The rumors were all true: the Samsung Galaxy Z Trifold, probably the most anticipated and talked about smartphone (aside from the Apple iFold), is real and shipping this month, but the devil is in the details.
Samsung announced Monday evening (December 1, 2025) that it will launch its first Galaxy tri-fold phone this month in South Korea (December 12), then arrive in the US in the first quarter of 2026 (no word on availability in the UK and Australia).
Lots of new technologies
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Overall, though, it looks like an engineering marvel, with two different styles of hinges: one needs to be wider to fold the third section over the other two. Samsung claims that the dual-rail structure titanium hinges work in harmony. There’s some question as to whether unfolding one requires unfolding the other, which means you can’t just have a two-thirds screen – it’s probably either the smaller 6.5-inch case or access to the full 10-inch tablet.
The Armor Aluminum frame is designed to prevent one part of the 10-inch screen from touching another part of it, preventing wear and damage. There is also a special “reinforced overlay” to help protect the flexible screen.
Triple camera system for the triple
On the exterior is the cover screen, surrounded by fiber-reinforced, ceramic-backed polymer panels. The left side houses the sizable triple-camera bump including a 200 MP wide-angle, 12 MP ultra-wide (120-degree FOV), and 10 MP 3X optical zoom.
There is also a 10MP selfie camera cutout on the cover screen and another 10MP selfie camera cutout on the 10-inch flexible display. This is essentially the same camera array as the Z Fold 7, although we don’t know much about the image sensors behind the lenses.
Even more so than the 8-inch screen you get when you unfold the Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 7, this 10-inch triple looks like it was built for work. Samsung touts built-in Dex support and multitasking. The system would support up to four workspaces with five applications each. Alternatively, the unfolded screen could be used as three connected 6.5-inch smartphones, but on which you could easily drag and drop between running apps.
Of course, it will also be a pocket-sized display for apps like Netflix and YouTube. The only thing that might be missing is a kickstand.
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The Samsung Galaxy Z Trifold may be well-equipped to handle an MCU-length movie or a lengthy streaming event: it has a 5,600 mAh battery spread across all three segments.
And big-screen gaming will likely be a reality. Under the hood, the Z Trifold will run the Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Elite mobile platform for Galaxy, meaning the 3nm chip is likely overclocked a bit for this trifold device. In support of this, the SoC will feature 16GB of RAM and, to start with, 512GB of storage. A 1TB model will be available of the Z Trifold.
What we don’t know is the price. Most rumors have it priced between $3,000 and $3,500, which seems like a safe bet considering the Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 7 starts at $1,999.99 (although Black Friday and Cyber Monday deals were heavily discounted).
A Samsung surprise
It’s unusual for Samsung to reveal so much with so little fanfare. Perhaps that’s because the Samsung Galaxy Z Trifold is still a few months away from a US release (perhaps longer in the UK and Australia), and Samsung wants to use its hometown as a sort of big test kitchen for the new device.
The announcement, however, raises the question of how the Z Trifold launch will factor into what is expected to be the launch of the Galaxy S26 lineup. Most people expect this to happen in late January or early February 2026. Perhaps the Z Trifold’s big release party will coincide with the expected big reveal of Samsung’s S26 lineup. The only odd part of this scenario is that the triple phone is separate from what is expected to be the launch of its foldable cousins, the Z Fold 8 and Z Flip 8, around mid-2026.
All will be revealed soon enough. In the meantime, we can’t wait to find out when we’ll be able to touch and try the Samsung Galaxy Z Trifold and how much it’s going to cost us.
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