Samsung is already the king of folding phones – and at the first Samsung Galaxy Unpacked in 2025, the tech giant teased its potential next frontier.
During the launch, where the Samsung Galaxy S25, Galaxy S25 Ultra and Galaxy S25 Plus were revealed, Samsung showed a brief roadmap of its future products – complete with a trifold foldable phone.
There were no times or dates included, and no suggestion that such a device will be with us this year, but I would suggest that such a phone will arrive sooner rather than later, as the Galaxy Z Fold 6 appears to have reached a plateau for folding phones at Samsung.
For more from the show right now, check out our Samsung Galaxy Unpacked live blog.
A new frontier for foldables
Although even the best foldable phones aren’t quite perfect, with thick bezels and visible creases. But even with those caveats, they’re pretty good productivity devices, so having a second screen can make them serious devices that can double as Android tablets.
Samsung’s display arm has already shown off a couple of prototype tri-fold concept phones at CES 2025, so such a folding phone was definitely being considered by the South Korean company. However, seeing such a phone on a roadmap is a very strong indicator that a triple phone will become a legitimate consumer product.
It’s over to fellow managing editor and TV/display specialist Matthew Bolton for his thoughts on the tri-fold concepts he got to see at CES: “I saw two versions of a prototype device with three folding screens. One that folds into a Z – shape, just like what Samsung hinted at in its announcement, and one where the left and right screens were folded on top of the center screen.
“I wasn’t allowed to fold these phones (no one was, it’s not a reflection of my rawness) but it showed the potential designs of these phones and how much extra space this layout can give you – it really feels like these achieve the promise of ‘a tablet that becomes a phone’, in the sense that when unfolded they are around 10 inches the size of a full tablet, rather than the mini-tablet size of the Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 6. Expect though not much change in the main flaws of folding screens: you get to look at two folds instead of one.”
We’ve already gotten to grips with other tri-folds, most notably the Huawei Mate XT, which impressed phone editor Axel Metz. So there’s no doubt in my mind that the next step for foldable phones will be tri-folds, at least from the Android camp in the smartphone arena.
