Holding the Z Trifold confirmed my suspicions: it’s a tablet with a phone attached. And after spending an hour folding and unfolding it, I’m pretty much ready to trade in the single-hinge foldable I’ve been carrying for the past couple of weeks.
I used the Google Pixel 10 Pro Fold over the holidays as my daily driver and I can probably count on one hand the number of times I unfolded it. Nobody in my family even realized that it unfolded for at least the first 24 hours when I used it on a trip back home. On a different kind of trip, with different circumstances, I probably would have unfolded it more. But after spending some time with the Trifold, I’m starting to wonder if it’s another hinge I needed.
You know the deal with the Trifold: it’s out in Korea but not officially on sale in the US yet. It has two hinges that close inward, unlike Huawei’s dual folding phone. It’ll be available in the US sometime in the first quarter of this year. The price isn’t known yet but I think we can safely say it will land roughly at “hella expensive,” given that the single-hinged Z Fold 7 costs $2000. But if it lives up to the promise I saw a glimpse of at my pre-CES demo, there might be a fair number of people interested in paying that price.
The Trifold is surprisingly springy. I took it off a stand where it was propped up and not all the way open; it flipped itself into the fully open position in my hands. When you fold it back up, you’ll want to put the left panel down first since the camera bump is on the other side. If you try it in the reverse order, you’ll get a strong haptic buzz and a stern notification on the inner screen scolding you to do it the other way.
Closed up, the Trifold has early Galaxy Z Fold vibes about it. The cover screen is a little more long and narrow than a traditional phone screen. It fit into the roomy pocket of my slacks but I wager it would look pretty ridiculous in the side pocket of some yoga pants. I tried using the outer screen, I really did, but the urge to unfold this phone is strong.
I’m not one for tablets usually and I’ve never really been interested in using a Bluetooth keyboard with a phone, but the Trifold begs to be decked out with accessories. I want to prop it up and use a neat little keyboard with it. Maybe even a mouse! If I’d had access to all that over the holidays, maybe I wouldn’t have had to lug my work computer through three airports while wrangling a toddler. I certainly would have unfolded my folding phone before the end of the first day.
The thing that makes the Trifold feel like it could finally be The One — the one device you can carry around, leaving all others behind — is none other than DeX. On the Trifold, DeX isn’t just a desktop environment when you pair it with an external display. It’s a whole standalone mode with windowing to your heart’s content.
When Samsung’s smartphone product head Blake Gaiser told me that there’s a specific version of Adobe Lightroom for the Trifold, it all started clicking. If there’s a grey area somewhere between a tablet, a smartphone, and a computer, then that’s where you’ll find the Trifold. And you’ll find me too, probably, just folding and unfolding it, watching it take shape into something new.
Photography by Allison Johnson / The Verge