You may be waiting until November to buy the Samsung tri-fold – and even then finding one could be tricky

• A new report points to limited availability for the Samsung tri-fold
• We might be waiting until November before it goes on sale
• Even then, you might struggle to find it outside of South Korea and China

All the indications are that Samsung is planning to unveil its first tri-fold smartphone at an event on Monday, September 29 – but if a fresh report is to be believed, we're going to be waiting a while before it actually goes on sale.

The report comes from South Korean outlet ET News (via @Jukanlosreve), and while we're relying on Google Translate to understand all the details, the prediction here is that it won't be available to buy until November.

What's more, only 50,000 units are being produced to begin with, with Samsung apparently wanting to test the market to see what the response to its new device is – around 10 times that number of shipments of the Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 7 are expected, for comparison.

This would make sense given a couple of other details we've previously heard about this foldable: that it's going to cost a significant amount of money (perhaps as much as $3,500 / £2,610 / AU$5,375), and that it may only be available in South Korea and China, at least to start with.

A limited release

No doubt Samsung fans outside of South Korea and China would be disappointed not to have the chance to buy this phone, but we've seen this strategy before from the company, most recently with the Galaxy Z Fold Special Edition launched in October 2024.

The latest ET News report makes no mention of international availability, so we'll have to wait and see – but 50,000 units won't go far. The article does say that the Galaxy Z Fold 7 is selling well, and Samsung doesn't want to risk affecting that too much with a new device.

At the moment, there just isn't enough market data to know how popular the Samsung tri-fold is going to be. The only tri-fold phone currently on the market is the Huawei Mate XT – which is also very expensive and also difficult to get in most markets across the world.

All eyes will be on Samsung on September 29, then – if that is indeed the launch date for the tri-fold, which was first teased back in January. Before then, we're expecting to see the Galaxy S25 FE and the Galaxy Tab S11 series on September 4.

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