[groaning] I can't do it. But that's okay because
Yoda was wrong. There is a try and it's in this box. I finally got my hands on
the Galaxy Z Trifold and I have been daily driving the Galaxy ZFold 7 in
preparation so I could be ready for this. But other than that, I have
learned as little about this as humanly possible other than I read a couple of
articles cuz I couldn't help it. I am so excited. Inside this box, I get case and
accessory. Surprisingly honest. See, phones these days don't come with
accessories. They just come with accessory if you're lucky. What's in
here? USB 2 cable. Typical. Which is weird because this phone comes with
freaking everything from a free screen protector replacement to a discounted
full-on screen replacement to VIP treatment at Samsung service centers to
even a dedicated helpline. And they couldn't include a USB 3 cable. Let's
have a look at the case. If it's anything like every other folding phone
case, it's going to kind of suck. But that seems to be real carbon fiber,
which is pretty cool, huh? Is it though? It doesn't It's not light. It's a really
convincing fake if it's fake. Is that it? Accessory was more honest than I
wanted it to be. Since basically the beginning of my career as a tech
YouTuber, I've been waiting for these future display technologies to finally
make it onto devices you'd actually want to own. And I think I might have to wait
a little bit longer while I find out if there's any more accessories in here. Ah, a 45 watt power adapter. Thank you,
Samsung. But hey, at least it's included. That's That's pretty nice.
Wow, the screen is so big. This is a tablet
that folds up and fits in your Oh my god, I almost folded it wrong.
Apparently, there's a warning if you fold it wrong, but I guess if it's not
powered on, there's no warning. So, that's cool. That's good.
It's a little heavy, but I think I could be convinced that it's a reassuring sort
of heavy. And the difference in thickness is not too bad. You can kind
of catch it, right? Like, you can kind of catch it on the thumb right there,
but it doesn't distract when you're just holding the device. So, this one's 4.2
mm, this one's 4.0, and this one's 3.9.
It's so thin that when you fold it, it
is still not that much thicker than the
Fold 7. It's thicker, but like how did
they manage to make the individual components even thinner and still manage
to pack in a Snapdragon 8 Elite Galaxy edition? So, it's like kind of a tuned
Gen 4 along with 16 gigs of RAM, up to a
terabyte of storage, a 200 megapixel main camera. Actually, I can see how
they pack that in. They just put a big camera pump on it. And it's IP48 water
and dust resistant. This thing is incredible. Oh, there's four more
cameras that I haven't mentioned yet. They've got a 12 and 10 megapixel that's
ultra wide and optical telephoto at the back as well as two more 10 megapixel
cameras. One on the cover screen and then another one as a hole punch on the
main screen. We've got a USB type-C port and you can see this thing is as thin as
anything could possibly be while still having a type-C port on it. We've got a
speaker here. So, oh interesting. I see
why they had to do that. But that's going to mean that it's optimized for
vertical content consumption. if I want stereo sound.
On the top, which is I guess the side, we've got another speaker as well as all
the noise cancelling microphones. On the right, we've got a fingerprint sensing
lock button. I can see that they've actually upgraded this a little bit compared to the ZFold 7. It sits a
little bit more proud and it has like an indent here that allows you to landmark
it a little more easily. I have a really hard time finding this for fingerprint sensing sometimes. As well as a volume
rocker. And then over on the left side, we've got Oh, wow. A SIM tray. Huh?
Apple couldn't put one in the air, but Samsung managed to put one in a trifold.
Showoffs. Shut up. Dual SIM. And it has
a 5600 mAh battery in there. Wow, I like
it. I want to daily this thing so bad. Let's turn it on. Oh, and let's thank
our sponsor, Dbrand. So, the funny thing, the Galaxy Z Trifold isn't
actually available in Canada or the US right now, but for reasons that I'd
rather not know, Dbrand somehow happens to have a stockpile of them. So, uh,
shout out Dbrand for hooking us up. And also, shout out Dbrand for hooking one
of you up. They are giving away a Galaxy
Z Trifold right now over on their website. It is super simple to get a
chance to win. All you got to do is place an order today. on the day this
video goes up and you're entered. Any order placed since Christmas has also
been eligible, by the way, including for their brand new Sketch 2D skins. They
just launched these for a bunch of devices, including all the major
smartphones, the Switch 2, the Steam Deck, AirPods, and yes, the Z Trifold.
