A newly surfaced patent suggests that Samsung is working on a tri-fold phone with a wide screen format, and if it ever actually makes it to market, it would be one of the most ambitious foldable designs the company has ever attempted.
The ambitious part
sThe patent that has caught everyone’s attention is for something Samsung is calling the Galaxy Z Tri-Fold Wide, and it takes the wider Fold concept much further. The device features two hinges and three panels, and when fully unfolded, it looks less like a phone and more like a compact tablet you could get work done on. That is a meaningful distinction from Samsung’s current Fold design.
When folded up, the device stacks into a chunky but manageable form, with one panel remaining visible on the outside to serve as a cover display. The back of that outer section houses a triple-camera setup, and the overall frame looks deliberately thick and sturdy, which makes sense given that two hinges need to remain reliable through thousands of folds. The detail that stands out the most, though, is the tent mode. Samsung’s patent drawings show the device propped up in a triangular shape, standing on its own like a little desk display. That opens up a different category of use cases: watching videos hands-free, displaying widgets, checking notifications at a glance, or just using it as a miniature second screen on a desk.
Should you get excited?
Patents are patents, and Samsung files plenty of them that never see the light of day as actual products. The more likely near-term story is still the Fold 8 and its wider sibling. The tri-fold wide feels more like a peek at where Samsung wants to eventually go rather than something arriving at a store near you anytime soon.
That said, with competitors already releasing tri-fold devices and Samsung clearly feeling the pressure to push foldable technology forward, it would be unwise to dismiss this one entirely. Samsung tends to be methodical about this sort of thing, and the fact that it is already patenting a wider tri-fold design suggests the roadmap extends well beyond what gets announced this year.
