Samsung’s Z TriFold Phone Has Razor-Thin Style and Ho-Hum Cameras

Forget regular foldable phones — trifolding handhelds may soon be all the rage. So far, North American customers have not had many trifold phones to consider, but Samsung will change that come early next year with the Samsung Z TriFold, a device that, at the very least, looks super impressive.

As The Verge reported this week, the Samsung Z TriFold is launching in South Korea next week ahead of a U.S. launch in early 2026. And although the U.S. price has not yet been revealed, the device will sell for around $2,440 at current exchange rates, though it is reasonable to expect tariffs may push the price even higher once it hits U.S. shelves.

It’s a staggering price for a smartphone, so what does the Samsung Z TriFold promise that may make it worth all that cash? Borrowing design inspiration from something like the luxurious Huawei Mate XT Ultimate Design launched last year, the Samsung Z TriFold has three distinct sections that unfold like an accordion to reveal a massive 10-inch 2160 x 1584 120Hz internal screen. As The Verge‘s Allison Johnson puts it, “That’s a lot of screen.” Users can run multiple apps side-by-side on the tablet-like display, turning the phone into a multi-tasking machine. However, its utility is perhaps a bit undercut by the puzzling lack of support for the Galaxy S Pen, continuing a frustrating trend from the Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 7.

Now, users don’t always want to use a tablet-like phone, so the Z TriFold, like more traditional foldables, also features an external display that turns the device into a much more typical slab smartphone. This outer screen is a lot like the one on the Z Fold 7 — 6.5 inches diagonally with a 21:9 aspect ratio and Full HD resolution.

What’s rather interesting about the TriFold is that each of its three distinct sections, which together form the giant internal display, is of a different thickness, ranging from just 3.9 millimeters to 4.2 millimeters. 3.9 millimeters is, frankly, crazy. The iPhone Air, Apple’s thinnest smartphone ever, is 5.6 millimeters thick. Samsung says it has built the TriFold’s folding mechanism to withstand at least 200,000 folds, which is over 100 times daily for five years.

What is perhaps even more impressive is that, when folded, the Z TriFold is still just 12.9 millimeters thick. While this is nearly five millimeters thicker than the Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra, it is still not all that thick considering what is going on inside.

In pursuit of extreme thinness and a triple-display design, it is little surprise that Samsung has cut some corners with the Z TriFold’s cameras, although none too surprising. The Samsung Z TriFold has the same camera features and specifications as the Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 7, including a 200-megapixel main camera with a Type 1/1.3 sensor, a 10-megapixel 3x telephoto (Type 1/3.94 sensor), and a 12-megapixel ultra-wide (Type 1/2.55).

As PetaPixel explains in its Z Fold 7 Review, the main camera is good but the accompanying telephoto and ultra-wide modules don’t stand up against the Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra, which features an impressive 50-megapixel periscope telephoto (Type 1/2.52) and better 50-megapixel ultra-wide camera (Type 1/2.5). Customers may reasonably find the camera cutbacks easier to swallow on a device as impressive and distinct as the Galaxy Z TriFold than they were on the Z Fold 7.

The Samsung Z TriFold is slated to arrive in South Korea on December 12 and in the U.S. in early 2026.

Image credits: Samsung