Samsung Galaxy Z Tri Fold

 

Okay, so this is it. Welcome to a hands-on and first impressions of a multi-folding smartphone. This is the Samsung Galaxy Z tri-fold. And it might sound crazy, like there's already so many comments that I've seen about how this looks ridiculous and pointless and looks like a gimmick and all that. But now that I've used this phone, this is a device that's actually starting to make foldable make sense to me.

Hear me out. So this is the shape of most other foldable we've seen. It looks, you know, like a single phone when it's closed and then you open it up to a larger, maybe eight inch square, which is super cool. But this is the tri-fold. It opens not once, but twice to give you a massive 10 inch tablet basically that can fit in your pocket.

And the difference between an eight inch screen and a 10 inch screen might not sound like much, hold your jokes, but it's the shape of that screen, the rectangular aspect ratio, that's what's making all the difference here. Now, this is technically not the first tri-fold smartphone. This is, this is the Huawei Mate 10.

This one though folded like a Z.

So what you have here is this super large display that's folded over the outside. So you could use either a single pane or a dual pane or all the way open as this trifold with a huge screen. And it's always on the outside exposed to the elements. So this Samsung trifold is a little different. It folds a little more like the letter U. So there's a cover display on the outside

Or you can flip it over and fully unfold everything to reveal a second interior display, which is the one that folds twice. So while you use that, the cover display is just kind of sitting unused on the back. So this is really interesting.

Clearly worse in some ways, but clearly better in some other ways. I have a lot of thoughts.

But let's just get the specs out of the way first. So it's a Snapdragon 8 Elite for Galaxy inside. So it's technically not the absolute latest and greatest 8 Elite Gen 5, but it seems like they've been working on this phone for long enough that this is the most recent flagship chip they could use. And it's obviously only a year old, so still a really great chip. 16 gigs of RAM and 512 gigs of storage.

Then there's the triple cameras on the back.

They're essentially the same ones as the Z Fold 7. So a flagship grade 200 megapixel primary camera, but then some pretty mid other cameras, a 10 megapixel 3x zoom and a 12 megapixel ultra wide. 

The cover display up front is also essentially the same as the Z Fold 7. 6.5 inches, 21 by 9, 120 hertz, and 2600 nits. The biggest difference of course is how much phone you're holding when you use it in single screen mode because you can see all that metal and those hinges. This phone is a heftier 12.9 millimeters thick.

and it's also over 300 grams, so it feels like it's about 50% more phone you're holding than the regular Fold. Now, looks crazy on camera and looks crazy on paper, those are big numbers, but holding this phone and using it, it doesn't, it's not sleek by any means, don't get me wrong, but it doesn't feel that ridiculous. First, in perspective,

this is actually thinner than the Z Fold 1 and the Z Fold 2. and the Z Fold 3, and the Z Fold 4, and the Z Fold 5. Something to think about. Either way, it does mean, you know, while using this phone closed, it is a little bit clunky. The bezels are pretty thin and all, but this is obviously not why you're getting this phone. You're getting this phone because you can unfold everything and you end up with this massive tablet-sized device.

10 inch display. So now when it's open, this tablet is 3.9 millimeters thin at its thinnest point,

which is over here on the left, and 4.2 millimeters at its thickest point. So it feels really thin and easy to hold and suddenly 309 grams is not so heavy after all. And I think context again helps so much with this. Most like 10 inch tablets are around 500 grams, so they're heavier than this.

But also, most roughly 10-inch tablets, including Samsung's own, have like 8,000 mAh batteries.

Not this one. This battery has to be squashed into this super ridiculously thin form factor, and it's also split into three separate columns. So this one totals 5600 milliamp hours, which technically, yes, is the largest ever in any Samsung folding phone, but it's also definitely on the small side for something with a 10 inch tablet size screen, if that makes sense. I feel like I've hammered this home so many times this year, but silicon carbon battery? Maybe? Maybe the next gen. It just feels like the perfect phone for that, obviously, being super thin like this.

But it is also still, it's actually the fastest charging foldable Samsung's ever made. It's 45 watt charging now with a charger included in the box. So that's pretty nice. And they also kept 15 watt wireless charging along with the IP48 rating from the Z Fold 7. So the specs are pretty solid, sure.

But the reason I'm saying that this phone is making foldable make sense now is because the screen that you get when you unfold it, this widescreen 10-inch tablet, is a massive difference from all the regular Folds. Yeah, I think this really says it all. This is a full-screen video on a regular slab phone. And we're all used to this, right?

Now, this is the same full screen video on the inside screen of a Fold.

You know, it's a big screen technically, it's an eight inch square, but the video frame that you're watching is not that much bigger. There's just a bunch of blank pixels around it.

So this is the same video on the trifold and you see how much better that is? That's the main theme here for why this is worth exploring, this widescreen aspect ratio thing. In this case, it's 16 by 11 and it just really makes for a way more expansive canvas. Full screen videos, also full screen games feel really nice. There's a ton more real estate for them.

