What if a phone could also be a 10 inch tablet? It’s a real thing, as Samsung shows off what the world can expect from a big phone that’s also a big tablet.
If you’ve ever wondered where tablets go from here, you may want to look at your phone and imagine what if it could do double duty as that.
For the past few years, foldable phones have been the evolution of the compact tablet, as smaller 8 inch models begin to move over for foldable phones that can kill two birds with the one stone. Devices like the highly water resistant Google Pixel 10 Pro Fold and super-slim and slender Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 7 have shown the world this year just how the foldable phone can evolve, but the area isn’t done yet.
While 2026 will likely be the year that Apple enters foldable phones with a model that’s both an iPhone and an iPad Mini, Samsung could just one-up the competition with something even bigger again: a 6 inch phone that can unfold to become a 10 inch tablet.
Look out Galaxy Tab range, because Samsung’s Galaxy Z Trifold is an interesting taste of what’s to come.
The phone — and it is a phone — is a little like the Fold 7 in that it uses an external screen and an internal screen. On the outside, there’s a 6.5 inch Full HD+ AMOLED display running 2520×1080, while the inside hides a 10 inch foldable 2160×1584 AMOLED screen, providing what is essentially a 10 inch tablet in the body of a 6.5 inch phone.
You do need to unfold it twice in order to get that 10 inch tablet, but the phone — which is a little like a digital pamphlet design of sorts — is built like a tablet with Samsung Z Fold 7 parts on the outside.
It even includes the 200 megapixel camera Samsung used on the Z Fold and S25 Edge alongside a 12 megapixel ultra-wide and 10 megapixel 3x zoom, while also offering 10 megapixel selfie cameras for both the front and inside screens.
Inside, there’s a Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Elite chip paired with 16GB RAM and either 512GB or 1TB storage, plus support for wired and wireless charging, a 5600mAh battery, and a crazy-thin thickness of 3.9mm at its thinnest point when unfolded. Most of the phone will be between 4 and 4.2mm when unfolded, but fold it back up and it’s a 12.9 mm phone, a little over 3mm thicker than the iPhone 17 Pro Max.
But the iPhone isn’t also a 10 inch tablet. This is, as the Galaxy Z Trifold takes the honour of being the first phone released outside of China to support a trifold design. Before it, Huawei’s Mate XT offered a 10 inch tablet in a foldable design, though you can’t get the phone easily outside of China.
Samsung’s Trifold should be available in more places, starting with Korea, but with the US to come next year, and knowing Samsung, likely Australia some time in the new year, as well.
