Apple’s iPhone Duo reveal on September 9 was full of moments people kept replaying, but one stood out: the opening animation where the cover screen blurs into the inner display as the phone unfolds. It didn’t stay an iPhone-only trick for long — about 12 hours later, a Galaxy Z Fold 8 owner had already recreated the effect on his own foldable and shared it on Reddit.
Galaxy Z Fold 8 Owner Rebuilt Apple’s Foldable Animation in Half a Day
The post went up in r/GalaxyFold, where a user going by moomanjohnny explained that watching Apple’s demo gave him a bit of FOMO, so he decided to see what his own phone could actually do. It turned out the Fold’s hinge sensor was accurate enough to drive an animation off of, and he used those readings to build a transition that plays across both screens at once.
The thread cleared 4,400 upvotes and 435 comments in about six hours, which is heavy traffic for a subreddit this specialized.
Why the Galaxy Z Fold 8 could already do this
For anyone holding a Fold 8, the real takeaway is that nothing new had to be invented here. The hinge sensor, the dual screens and the graphics tools needed for this animation were already built into the phone — which makes this less a hardware story and more a question of Samsung’s priorities.
That hinge sensor isn’t new either. Android has been able to read hinge angles since Android 11 arrived in 2020, exposing a sensor that reports, in degrees, how far apart a foldable’s two halves are. Google’s own documentation even instructs developers to use those raw readings to drive animations that track the device as it physically moves.
Here’s the detail that’s easy to miss: none of what’s on screen during that transition is his actual home screen. It’s a separate app cycling between two photos he took earlier — one of each display — blurring from one to the other as the phone opens.
That workaround exists because Android hasn’t let ordinary apps see what’s actually being displayed on screen since Android 10, so static images are the only material an app like this has to work with. It’s also why the clock shows two different times mid-fold — the “screens” are just stills, frozen at whatever moment he snapped them.
Our Galaxy Z Fold 8 review noted that the wider cover screen takes some getting used to, and we pointed out after the Duo’s launch that Apple’s small touches looked so polished it raised a fair question: why hadn’t anyone on the Android side tried this first?
If you own a Fold 8, a Fold 8 Ultra or a Pixel 11 Pro Fold, nothing about your phone actually changed overnight. What did change is how thin the excuse looks now — because the hardware clearly was never what was holding this back.
The Catch Behind This Galaxy Z Fold 8 ‘Recreation’ — And It’s Hiding in Plain Sight
Even the person behind it isn’t overselling it. The app’s creator told the thread the effect looks cool for about a minute before it gets annoying, and that it only really holds up when viewed head-on — any shift in angle and the illusion falls apart.
Why this keeps pulling people toward Android
This is the part I keep coming back to: someone with an idea and a free evening added something to their phone that the manufacturer never shipped — and that’s not the kind of thing any spec sheet has ever captured.
Sure, it’s just an animation, and a slightly annoying one by its own creator’s admission. But I’d love to see Samsung take the hint and build it properly. And I’d love even more to keep watching people who don’t wait around for permission to try.
