Picture two phones at a café table. The iPhone 15 Pro is small, sharp, and light; the Galaxy Z Trifold unfolds like a marquee—huge screen, big price, and lots of cameras. You get more viewing area but chunkier pixels and a heavier pocket. Battery lasts a bit longer on the Samsung; photos wow; the novelty turns heads. Still, for everyday scrolling and comfort, the iPhone’s crisp display and easy carry win the narrator over. Big isn’t always better—just louder.
Stop squinting at a $1,099 5.8×2.8-inch 2556×1179 OLED (460 ppi) Apple iPhone 15 Pro screen, and let your eyes drift over a Samsung Galaxy Z Trifold 8.4×6.3-inch (10.0-inch diagonal), 2160×1584 AMOLED (269 PPI) screen, with an amazing array of cameras and price ($2,400). You can see more, can’t you? I mean, it’s physically bigger, right?
Samsung’s first trifolding smartphone comes ahead of the expected launch of the first folding iPhone next year. (Photo by Kim Jaewon Asia Nikkei)
But you can’t see as much because it has less resolution and PPI? Wait, this is new, revolutionary, and very, veryexpensive. So for almost 2.5× the price, you get 3.2× the viewing space, and 1.1× overall resolution, but with fatter pixels and 0.6 PPI. Wow, that sounds like one hell of a . . . foolish purchase. Flashy without a doubt. You whip that big bad boy out, and people are going to notice. For one thing, they’ll notice jaggies, but probably not care—they’ll be so awed with the folded display.
Also, the Samsung Galaxy Z Trifold has lots of big cameras—a trio of rear-facing cameras offer 12 MP ultra-wide shots, 200 MP wide-angle, and a 10MP telephoto unit that can achieve 30× digital zoom. Identical 10 MP selfie-cams are available from the Main or Cover screen.
Whereas the iPhone 15 Pro only has a rear camera, a 48 MP Main camera, a 12 MP ultra-wide camera, and a 12 MP 2×telephoto (enabled by Quad Pixel), plus a 48 MP 2.44 μm (Quad Pixel 12 MP) front camera. So Samsung has over 400% more light capture, and we presume, is just as fast as the iPhone.
So why do you buy a phone—to surf the Web and keep up-to-date on TikTok, X, and Facebook, or to take super-high-res photos of your dinner and your best friend’s date?
The iPhone 15 Pro is 5.77×2.78×0.32 inches (5.1 inch3), whereas the Z Trifold is 6.3×3.0×0.51 inches (9.6 inch3, 187% larger). The iPhone 15 Pro will run for 23 hours under normal use, and the Z Trifold can go 26 hours; it holds a bigger battery. The iPhone 15 Pro weighs 6.6 ounces, while the bigger-battery-equipped Z Trifold weighs 10.9 ounces.
So it’s a little bulkier and heavier, a little better battery life, a lot better camera, but lower resolution, albeit a physically larger display. Overall, I’ll stick with my 15 Pro; it does everything I want to do, and fits comfortably in my pocket.
I realize this is a fairly Apple-favor review. I have not spoken with or heard from Apple in any form; this is just my babbling. I started out prepared to fawn all over the Z Trifold, but as I dug into it, I got disappointed; it doesn’t bring much to the party except novelty and expense, and a great camera.
LIKE WHAT YOU’RE READING? INTRODUCE US TO YOUR FRIENDS AND COLLEAGUES.