Folding phones have been stuck in a rut for a few years. We've seen concept smartphones playing with fresh folding designs, but ever since Samsung kickstarted the trend in 2019, there have only really been two major styles in the market: a booklike fold and the flip. However, there's new life emerging in the category with significantly slimmer designs—such as last year's Samsung Galaxy Z Fold7—and now the company's “TriFold," a smartphone that can truly transform into a 10-inch tablet.

Samsung isn't the first to market with such a phone—Huawei takes that cake with the Mate XT—but the Galaxy Z TriFold has a slightly different design. It's only available in a handful of countries, like China, South Korea, and Singapore, but Samsung plans to release it in the US this year. The price? Samsung is being coy with the MSRP, but the price of 3,594,000 South Korean won suggests it'll cost around $2,500 in the US, if not more.

I was able to briefly spend some time with the triple-panel smartphone at CES 2026. Here's what it's like.

Thick and Thin

As the name suggests, Samsung's priciest folding phone opts for a trifold design, whereas Huawei's equivalent has a Z fold. I haven't used Huawei's version yet, but that does have a leg up: You can use one, two, or all three panels with its accordion-style design. The Galaxy Z TriFold only goes from a single panel to a triple panel.

As a single panel, the 6.5-inch front screen feels quite like a normal smartphone, albeit with thicker-than-usual bezels around the screen, and a weight of 309 grams that you'll have to get used to. Flip open the screen to the right, then flip the inner layer to the left, and you get a sprawling 10-inch display to work with. Keep in mind, the Galaxy Z Fold7 nets you an 8-inch screen, but that sounds like child's play next to the TriFold. It instantly feels more like an Android tablet than any other foldable Samsung has made before.