We’re getting a glimpse of the future. The Tecno Phantom Ultimate 2 is a trifold folding smartphone, and although it’s only a concept for now, it’s a tantalizing look at where manufacturers are taking foldable design.
A step beyond folding phones like the Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 6, which has a single hinge and two panels for a single fold, the Phantom Ultimate 2 has two hinges and three panels. In other words, it can be folded three times — and it looks spectacular.
The Tecno Phantom Ultimate 2 starts out folded up with a 6.48-inch screen, but the really impressive part is the device is only 11mm thick in this form. Sure, Honor has made the Honor Magic V3 folding phone a little over 9mm thick, but the Phantom Ultimate adds another panel and hinge to its design. A special battery cover that’s just 0.25mm also helps give the Phantom Ultimate 2 its incredibly thin profile.
Unfold the panels, and the phone becomes a 10-inch tablet with a 4:3 aspect ratio, far larger than the approximately 7-inch screens we’re used to on current folding phones. It really becomes a full-size tablet rather than a mini tablet, and Tecno has imagined a clever use of its double-hinge system.
Flip the unfolded phone into portrait orientation, and the lowest panel can be folded slightly to support the device on a desk. A virtual keyboard appears on the screen, helping it become a surprisingly cute laptop. Tecno says the hinges are very strong and should pass 300,000 folds while minimizing any crease (twice the hinge count means twice the screen crease, don’t forget) on the unfolded screen.
Tecno has also worked some software magic so the icons and user interface adapt to the phone’s orientation. For example, the phone can sit in between two people who can use a side of the screen each. This could be useful for collaboration or for translation features, just like we’ve seen from Samsung and Google. The rest of the hardware specifications aren’t known, but we can see that it has three cameras set inside a raised side section, somewhat like the Huawei Mate XS. The possible downside of this camera design is that it may not rest flat on a desk.
The Phantom Ultimate 2 follows the Phantom Ultimate rollable phone, and both are concept phones. Tecno is not saying when either will make it to production, if at all. That doesn’t mean triple-folding smartphones aren’t being fully explored, as Huawei has been teasing (intentionally and not) its own trifold phone, which is expected to get a full announcement this year.