All photographs and screenshots are our own. The Galaxy Z Fold8 was supplied by Samsung Malaysia. This article carries a paid partnership label.
Five everyday tasks, done on our Malaysian Galaxy Z Fold8 in September 2026, each shown on screen rather than described.
Contents
- 1. Can your phone find lunch and write the list for you?
- 2. Can your phone tell you what you are looking at?
- 3. Can your phone run three apps at once, and still be readable?
- 4. Can your phone organize your documents?
- 5. Can your phone send a big video straight to another phone?
- So, can your phone do this?
Most phones can run an AI assistant now. The more useful question is what you can actually get done with one, and whether the phone in your hand makes that easier or harder.
So we set the Galaxy Z Fold8 five small challenges, the kind of thing you might genuinely need on a Tuesday, and photographed every step. No staged results and no borrowed marketing shots: what you see below is our phone, our account and the answers it gave us.
1. Can your phone find lunch and write the list for you?
The test: one request, two apps, no switching. We held the side button to bring up Gemini and typed a single sentence:
"Find three highly rated nasi lemak places near KLCC and save them as a list in Google Keep."
Gemini can draw on Google's own apps, such as Google Maps and Google Keep, when you ask it to, which is what lets a request like this go from a search to a saved note in one conversation.
Gemini came back with Madam Kwan's in Suria KLCC, and two Kampung Baru favourites a short ride away, Nasi Lemak Wanjo and Nasi Lemak Antarabangsa, and confirmed it had saved them to a new list in Google Keep.
Opening Keep, the note was already there: titled "Highly Rated Nasi Lemak Near KLCC", with the three places as a checklist and a small Gemini tag showing where it came from. One request, and the list existed before we had put the phone down.
It is a small thing, but it is the small things that usually fall apart: you find the places, get distracted, and the list never gets made.
This is separate from Samsung's Gemini Intelligence app automation, which goes further in some markets and works across more than 40 supported apps and services, from looking up tickets to making a restaurant reservation. Samsung states that feature is currently available in the United States and Korea, with more regions and languages to follow this year. If it arrives in Malaysia, we will put it through the same kind of test.
2. Can your phone tell you what you are looking at?
The test: ask about what is already on the screen, without copying, pasting or describing it. We paused one of our own ProductNation videos on YouTube, started Gemini Live, shared the screen with it and asked:
"What is this video about?"
This needs Gemini Live rather than the standard Gemini panel: once the screen is shared, Gemini Live can see the video in front of you and talk about it, instead of running a general search.
Gemini Live's answer was that the team at ProductNation replaces all of its regular content creation and filmmaking gear with Samsung Galaxy Z Fold phones, to see whether the foldables can really do it all. That is an accurate one-line summary of the video, and we had not told it anything about what was on screen.
Gemini Live works with the camera the same way, so the question can be about something in the room around you as easily as something on the screen.
3. Can your phone run three apps at once, and still be readable?
This is where the fold earns its place over a regular phone, however good that phone's assistant is.
The test: keep Gemini, a web page and our notes in view at the same time. On the Galaxy Z Fold8's 7.6-inch inner screen, now in a wider 4:3 shape, three-way Split View put a ProductNation article in Chrome on one half, with Gemini and Samsung Notes stacked on the other. A tap moves between windows, and text and images can be dragged from one app into another.
In practice it changes how research feels on a phone. Instead of asking a question, leaving to check a page, and coming back to write something down, all three stay in front of you. If you use the same combination often, it can be saved as an app pair and reopened together in one tap.
This is also where the wider inner screen matters. In our review of the Galaxy Z Fold8 on 4 August we called the squarer 4:3 display a better canvas for reading, browsing and multitasking, and a month later, in our one-month report, it was still the screen we kept opening. Three apps side by side is the clearest reason why.
If you want even more room, the Galaxy Z Fold8 Ultra has an 8.0-inch inner screen for the same layouts.
4. Can your phone organize your documents?
The test: take a long document and get something useful out of it without reading it end to end. The Galaxy Z Fold8 comes with Gemini Notebook, the research app Google called NotebookLM until July, and it answers only from the files you give it.
We pasted a page of meeting notes into it and asked for two things. First, a slide deck: Gemini Notebook turned the notes into slides, and it can make an infographic the same way, which you can check on the inner screen with the notes open beside it. Second, an Audio Overview: a podcast-style discussion of those same notes, which ran to just over 15 minutes, to listen to on the drive home instead of reading at a desk.
It is the kind of job a big screen suits: the document on one half, the finished slides on the other, and nothing to copy between them.
5. Can your phone send a big video straight to another phone?
The test: move a 181.8MB video between two Galaxy phones sitting next to each other, with no cable, no cloud upload and no messaging app compressing it.
Pick the file, tap Quick Share and choose the phone beside you. The other phone gets a prompt straight away, with the file and its size, and one tap on Accept starts the transfer.
For anyone who shoots video on their phone, it means sending the original file rather than trusting a messaging app not to compress it. And it is no longer limited to Galaxy phones: Quick Share on the Galaxy Z Fold8 now works with AirDrop in both directions, so a friend with a nearby Apple device can send you a file, and you can send one back.
So, can your phone do this?
None of these five tasks is dramatic on its own. Planning lunch, asking what a video is about, keeping three apps open, turning a document into slides, and sending a file are ordinary jobs. What the Galaxy Z Fold8 does is cut down the steps in between: less switching between apps, more of the task in view at once, and the original file rather than a compressed copy.
And the third challenge is the one that sets it apart: an assistant, a web page and your notes, all readable on one screen at once, is what the fold is for.
In Malaysia the Galaxy Z Fold8 starts at RM7,299 and the Galaxy Z Fold8 Ultra starts at RM8,099. Samsung Malaysia's current promotion runs from 14 August to 4 October 2026, with savings of up to RM1,909.90 on the new Galaxy Z series, and a Galaxy Z Fold8 purchase includes a six-month trial of Google AI Pro.
Paid partnership with Samsung Malaysia. Samsung Malaysia supplied the Galaxy Z Fold8 used for this article. The tests, the photographs, the screenshots and the observations are ProductNation's own. Features and availability of Galaxy AI and Gemini may vary by country, language and device.
