Samsung’s Galaxy Z TriFold Shows Promise and is Undeniably Cool

Earlier this fall, Samsung announced its new Galaxy Z Trifold, the brand-new foldable from the company. Innovating off of its Galaxy Z Fold 7, a favourite of mine this year, the Galaxy Z Trifold folds twice instead of having a single crease. In a brief hands-on session with the device, I began to realize how Samsung may attempt to bridge the gap between smartphone and tablet even more.

Smartphones are becoming larger than ever. Manufacturers are attempting to push the boundaries of screen real estate, especially when it comes to foldables. This year, Samsung introduced the Galaxy Z Fold 7, which impressed me with its stunning 8-inch AMOLED display and slim body when folded. The company looked at itself in the mirror and asked, “Can we go bigger?” And the answer is yes. In comes the Galaxy Z TriFold.

Samsung’s Galaxy Z TriFold feels very reminiscent of the Galaxy Z Fold 7, the flagship foldable from Samsung. While folded, the device is 159.2 x 75 x 12.9 mm, thicker than the Galaxy Z Fold 7 or even the iPhone 17 Pro. It’s still sleek and impressive to hold. In my pocket, it’s easily more cumbersome than other current smartphones, but it’s understandable. While unfolded, the device is 159.2 x 214.1 x 3.9mm. It’s impressively thin. The only unfortunate part of its design is how the triple camera array stops the device from lying flat on a table. One of the brilliant design elements is how Samsung prevents users from incorrectly folding the device. If I attempted to fold the device from the right side rather than the left, I was immediately met with a vibrating alarm and an onscreen notice.

The new tri-folding smartphone features an expansive 10-inch AMOLED display with a 120Hz refresh rate. When fully unfolded, the Galaxy Z TriFold feels more like a tablet than its Z Fold 7 sister product. While folded, I was able to navigate the 6.5-inch cover screen. The displays are bright and vibrant. The real estate of the main display is large enough to support multiple productivity apps to power your workflow. When content like Netflix or a YouTube video is brought up, large black bezels surround the video as content isn’t quite optomized for a more square display. Samsung confirms that this is the first smartphone to natively support DeX, offering a true desktop PC experience without a monitor. This opportunity of multitasking is very intriguing to me and begs more hands-on time for testing. Similar to the Galaxy Z Fold 7, Samsung does its best to hide the creases on the screen. Unless viewed at a steep angle, the creases are fairly unobtrusive when the device is in use.

Under the hood, the Galaxy Z TriFold is powered by the Snapdragon 8 Elite chipset and utilizes One UI 8 and Android 16. It features 16GB of RAM and up to 1TB of storage. With all of this in mind, the TriFold is positioned as a workhorse. While unfolded, the Trifold is able to support up to three portrait-oriented apps all at once. Discovering this, my mind instantly began to race at the possibilities. While my workflow doesn’t necessarily hinge on this ability, I do think it’s novel to be able to bring up a YouTube video while answering emails and scrolling through Threads. For most users, this may not be an everyday function, but for someone who’s terminally online or flips through multiple apps at once, this could be a game-changer.

With its 10-inch main display, the Galaxy Z TriFold supports up to 1,600 nits of brightness. The cover display offers up to 2,600 nits. It’s a marvel to see in action, despite my feeling as if I only scratched the surface of its full capabilities. Samsung is leveraging a 5,600mAh cell for the battery, the largest battery on a smartphone from the company. Without proper time with the device, its’ hard to quantify how long this battery will last, especially since the device has such a large display to begin with.

The camera array on the device is the exact same as the Galaxy Z Fold 7. It features a 200-megapixel main lens, a 10-megapixel telephoto shooter , and a 12-megapixel ultrawide camera. For the selfie camera, the device sports a 10-megapixel wide lens. All-in-all, its more of the same. For what its worth, I was never dissapointed by the camera on the Galaxy Z Fold 7. I was able to play around and take some photos in the studio with the Galaxy TriFold. One of the quirks I enjoyed was having zoom controls off to the left side of the unfolded screen for easy access. Though, I think one of the major oversights when it comes to photography are how the hinges operate. The device’s hinges are basically the same as the Z Fold 7’s. Though, they have a bit of magnetic magic to them and in most cases this is a great design perk. Though, I was a little dissapointed that the hinges don’t allow you to prop the device up on itself to take a photo. It’s very finicky to open the device up slightly and have it freestand.

Seeing the design in person, I’m pretty happy with the finish on the Galaxy Z TriFold. It’s offers a glossy Kevlar texture that look pretty sleek with one major exception. The gloss shows every smudge and fingerprint I laid on it. So, if you’re hoping for a more elegant mattee black finish, you may be dissapointed with the look of the Galaxy Z TriFold.

Overall, I’m quite impressed by how the Samsung Galaxy Z TriFold operates from a technical and design level. It’s stunningly thin for a foldable of this kind. Having three foldable displays on a smartphone is insanely cool and just has a ‘wow’ factor not commonly achieved, unless you’re Huawei and its Mate XT. I am still left with some questions on versatility and use cases. I hope that by the time the devices launches in Canada next year, I’ll be able to put the Galaxy Z TriFold through its paces.