A photo of TCL’s triple-folding smartphone concept

The tri-fold smartphone has been spotted in the hands of Huawei’s CEO, and it looks like it could soon become a reality. Whether we need one is a whole other question (has that ever really stopped tech companies?), so let’s ask a more relevant question: how would you design a protective case for this new kind of smartphone?

A quick recap on the phone itself – last week photos surfaced of Huawei CEO Richard Yu holding a strange smartphone. It was foldable, but unlike traditional clamshell or folding phones, this one had three panels with two hinges (similar to that wild Samsung concept from 2020). Dubbed the “tri-fold,” this phone managed to garner quite a bit of attention online, with people speculating about specs and launch dates, and even one Twitter user (or X-user) betting on a $4000 price tag. Still, when I saw the phone, I had three distinct thoughts in exactly that order.

A. Wow, that’s an impressively thin tri-fold phone.
B. Is there really a market for this?
C. It is absolutely impossible to make a case or screen protector for this phone.

I’ve created an illustration below showing what the phone would look like if you designed a case for it (and why the case wouldn’t work), and I’ve also taken the liberty of designing what I believe is the only possible style of case you can make for such a phone.

With traditional foldables, the obvious way to make a case is to design a two-part case that protects the bumper at the front and the entire back. Regular smartphones have two displays, one front-facing and one foldable, and it’s important to remember that the case should never obscure the display. With Huawei’s Tri-Fold, however, you actually have a single display that zigzags from the front to the inside. Look at the image above and you’ll understand what I mean. Designing a case (with as many parts as possible) makes the phone harder to use rather than protecting it. Think of the obvious three-part case that snaps onto all three panels and you’re faced with two massive problems – firstly, the case obscures the screen when you look at how it fits onto the middle panel. Second, closing the case would mean it would be wedged between the phone’s plates and would likely press on/damage the display… kind of like closing your laptop screen with a charging cable, USB stick, or even your keyboard keys.

An impossible case design is shown in red, and the only plausible case design is shown in green.

The only way to make ANY kind of protective case for the tri-fold is to design a single piece that only fits on the back of the rear panel. That means the first two pieces get no protection whatsoever (because they actually can’t), leaving more than 60% of your phone vulnerable to drops etc. The best you can really do is add a bumper protector to the front that only covers the edges, but the middle piece (the most important piece in my opinion) is still vulnerable to damage. It’s safe to say that screen protectors are also out of the question – something that still hasn’t been an issue with regular bi-fold smartphones, as you can still shield the front-facing display with a plastic or tempered glass protector.

Huawei CEO Richard Yu holds a prototype of Huawei’s alleged triple-folding smartphone.

That basically puts a lot of pressure on Huawei to make sure this phone is rock solid… which is already a pretty big ask considering they also have to make the phone slim and make sure the hinges work 100% reliably. The hinges are a separate topic too, as so much depends on both hinges working flawlessly every time to ensure you have a flat screen when you open your phone fully. The only standout benefit of this phone is that it at least gives you a more comfortable aspect ratio when fully open, compared to the current foldables that give you a weird square display that doesn’t really work well with either landscape or portrait media. At the moment, details on the Huawei Tri-Fold are incredibly sparse, though PhoneArena is doing a pretty good job gathering as many rumors as possible to paint a complete picture of this absolutely insane device. Whether it’s a good idea to make a triple-folding phone with two hinges and a rumored $4,000 price tag is another debate entirely.