The first foldable smartphone, which launched in China in 2018, broke the tech industry at its debut. The world went crazy over this new piece of technology, able to bend the screen itself and fold to twice its size. But really, this was only a reinvention of the wheel. Flip phones were the ordinary from the 90s leading into the early 2000s, and the phone giants of today seem to be on a trend of repeating history.
Samsung released its Galaxy Z Trifold on December 12, 2025 for $2,500, an insanely 3.9 millimeter thin smartphone that becomes three screens wide when twice unfolded. The second of its kind after Huawei’s Mate XT trifold, the Samsung phone is only available in South Korea for now. It’s still a half-baked product with many kinks to work out: if you bend it too hard, it will snap; if folded in the wrong order, a warning flashes on screen before snapping.
Samsung has a strong, reputable history with foldable phones. The Galaxy Z Fold, released in 2019, folds lengthwise to combine two screens into one mega-screen. The Galaxy Z Flip, like a regular smartphone, only has one screen but with the ability to fold in half top-down. Though, like the trifold, the Z Flip’s purpose seems to be more for aesthetics than functionality. Most modern pockets and purses are able to fit a full smartphone without the need to halve it. The inconvenience of a crease across the middle of one screen, for most people, isn’t made up for by its portability or ability to sit on tables.
The Z Trifold and Flip serve more as conversation pieces than anything. Realistically, the majority of multitaskers who need a bigger screen will do just fine with the regular Z Fold. If you do consistently need to triple your phone’s screen size, then you’re better off buying a tablet. A phone of this size, which most hands can’t even fully reach across, becomes too big at this point and loses practicality.
In late December of 2025, a supposed leak of this year’s Apple iPhone lineup plagued the internet, most notably the rumor of the launching of a (crease-free!) foldable iPhone. Now that Apple has ostensibly joined this train of folding their phones, it seems set in stone that foldables will be significantly prevalent in pockets around the world.
This tech trend, like all others, has its pros and cons. While I don’t see the future of smartphones being 100% foldable, I definitely see the prominence of the foldable as a high-end, luxury option for those who want the option of a convenient big screen. Though, because of the outweighing disadvantages of the trifold and flip phones, the future of foldables will likely only be the two-screen foldable, being the most practical between the three. Ultimately, this oncoming competition for the best foldable raises hopes especially high for future phone durability, compactness, and pricing.