Wait, they're making Z Trifold skins for who? It doesn't matter. The point is, if
you want to pick up some Sketch 2D skins and get entered to win a super rare
trifold phone, you know where to go. Shortlinus.com.
Oh my god, it's glorious. 10 in or as I
call it, way too big. You don't need that. But I do.
It's hard to get a proper sense of the scale next to these childlike hands. But
like this is an iPhone 17. It's literally the guy she tells you not to
worry about. Like look at this thing. It's a monster. Even when it's folded.
Okay, it's a little on the chunky side. She wobbles even harder than an iPhone
if you try to use her on the table. But like, you know, as a '90s kid, I'm
looking at this form factor going, "Yeah, I could use that. Sure, I could do that." It is thick, though. 12.9 mm
to be precise. But unlike other foldable devices, which in my mind are more
useful for productivity or like retro
content consumption cuz you know, you can find videos that are 4x3 aspect
ratio. This actually unfolds in a way that genuinely gives you a bigger
screen. Like when you expand this, you're not actually getting a wider
picture than you already had, right? But when you expand this
this is awesome. I would actually have to use the split keyboard though,
which I don't bother with on my ZFold 7. Like I I'll just reach, but there's no
way that I'm doing that on this. It does up to 120 Hz refresh rate, so you get
that nice smooth scrolling. It'll do up
to 1,600 nits HDR, which is pretty far
off of the brightest displays these days, but more than acceptable for how a
lot of content is mastered. And it'll actually do up to 2600 nits on the cover
display, which we'll talk about later. And the resolution, which I haven't
mentioned yet, is 2160x 1584. So, this is like having a taller,
slightly above 1080p resolution, but at this size, that is really fine, man. and
I like it a lot. The question is just do
I like it in theory or do I actually like it in practice? See, I've been
daily driving the GPD Win 5 lately. Cool handheld device, great performance. Lot
of day-to-day practical issues though. And I do wonder if this would be full of
the same things. See, unlike the Huawei Mate XT, which can be used on the cover
screen like this, or with just two like this, or completely unfolded, the
trifold can only be used either on the
cover screen, which did I mention Gorilla Glass Ceramic 2? This stuff is
incredible. Like, everything should be made of it. It's so hard to scratch.
Going to put Zach from Jerry Everything Out of a Job. Yeah. So, either cover
screen or the full screen. Also, oh, I
didn't actually notice this before, but the Mate XT has a slightly wider, more
media consumption friendly aspect ratio, too.
Man, can you believe these are phones, dude? That's freaking nuts.
That's also a really cool fold action, whereas this is like, ah, you know what?
That's pretty satisfying, too. Oh, and how many times could you do that? I'm
not going to test it, but somebody already did. What was it like 150,000
folds they got to I think before it like really started to fall apart. There are
some drawbacks to Huawei's design. It leaves the display edge exposed, which
uh probably not the greatest thing for durability. What else can we say about
the Samsung? They're using some kind of special super durable aluminum for the
frame as well as titanium in the hinge. [laughter]
I feel like I'm at my command station. I I got to look back and forth for my
keyboard. All right, we're switched to a calibrated mode. Let's fire something up
here. [snorts] This is insane
for this to be something that you can carry around in your pocket. Like,
see, I love the fold for spreadsheets.
Here's our WAN topic checklist. So, here's what it looks like if I'm on a
regular phone. That sucks. Boom. Now I can see all my, you know, what's going
to be rapid fire, what's going to be main topic. is very usable, you know,
but for content, it's just marginally larger than a regular phone. It is still
a little bit larger than watching on the cover screen, just not by as much as you
would want it to be. The point that I'm trying to get to is that yes, a Fold is
a bigger content watching experience than a regular phone, but only
marginally. So two is not double of one,
but three is much, much greater than two, if that kind of makes sense. I'd
say this is about like going from a 55 in TV to like a 75 in TV. It is an
enormous difference in usability. Here's
the challenge though. That looks great. Wow. Is that incredible or what?
Freaking love it. But we're basically asking people instead of carrying around
a sort of folding phone that is still about the size and weight and shape of a
phone. We're asking people to carry around a tablet that does fold but isn't
really the typical weight of a phone
anymore and certainly not the typical thickness. The more I hold it, the more
I think the thickness could be a dealbreaker for some people. I mean,
let's think about what is successful out there in the market. There are phones
that are this thick. In fact, we covered one of them on ShortCircuit quite
recently. It had like what is it like 3 weeks of battery or something like that
that it was rated for that exists, but very few people choose to buy that. So,
in a world where products like the iPhone Air aren't necessarily massively
successful, but clearly people have rejected super thick devices, I do
wonder if this is going to struggle to find an audience. That's a cool feature.