And while we're at it, here's a few more nicely optimized things I noticed while playing with this large horizontal display.

The Files app lets you see multiple columns at once, so you can fit a whole three layers of the file system deep and see it all. The YouTube app also looks really nice, basically because it's just the tablet YouTube app, so you can scroll related videos or read comments while the video still plays in a pretty big window.

Web browsing is also just better from having a sheer ton of real estate. I keep using that phrase, but I actually enjoyed a lot of regular apps, just like the web browser or social media apps in portrait mode and landscape mode, just because they feel huge. Also side-by-side apps, whether you split them top, bottom or left, right, you can do three apps side-by-side. They all just have way more room to breathe instead of being compressed and tiny.

Oh, and this just happens to be the only Samsung phone that they'll let you run Samsung DeX on its own. So without being connected to a monitor, it will do the multi-window and multiple spaces with different setups with a connected mouse and keyboard.

And if you do connect it to a monitor, you can have it act as a second screen, which is smart. I also gotta say, I've only spent a little bit of time with this phone, but I do feel like you can see that it is very well considered. Like, I can almost feel like the different variations and versions that they went through to get to this point. Like, for example, opening the phone, you always pull from the same spot. They made the bottom leaf of this tri-fold just a little bit longer than the other two. So it actually sticks out a little bit.

And that is super convenient to just grab that little lip to open it up. And then the strength of the magnets that hold it together are really nice and solid. Then you pull the lip, it opens. Then the leftmost hinge also springs nicely open because there's a lot of nice force to it. It all just feels very solid to open and close. Then the nice smooth fiberglass composite on the back. You know, this is the only color available for this phone, but I also think it makes a lot of sense because it's touching screen on the back here. It's also a huge fingerprint magnet, so that's too bad.

But then, you know, you can only fold it a certain way. Left side first, then right side which wraps around it. So if you try to fold the right side first,

It gives you this little message and vibrates and tells you, no, don't do that. That's not how you fold this phone. Also without a case, I noticed that just like the Fold 7, this is one of the biggest rockers on a table the world has ever seen. But alongside that charger, this phone also comes with a case that basically fixes that. So what's the catch? There's gotta be a reason why not everyone's doing this. There has to be downsides, right? Well, yes.

but there's not that many. Like the middle screen is the obvious one. This is gonna be the most delicate part of the phone, having a display that not only folds twice, but also folds in two different directions and with two different radii. Like you can obviously see these creases if you're looking for them, but you can also see that the crease on the left is a little bit smaller than the crease on the right because it is a tighter curve radius when you fold it up versus folding the right side up.

around the left side. I also obviously don't have any long-term data on using this phone, but I would consider this a first gen device when thinking about durability and how that might go. I mean, it's nice that it is fully protected on the inside, but it's gonna be a delicate screen. It's also not the brightest in the world. So the outside screen is full 2600 nits. The inside is only 1600. So kind of limits like the outdoor use and super high brightness stuff.

Stuff that I guess I expect with first gen. You could also totally say that the thickness and weight while using it closed is a con because obviously it's worse than normal folds today. But then again, I really, I just, I don't know how much thinner this thing can actually get. I mean, they still have to get a decent battery in there and decent speakers and still a USB type C port.

this is starting to feel pretty close to the dimensional limit of a tri-fold setup. So it will be interesting to see, you know, how they evolve it from here and what a second generation actually looks like. But then of course the elephant in the room, price, obviously. I mean, this is two screens, so twice as many screens as a normal phone. It's twice as many parts, obviously twice as many hinges as a regular fold. It's like 50% more screen and then also 50% more thickness and 50% more weight.

So... 50% more price? Now Samsung in the US has not given me an official cost for what this is gonna retail for here, but I bought this one, and I imported it from Samsung Korea, and this cost the equivalent of about $2,500 US there. So...

I'm just doing the math. I expect it to probably be in the same range, $2,500 to $3,000 here, which is a lot. It's pricey. It's the top of the range, but also maybe not insane. You know, I think my take is for the right person who knows what they're getting into,

this can be worth it. I really think this would be a nice, fun phone to use and daily for having a legit 10-inch display, a tablet in your pocket wherever you go. Like, that's such a game-breaker. And it's interesting now to see different approaches to the tri-fold thing with the Z that folds to the outside. And sometimes the ability to use half-open is kind of interesting, but again, it's just the square when I just feel like the rectangle huge thing is way more interesting. So...

Yeah, I don't know. This is really cool. And it's also just hilarious that this exists from Samsung, isn't it? Like the same company that is ridiculously slow moving and chill and conservative on their Galaxy S phones. Like they don't wanna change too much. They don't wanna rock the boat or do anything crazy, but they'll also try this. This completely insane trifold thing and just throw stuff at the wall to see if it sticks.

And maybe it'll stick. I think people are gonna get this phone and are going to really like it. Obviously the asterisk still is durability. We'll see. But yeah, it makes sense now. 

Let me know what you think of the Trifold in the comments below. I think it's a pretty polarizing phone, but I'm curious to see what you guys think.