Samsung (finally) announced the Galaxy Z TriFold in South Korea this evening, and it's coming to the United States! The Galaxy Z TriFold was first teased back in January at the Unpacked event that launched the Galaxy S25 Ultra and its smaller siblings, and we have been waiting ever since. Despite the name, the TriFold doesn’t fold three times; it uses two hinges to deliver the real estate of three screens side-by-side. It’s a little unwieldy, and exactly the kind of hardware Samsung needs to keep foldables interesting.
The specs leave no doubt this is meant to replace both your phone and your tablet. You get a 6.5-inch cover screen for everyday tasks and a sprawling 9.9-inch display when fully opened – just 3.9 millimeters thick at its slimmest point. Samsung is giving it the same muscle as the Galaxy Z Fold 7: a Snapdragon 8 Elite for Galaxy processor, 16GB of RAM, and either 512GB or 1TB of storage. The 5,600mAh battery certainly has its work cut out powering three panels, but at least Samsung didn’t skimp there.
As for cameras, you get the same setup as the Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 7: a 200-megapixel main sensor, 12-megapixel ultrawide, and 10-megapixel telephoto camera with 3X optical zoom. If you'll recall, I found the cameras on the Fold 7 to be quite good, especially the main sensor, and I have no reason to believe these optics will be any different.
Read more: Galaxy Z Fold7 Review: Samsung Finally Gets the Fold Right
Of course, the most important part is that Samsung announced the phone will be available in South Korea starting on December 12, and it will come to the United States in Q1 of 2026. In my head, I figured this to be a South Korea/perhaps China only release, but the fact that it's coming to the U.S. is awesome.
Some other highlights include an IP48 rating, so yes, it will be water-resistant. It'll be 12.9mm folded, so it'll land somewhere in between the Z Fold 5 and the Z Fold 6 in that respect. The inner screen will max out at 1,600 nits, while the cover screen will reach 2,600 nits of brightness. It will also have a capacitive fingerprint sensor on the power button.
Truth be told, this feels like the foldable I've been waiting for. Having used book-style foldables regularly since the Z Fold 4, I have enjoyed using them, especially for reading and for viewing spreadsheets – don't knock it; I do that a lot – but I never really felt like I was getting the tablet experience. Early-generation foldables were always too small to be a good phone and too small to be a good tablet. Since then, smartphone makers have solved one of those problems.
The Z TriFold’s expansive 9.9-inch screen finally feels like a true tablet, a real productivity workhorse. I'm already carrying around a phone on my full time, so I could see tossing something like a Logitech Keys to Go 2 keyboard into my pocket and hunkering down at a coffee shop for some writing. Then again, this is a phone, so I won't even need the Wi-Fi.
I am genuinely excited about this phone, and I can't wait to try it out. I'm especially interested in pricing, especially when it comes to carrier pricing. Samsung didn't share it with us, but we'll know for sure by Dec 12th. This phone is a feat of engineering, and I'm sure it'll have a price tag to match, but if you have been disappointed by foldables so far, this could be the best answer yet.
[Image credit: Samsung]
