Let’s be honest, the foldable phone market has started to feel a little… predictable. For the past few years, it’s been a two-horse race of “books” that open into small tablets (like Samsung’s Z Fold) and “flips” that are all about nostalgia and pocket space. It’s cool tech, but we’ve all been waiting for the next leap.
Well, it looks like Samsung is finally ready to show us its next hand, and it’s a big one.
The floodgates just opened, courtesy of renowned gadget leaker Evan Blass (a.k.a. @evleaks), who dropped what he calls “some confirmed details” on Samsung’s long-rumored, oft-teased trifolding device. If this spec sheet is real—and with Blass, it’s wise to pay attention—Samsung isn’t just dipping its toe in the water. It’s doing a cannonball.
First, it finally has a name, and it’s exactly as straightforward as you’d expect: the Galaxy Z TriFold.
No “Ultra,” no “Pro,” no “G” (as some had rumored). Just a simple, descriptive name that tells you exactly what it is. And what it is sounds frankly bonkers.
According to the leak, the TriFold is a device of two extremes. When it’s all folded up, it’s a phone with a 6.5-inch cover display. That’s basically a normal-sized smartphone, and it’s reportedly a super bright one at that, capable of hitting a blinding 2600 nits of peak brightness for outdoor viewing.
But the party trick, of course, is when you open it. And open it. And open it again.
Unfurled, the Galaxy Z TriFold reveals a massive 10-inch internal display. This isn’t a “phone-that-becomes-a-small-tablet” anymore. This is a “phone-that-becomes-a-full-on-iPad.” That’s a genuine leap in usability, bridging the gap between a pocket device and a proper productivity or media-consumption screen.
A 10-inch screen needs serious hardware to back it up, and Samsung appears to be throwing the kitchen sink at this thing.
- CPU: It’ll be “Powered by SD,” which is code for a high-end Qualcomm Snapdragon SoC. While the exact chip isn’t named, it would have to be either the current-gen Snapdragon 8 Elite (found in the Z Fold7) or the brand new Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 to make any sense. A 10-inch screen doing high-level multitasking will need all the horsepower it can get.
- Camera: This is where Samsung is making a statement. The TriFold is tipped to host a 200-megapixel main camera. This is a huge deal. Typically, foldables (even premium ones) have to compromise on camera hardware to save space and weight. By including the same sensor found in its top-tier S-series “Ultra” phones, Samsung is signaling that the TriFold is not a gimmick; it’s a new flagship, period.
- Battery: Powering a 6.5-inch screen and a 10-inch screen takes juice. The leak points to a 5,437mAh rated battery. That’s a massive battery for any phone, and it’s a critical component for making this form factor viable for all-day use.
Perhaps the most impressive part of the leak is the one that’s easiest to gloss over: the thickness.
Blass claims the three separate panels that make up the device have varying thicknesses: 3.9mm, 4.0mm, and 4.2mm. Do the math, and that means the phone, when fully folded, could be as thin as 12.1mm.
Why does this matter? Because the only real competitor in this space, Huawei, has already shown its hand. Huawei’s trifold, the Mate XT, is a technical marvel but comes in at around 12.8mm thick. Samsung’s rumored device isn’t just matching the competition; it’s beating it on a key metric that directly affects how good a device feels in your pocket. A fraction of a millimeter is a canyon-sized gap in the world of high-end phone engineering.
It also appears Samsung is sticking with its inward-folding design, which (unlike Huawei’s) keeps the delicate, foldable 10-inch screen protected when the device is closed.
Okay, so it’s a 10-inch, 200MP, ultra-thin folding tablet-phone. Now for the cold water.
Nothing is official until Samsung says it is. We’ve seen rumors for this device come and go for over a year, though Samsung did recently show it off (under glass, mind you) at a tech summit in Korea, adding a ton of fuel to the fire.
The current whispers point to a December 5th launch in Korea. But this isn’t expected to be a global, buy-it-at-Best-Buy kind of release. Reports suggest an initial run of just 20,000 to 50,000 units, making this a very limited, “testing the waters” kind of launch.
And the price? You’d better sit down. The rumored tag is floating at a staggering $3,000.
At that price, this is not a device for you or me. It’s a device for the earliest of early adopters, for tech enthusiasts with deep pockets, and for Samsung to prove that it can. It’s a halo product, a “because we can” device that will pave the way for the Z TriFold 3 or 4 that might, one day, be affordable.
But one thing is clear: the foldable race is about to get a whole lot more interesting.
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