Samsung opened a temporary pub in London's Soho district to launch its newest foldable phones, smartwatches, and to give a hint about upcoming smart glasses. The venue, called The Fold Inn, was confirmed by Samsung's own UK newsroom on July 23, 2026, and independently visited by reporters from Engadget and Stuff.tv the following day. Samsung described it as a "first-of-its-kind London pub experience" in its official announcement.

Foldable phones are devices with screens that bend or fold in half, letting a phone open up to a larger display. Samsung created The Fold Inn to mark the launch of three new foldable phones alongside two new smartwatches, with smart glasses teased as a product coming later.

The pub's interior worked Samsung's phones into the British pub theme in a literal way. A "folded" bar extended up the wall with non-working beer taps. The backroom had a pool table that crept up the wall, matching the screen shape of the newly launched Galaxy Z Flip 8, with multiple Z Flip 8 units placed around it for visitors to pick up and try. Walls were decorated with line drawings in a traditional pub style, but showing people holding phones instead of pint glasses. Engadget reported that Samsung had product experts on site to help visitors.

Three themed non-alcoholic beers were served on draught, free of charge, each meant to capture the personality of one of the new phones: City Pour, Soho Sippa, and Shoreditch Pint. Stuff.tv confirmed the free draught service and noted that the bar was stocked with pub snacks. For those who wanted actual alcohol, Grolsch at 3.4 percent ABV was also available. Samsung declined to say which brewery made the themed non-alcoholic beers, and the Engadget reporter, Mat Smith, described all three as tasting "pretty terrible."

One detail is worth a closer look. A signed England football shirt from the Euro '96 squad hung on the wall, bearing autographs from Alan Shearer, Teddy Sheringham, and manager Terry Venables. Smith held up a Galaxy Z Fold 8 running Google Gemini — an AI assistant built into the phone — and used it to identify the signatures on the shirt. AI, or artificial intelligence, refers to software that can perform tasks that normally require human thinking, like recognising handwriting or understanding language. That is a small moment in a marketing event, but it is exactly the kind of everyday, low-effort usefulness that built-in AI is starting to deliver outside of carefully rehearsed demonstrations. The Fold Inn is, at its core, a brand activation, and Samsung is a company that knows how to stage one. The pub theme is well-executed, the hardware is integrated into the environment with a degree of wit, and the free drinks and product experts on hand make it easy for visitors to spend time with the devices.

The broader context here is the scale and coordination of the campaign. Samsung pushed the Fold Inn announcement across multiple regional newsrooms — Norway, Belgium (French), and Sweden — alongside its UK and EU community channels, indicating a coordinated European push around the Z Fold 8 and Z Flip 8 launch rather than a UK-only stunt. The company has not shared specifics about the Fold Inn's duration or whether similar events are planned in other cities, based on the available reporting.

Foldable phones are still fighting for mainstream attention against standard, flat-slab phones that continue to dominate the market. Samsung has run pop-up events before, and rival manufacturers have used similar tactics around major launches. But the Fold Inn does something slightly different: it puts the hardware into a social, low-pressure setting where people can encounter foldable phones naturally rather than at a shop counter. Whether that turns into actual sales is a separate question that no pop-up pub can answer. What it does accomplish is giving Samsung's foldable line a tangible, shareable moment in a major European capital, at a time when the company is also signaling ambition beyond phones with the smart glasses teaser.

For the Z Fold 8 specifically, the Gemini demo — identifying handwritten football signatures on a pub wall — is a more convincing real-world use case than most of what gets shown in glossy launch presentations. If the Fold Inn does nothing else, it puts working AI on working hardware into the hands of people who might not otherwise try it. That is not nothing.