At CES 2025, Samsung showed off two potential designs for a tri-fold Galaxy phone. At a show that otherwise felt pretty cautious and predictable, this was one of the more notable pieces of news – even though it wasn’t even an actual product announcement.
Rumors have been swirling for months about when – not if, but when – Samsung will bring out a three-section foldable Galaxy phone to join the rest of its folding phone line-up, which currently includes the Z Fold and Z Flip lines (some of the best camera phones). The manufacturer still seems to be settling on the exact form the tri-fold is going to take, hence the two designs shown off at CES, one folding fully inwards, the other with a portion of the screen still on show when fully closed. One assumes that part of the point of showing them off was to gauge public reaction.
You can see the tri-fold design in action in a TikTok video from our sister site Tom’s Guide, embedded below. However, I would temper your excitement. I don’t think tri-fold phones are the next big thing – and clearly neither does Samsung.
Barely a week after the designs were debuted, Korean outlet The Elec has reported that Samsung only plans to ship 200,000 of these things in 2025, whatever form they end up taking. This is a further revision downwards from the previous estimate of 300,000 – already pretty modest – due to the complex manufacturing requirements of the tri-fold design, according to The Elec.
(Image credit: Samsung)
This also indirectly confirms something we could already have assumed, namely that this tri-fold Galaxy phone, when it arrives, is going to be eye-wateringly expensive. The first tri-fold phone to hit the market was the Huawei Mate XT, currently only available in China, and it starts at 19,999 yuan (around $2,810 / £2,150 / AU$4,220). That is very silly money, and those complex manufacturing requirements mean it’s not coming down any soon.
That’s the inherent trouble with tri-fold phones – every issue you already had with folding phones is now doubled. Folding phones are expensive, prone to breaking, and have a big unsightly crease down the middle of the display. Introducing another fold does nothing but compound all those problems.
The existing folding phones are certainly cool – but the expense is a barrier. (Image credit: Beth Nicholls / Creative Bloq)
What is the point of a tri-fold phone? Most of the excitement around it centres around the fact that the screen can fold out into widescreen format, making it great for watching movies and TV in the standard 16:9 aspect ratio. In an article on Android Police published late last year, writer Stephen Radochia makes the case that this advantage could see tri-fold phones gaining mass adoption in a way that regular folding phones haven’t, particularly.
I don’t see it, though. Barring some kind of manufacturing breakthrough that sees costs significantly decrease, you’ll always be able to buy a smartphone and a tablet for less than the cost of a tri-fold phone, with enough change left over for a steak dinner or a PS5 Pro or something like that. Is anyone really so desperate to do everything on the same device that this sounds like a good deal? Particularly when said device has a screen that’s easy to break, and sticks out like a brick in your pocket.
There’s plenty of reason to be sceptical about the future of folding phones in general. I can’t sum it up better than Creative Bloq’s reviews editor Erlingur Einarsson in his damning assessment from a couple of years ago, still completely on-point today:
“The foldable phones of today are the equivalent to SUVs. Needlessly big without actually offering any more storage space or performance on the inside, wastefully made because they use more material than they need, more expensive than they have any right to be, they cause constant issues for users, they’re not as fun to use as their sleeker counterparts, and most of them look awful.”
So if you were thinking that tri-fold phones are going to be the next big innovation that makes smartphones exciting again – well, I’m afraid we’re still waiting for Godot on that one. Ah well. Maybe next year.
