Folding phones are so last year. TCL is already cooking up phones based on where the industry is going to be in 2025, and they've debuted some concept devices that are, quite frankly, pretty insane.
No, you probably won't be able to buy one of these. But they're still really neat devices, so just sit back and enjoy when a company goes all out to try and impress you.
TCL Tri-fold phone
Instead of a phone that folds, why not a phone that folds twice? Meet their tri-folding phone, which literally folds as much as some wallets.
Instead of it folding in half like the Galaxy Fold or something, it has two hinges. In its smallest factor, that gives you a 6.6-inch display, but completely unfolding creates a 10-inch tablet.
And yes, this thing really is basically a tablet. It still works with a phone, but when folded up it's big and heavy, and that's really the only knock against it compared to the sleek offerings we've seen from Samsung and Motorola.
As a concept device, though, it's exciting. It also allows TCL to manufacture a device that uses both its DragonHinge and ButterflyHinge mechanisms that fold inward and outward with a minimal gap. It's pretty unlikely that you'd see TCL release a phone in this state, but it does give them practice with both types of folds for whenever they do release a marketable folding smartphone.
There's no pricing or availability yet (duh) but TCL did give up some very convincing press renders of the device.
TCL Rollable phone
But folding up multiple times isn't even the craziest thing TCL wants to show off. They also have a rolling phone that's reminiscent of one of LG's rolling OLED TVs, but in your pocket.
This concept is really strange, but essentially takes a regular sized phone and allows a secondary screen to “roll” out of it.
No folds, hinges, or other issues that we've seen with foldable smartphones, but it still gets a ton of the extra advantages. The phone is very normal when “rolled up” at just 9mm thick and with a 6.75-inch screen, but rolling it out gives you quite a bit of extra screen real estate, capping out at 7.8-inches with a 4:3ish aspect ratio.
While very cool, this one's tricky. TCL will need to actually create a powered slider that can slide the display in and out, since users just manually pulling and yanking the screen to unroll it is almost definitely guaranteed to cause damage.
But if they can figure out how to make this work? I'd be more excited for this than folding smartphones, and it's not even close.
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