Here it is. If you uh start to fold the wrong way, it's all like, "No, no." when
it and it vibrates and stuff. We should try the speakers. I was not a fan of the
positioning of them, but who knows? Maybe they'll blow me away with their quality. Oh my god, how awesome is that?
Okay, but like how usable is it from like a Can you like No, you can't really
like use it as a stand or anything. Yeah, that's [music] that's not going to
be a thing. Okay, that's a little disappointing because one of the features that Samsung is touting for
this is the ability to use Dex, their
desktop experience for the first time without connecting to an external
monitor. You can just use Dex, plug in a keyboard, mouse, and just [music] go.
They also t the multitasking as a major feature. So, here we can we can actually
do that right now. So, you can either multitask like you would on a regular
Samsung device where you just [music] uh go into the multitasking interface
and you just be like, "Yeah, sure." Or you can create a desktop layout like
this. Ah, yes. Wonderful. Boop. And then also a [music] browser. Yes. Success.
And then you can do like like window snapping and stuff. Oh, yeah. I still
haven't tried the speakers. Yep. Those
are definitely where the speakers are. So, that's something. I mean, it
prevents you from accidentally blocking them with your hands, so that's a plus.
I don't know what I expected, but no base. Um, they they didn't have a lot of
room to work with. They're a compromise. What about the cameras, though? Fold 7
cameras. Actually been pretty happy with it. Clearly not as good as my wife's
iPhone, but fine. Oh, we're going to have no context. We're on a new set.
Well, all right. Hm. I don't need a lot of context to know that this is not the
finest camera that I've ever seen. But what I can tell you [music] is that boy
am I ever going to be able to look at that picture bigger than I ever have
before. Look at that quality right there. Pretty decent detail retention.
It's not terrible, but it is worth noting that 200 megapixels does not mean
that it is, you know, 200 times the quality of a 1 megapixel camera. That's
just not how that works. Even a little bit washed out colors, but not bad.
Dynamic range is actually pretty okay as well. Very usable. What about video
though? Can you imagine someone going around recording video like this? Recording portrait video like this. So
awful. Okay. Anyway, so this is how you'd record landscape video. Look at
the black bars. Oh lordy. They need to use Apple square sensor technology or
something like that because that is uh not the greatest experience what I'm
doing right now. Yeah. In typical Android fashion, motion handling just
isn't as good as an iPhone. But colors, other than being over juiced just a
little bit, not that bad. Oo, how about the selfie camera? Well, how about the
selfie cameras? There's a couple. So, first we've got our hole punch. Oh, wow.
Oh, that's hilarious, right? See, cuz the camera is over here. So, if you hold
it centered, it's like that. Okay, I can do better then. That's not bad. How
about the cover one? See, I'm just imagining myself pulling this out at
like my grandparents place when I'm trying to show them pictures and they go, "Oh, let me get my glasses." and
they like can't see anything I'm showing them. If I could just boom, grandma and
grandpa cool picture of, you know, your daughter or cool video of your son
playing volleyball or whatever. Game changer. Really looking forward to
trying this. Can already tell there's going to be some little buggginess in
the experience. And also, Samsung, what is this? Someone help me out. I need a
tech tip because I've got mirroring for my icons and there doesn't appear to be
a way to have them be over here where my
thumb is. So, if anyone has a tech tip in the comments, please hit me up
because I do not want them there. But I do want to use mirroring. Oh, yeah. I
never actually tried the case here. We'll put that on.
Yep. That thing that goes over a
fraction of the device. Cool. But what does it all cost? Well, there is no US
availability and therefore no US pricing yet. And same goes for Canada where I
am. But we can convert the pricing from Korea and it works out to about $2500,
which puts it pretty close to the Mate XT Ultimate. Not that, as far as I know,
you can even get this outside of China or this outside of South Korea anyway,
so it's not like you'll exactly [music] be shopping between the two of them. [snorts]
I think that's all I can say for now without really trying to daily drive the
thing. Will an Android tablet, because you know how popular those are, be
enough to be worth carrying around a brick of an Android phone for? What a
question. Moon pies. What a time to be
alive. Subscribe to ShortCircuit.