% compared with the previous model.

Samsung officially launched new offers for the buyers of Galaxy Z Fold 8, Fold 8 Ultra, Watch 9 and Watch Ultra 2 in the UK.

Launched on July 22, the new Galaxy products went on sale on August 7. The company offered some incredible promotions during pre-orders. However, the response from British shoppers pushed Samsung to expand the offers.

Galaxy Z Fold 8 series – Up to £170 off

UK people buying Galaxy Z Fold 8 or Z Fold 8 Ultra from Samsung.com or an Experience Store can receive up to £170 off select configurations at checkout. Samsung also offers enhanced Trade In values toward the latest foldables.

For shoppers wondering about upgrading from an existing smartphone, Samsung is also offering enhanced Trade In values of £30 – £752 towards Galaxy Z Fold 8 or Galaxy Z Fold 8 Ultra when you trade in a qualifying device.

Galaxy Watch 9, Ultra 2 – Enhanced trade-in and 100-day trial

Samsung UK announced that customers purchasing a Galaxy Watch 9 or Galaxy Watch Ultra 2 from the official shop or an Experience Store can receive between £27 – £132 off when trading in a qualifying smartwatch.

Additionally, the company’s 100-Day Buy & Try programme lets shoppers discover Samsung’s latest smartwatches. Note that the offer is limited to non-cellular variants of the Galaxy Watch models, purchased from a participating retailer.

What’s more, shoppers getting a Watch Ultra 2 or Watch 9 alongside any eligible phone, tablet, laptop or XR device from Samsung.com or an Experience Store by August 18, 2026 can receive 15 percent off their watch at checkout.

Samsung Galaxy S27 series may not be equipped with a variable aperture camera. A new industry report claims that the company has internally canceled the project, even though potential debut on the iPhone 18 Pro series.

Galaxy S27 Ultra drops variable aperture camera

Korea’s credible outlet, ETNews, reports that Samsung has no plans to use a variable aperture camera in the Galaxy S27 Ultra. The company has reportedly decided not to revive the camera tech it debuted on the Galaxy S9 series.

Samsung had reportedly been working with camera module partners on variable aperture tech, which fueled expectations it would land on the Galaxy S27 Ultra’s main sensor.

Previous rumor: Galaxy S27 Ultra tipped to feature 200MP camera with variable aperture

Adding a mechanical aperture means a thicker, more complex camera module, and Samsung apparently concluded the real-world image quality gains don’t justify that trade-off on a phone-sized sensor.

With camera specs no longer the deciding factor for most smartphone buyers, it makes sense that Samsung would rather not sink money into hardware with limited everyday benefit.

If this holds, the Galaxy S27 Ultra will likely continue leaning on software-driven image processing rather than mechanical hardware to fine-tune exposure and depth.

Samsung isn’t new to variable aperture camera

Apple will effectively have variable aperture to itself, at least for this generation, giving it a genuine talking point over Samsung’s flagship when the iPhone 18 Pro launches later this year.

For context, variable aperture lets the camera physically adjust how much light hits the sensor, tightening up in bright daylight and opening wider in low light.

The Galaxy S9 and Galaxy S10 both shipped with variable aperture hardware back in 2018 and 2019, before the company dropped it in favor of handling similar effects through software and computational photography.

High-Bandwidth Memory (HBM) is crucial in AI architecture, but leading vendors like SK Hynix and Samsung are now looking to focus on utilization rather than just producing the memory chips in high volume.

Industry sources report that AI servers today are only using 50 to 60 percent of their installed memory for actual computation, with the rest sitting locked away, unable to be shared across servers even when idle.

That’s a massive amount of wasted capacity, and it’s pushing companies like Samsung and SK Hynix toward a very different strategy: utilization over raw expansion.

HBM has been the backbone of AI acceleration for years, but there’s only so much of it you can physically attach to a single GPU before manufacturing costs and process complexity spiral out of control.

Add in plant site constraints for SK Hynix and Micron, along with Samsung’s ongoing yield challenges on 1c-nm DRAM, and it’s clear the industry needs another lever to pull.

CXL, PIM, and HBF step in

That’s where Compute Express Link comes in, letting scattered memory across servers get pooled and reallocated dynamically instead of sitting locked to one machine.

Samsung is already mass producing 256GB CMM-D modules with an orchestration console for managing allocation, while SK Hynix has its own 96GB and 128GB CXL solutions paired with Niagara software.

Beyond that, Processing-in-Memory and High Bandwidth Flash are entering the picture too, tackling power efficiency and massive-capacity inference workloads respectively.

A tiered future

SK Hynix’s “Tiered Memory” vision, unveiled at FMS 2026, sums it up well.

No single memory type can carry the agentic AI era alone. Instead, HBM, CXL, and PIM will likely work together, each handling a different piece of the puzzle as AI workloads keep evolving.

Samsung Galaxy Z8 series is off to a stronger start in Indonesia than any foldable lineup before it, and the Galaxy Z Fold 8 is doing most of the heavy lifting.

According to an Indonesian outlet, Samsung announced that the pre-order volume for the Galaxy Z Fold 8, Z Fold 8 Ultra, and Z Flip 8 combined jumped 50 percent over the previous generation in Indonesia.

Samsung has reported similar record-breaking numbers out of South Korea, India, and parts of Europe for the same lineup.

Samsung foldable sales surge 50% in Indonesia

Out of every ten units ordered during the pre-booking window, close to six went to the standard Galaxy Z Fold 8 across Indonesia and the wider Southeast Asian region during the early booking period. Lavender has turned out to be the most popular colorway among Indonesian buyers.

Samsung’s own research found that 89 percent of buyers weighed the fresh, unique, and more compact design before deciding to purchase. Galaxy Z Fold8 is the lightest Fold model Samsung has ever shipped, and it shows in how customers are responding.

Yadi Prayitno, who heads Samsung MX Indonesia, called the numbers beyond expectations, noting that pre-order volume hit its highest mark since foldables launched in the country, just two weeks after bookings opened.

Pre-orders in Indonesia run from July 22 through August 13, and Samsung has sweetened the deal as the window nears its end with trade-in bonuses, banking cashback, and zero percent installment plans starting from roughly Rp900,000 a month.

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• Galaxy Z Fold 8 1.44 million pre-orders break records of Galaxy S26, Note 10, and all others