A new benchmark report looks at how the most popular foldable Android devices perform just one month before the release of the iPhone Duo.Credit: Chris Ratcliffe/Bloomberg
We are just a month away from the official launch of Apple’s first foldable device, the iPhone Duo. If you’re already an iPhone user, only looking to purchase a foldable iPhone, there’s likely nothing that will sway you towards any other foldable smartphone.
However, Android users may be wondering just how the iPhone Duo will stack up to the other foldable devices that exist for Android. While we will still have to wait for iPhone Duo benchmarks, the company behind SpeedTest.net, Ookla, has just released comprehensive benchmarks for Android foldable devices, which should definitely come in handy when deciding which foldable you’ll go with in a few weeks.
Ookla’s report focuses on six popular foldable devices in the U.S. market: Samsung’s Galaxy Z Fold6, Fold7, Fold8, Fold8 Ultra, Flip6, and Google’s Pixel 10 Pro Fold.
The company tested these foldable smartphones on a number of metrics and used their respective generation’s “slab” model with the same chipset, such as the Galaxy S26 Ultra, as the “control” for comparison.
It’s important to note that there are some differences between the foldable device and its comparable slab model, such as antenna placement and specific device firmware, that will affect these metrics. But this seems like a generally good methodology for deriving these benchmarks.
When it comes to speed, the Galaxy Z Fold8 Ultra appears to be the big winner. It excelled in download speed, upload speed, and packet-loss reduction. The base Galaxy Z Fold8 model was not far behind. In fact, in median download speed it actually performed slightly better than the Ultra, although the Ultra model bested it in the other metrics.
While the Fold8 and Fold8 Ultra performed best in the speed test trials, they didn’t fare as well when it came to the signal quality measurement tests. As Ookla points out, even though the two foldables are powered by the same Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 chipset and Snapdragon X85 modem as the Galaxy S26 Ultra, the latter outperformed the Fold8 and Fold8 Ultra here.
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Overall, the Galaxy Z Fold6 appears to have had the best scores in both signal quality measurement tests, in both good and bad conditions. Interestingly, the Galaxy Z Flip6 had the worst performance in signal quality measurement tests under good conditions, but the best under bad conditions when compared to its control device.
The temperature benchmark found that the Samsung Galaxy Z Fold7 ran the coolest when compared to its control device, whereas the Flip6 was the hottest.
Ookla also mapped out how Samsung’s foldable devices have fared with each subsequent generation on each metric. It found that Samsung has improved the upload speeds, download speeds, and signal strength measurements with each new model foldable smartphone. However, there were two benchmarks where Samsung has been regressing.
When it comes to signal strength in bad conditions, the Fold6 actually outperformed the Fold7 and Fold8. While the Fold8 Ultra performed better than the Fold7 and Fold8 in this area, it was still outperformed by the Fold6.
The Fold8 and Fold8 Ultra also saw a big decline in performance on the overheating-related throttling benchmark when compared to the Fold7. The Fold7 had a big boost in this metric when compared to the Fold6, but its successors have seemingly regressed when it comes to the operating system slowing down due to the device’s temperature.
While not benchmark-related, Ookla also shared some market share statistics. Based on Speedtest’s foldable sample share, the Samsung Galaxy Z Fold7 far and away is the most popular foldable smartphone in the world.
And while companies like Motorola, Google, and Honor have been chipping away at Samsung’s foldable market share, Samsung still holds more than 77 percent of the foldable market.
We’ll see how that changes on October 23 with the release of the iPhone Duo.
Matt Binder joined Mashable’s tech vertical in 2018, where he covers social media, tech policy, cybersecurity, online scams, cryptocurrency, AI, creator news, weird tech, and other related tech beats.
