Galaxy Z Fold Tab with tri-fold design could launch early next year

Even with Huawei’s, Motorola’s, and now even Xiaomi’s presence, it’s hard to deny that, at least for the moment, Samsung has cornered the foldable phone market that it also created itself. It is close to launching third-generation models of its Galaxy Z Fold and Galaxy Z Flip phones but there are indicators that it isn’t going to stop there. Aside from future rollable phones, the company has been known to be toying around with ideas for more foldable devices, one of which might even be arriving as early as next year’s first quarter.

The original idea behind the foldable phone is a device that can be both a phone and a tablet without sacrificing size or portability. While the Galaxy Z Fold, both first and second generations, are indeed usable as tablets, they are dwarfed by the 10 to 12 inches of most conventional slates. Those tablets, on the other hand, can’t simply be folded in half to become phones and need some other design instead.

One solution is the so-called tri-fold, a design that has two hinges that split the device into three. Even before Samsung actually launched the Galaxy Fold in 2019, it was already seen toying with such an idea, mostly through patents. It was TCL, however, who first showed an actual working prototype last year but Samsung might beat it to the punch in actually launching such a device.