Samsung’s Galaxy Z TriFold Is the ‘Phablet’ You’re Looking For

Folding phones have been stuck in a rut for a few years. We've seen concept smartphones playing with fresh folding designs, but ever since Samsung kickstarted the trend in 2019, there have only really been two major styles in the market: a booklike fold and the flip. However, there's new life emerging in the category with significantly slimmer designs—such as last year's Samsung Galaxy Z Fold7—and now the company's “TriFold," a smartphone that can truly transform into a 10-inch tablet.

Samsung isn't the first to market with such a phone—Huawei takes that cake with the Mate XT—but the Galaxy Z TriFold has a slightly different design. It's only available in a handful of countries, like China, South Korea, and Singapore, but Samsung plans to release it in the US this year. The price? Samsung is being coy with the MSRP, but the price of 3,594,000 South Korean won suggests it'll cost around $2,500 in the US, if not more.

I was able to briefly spend some time with the triple-panel smartphone at CES 2026, where Samsung held its First Look event at Wynn Las Vegas. Here's what it's like.

Thick and Thin

As the name suggests, Samsung's priciest folding phone opts for a trifold design, whereas Huawei's equivalent has a Z fold. I haven't used Huawei's version yet, but that does have a leg up: You can use one, two, or all three panels with its accordion-style design. The Galaxy Z TriFold only goes from a single panel to a triple panel.

As a single panel, the 6.5-inch front screen feels quite like a normal smartphone, albeit with thicker-than-usual bezels around the screen, and a weight of 309 grams that you'll have to get used to. Flip open the screen to the right, then flip the inner layer to the left, and you get a sprawling 10-inch display to work with. Keep in mind, the Galaxy Z Fold7 nets you an 8-inch screen, but that sounds like child's play next to the TriFold. It instantly feels more like an Android tablet than any other foldable Samsung has made before.

That's important because this tablet experience is the promise “book-like” folding phones have made for years, but the slight increase in screen real estate never yielded the same experience as a standard tablet. The TriFold changes that—the screen here is bigger than an iPad Mini! It feels like the actual definition of a phablet.

You can run three apps side-by-side, two apps at once, or one big app across the whole screen.

PHOTOGRAPH: Julian Chokkattu

There are two titanium hinges, and they open up three panels. You can place a full-size app on each of the three panes, use a larger version of split-screen, or expand one app across the vast display. It was easy to configure these setups, and I can totally see myself taking advantage of having three apps open simultaneously. It is still a little unwieldy to hold, but that's not unusual for a 10-inch tablet. The TriFold is very slim in its unfolded state, which helps.

Fold it up and you're looking at a thickness of 12.9 millimeters, which is just a smidge chunkier than the Galaxy Z Fold6 (12.1 mm). The fact that it's roughly the same thickness as a prior-generation fold, yet with a dramatically larger screen, is impressive. It makes the bulk a little more palatable. There is a correct way to fold it and an incorrect way. Thankfully, if you start folding it the wrong way with the right screen in first, the phone violently buzzes, and you'll see an alert on the screen asking to fold in the other screen first. I can still picture someone ignoring this and just carrying on, though.

The hardware is exquisite, and the specs are top-notch, closer to the Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra; there's a 200-megapixel main camera on the back, and the phone is powered by Qualcomm's Snapdragon 8 Elite. The displays are protected by ceramic glass, and there's even an IP48 dust- and water-resistance rating.

But as exciting as it is, the TriFold is still a niche phone. Despite nearly a decade of folding phones, the prices for these handsets are still a premium, with Samsung even raising the MSRP of its folding devices in 2025. It is far cheaper to buy a decent tablet and a flagship phone. At a time of economic turmoil, the TriFold feels frivolous.

But it's hard not to feel impressed at this engineering marvel. It's just a shame that only a handful of people will really be able to enjoy this phablet's capabilities.