Apple solved the speaker issue Samsung couldn't on its Galaxy Z Fold 8

For some of us, Samsung's Galaxy Z Fold 8 quickly became one of our favorite smartphones ever. Even so, it distinctly feels like a first-gen device in some areas. One of our main issues with the Fold 8 is the speaker placement, and it looks like Apple took notes.

Apple has just announced the iPhone Duo as its first-ever foldable phone, and it certainly looks like an interesting Galaxy Z Fold 8 rival. There is plenty to talk about, but the speaker placement is something that really caught the attention of some of us Fold 8 users.

The Galaxy Z Fold 8's audio issue, apart from the tinny-sounding speakers, is the speakers' placement. Both speakers are embedded in the cover screen half of the phone. One speaker is at the top and the other one at the bottom.

Samsung's speaker placement works perfectly fine when viewing content in landscape mode on the cover screen. However, once you unfold the phone into landscape mode, you'll notice that both speakers now fire from the left side, almost negating the phone's stereo capabilities.

Apple's brand-new iPhone Duo also has two speakers: One at the top and the other at the bottom when you use the phone folded in portrait mode.

What's different is that each speaker is located on the opposite half of the iPhone Duo. One is at the bottom of the phone's camera half, and the other is at the top of the cover display half — instead of both being embedded in the cover display's frame.

In practical terms, when using the iPhone Duo unfolded as a tablet in landscape mode, one speaker fires from the upper-left side, and the other fires from the lower-right side. Here's a screenshot of how Apple presented this characteristic.

The iPhone Duo's speaker placement is still not perfectly symmetrical, but this layout should provide better stereo separation than the Galaxy Z Fold 8's solution.

All in all, this isn't something truly innovative, and we don't know how the iPhone Duo's speakers actually sound. But it is something we had already wished the Fold 8 had weeks before Apple announced its iPhone Duo.

Apple's speaker placement feels like a natural conclusion, and it's a bit of a head-scratcher how Samsung couldn't reach the same conclusion while designing the Fold 8. Or maybe it did and had other Fold 8 design constraints to worry about.

Whatever the case may be, the iPhone Duo does speaker placement better than the Galaxy Z Fold 8, and we're hoping Samsung takes its own notes for the next-gen Galaxy Z Fold.