This week, Samsung officially announced the Galaxy Z TriFold in Korea, which will make its way to the US in Q1 of 2026. But a puzzling part of the spec sheet was the fact that Samsung is using the Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Elite instead of the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 announced in September.
Of course, Korean media asked Samsung execs about this decision, and Samsung’s VP of Mobile Experience’s product planning, Kang Min-seok, stated that Samsung wanted to focus on perfection for the Galaxy Z TriFold. Which is why they opted for the Snapdragon 8 Elite.
“It was most important to prepare a perfect and highly finished product for the TriFold. We installed this chip with a focus on creating a highly finished product.”
What does that even mean?
So what does this actually mean? Well, Samsung has been working with the Snapdragon 8 Elite and tuning it to their hardware for well over a year. While the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 has been far less time (probably 5-6 months if we had to guess). So Samsung believes that it is closer to “perfection” than the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5. This is also likely part of a cost-cutting measure, since it is going to be pretty pricey anyway.
The Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 is more expensive than the Snapdragon 8 Elite. From the estimations we’ve seen, it costs on average about $280 per Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5, versus around $220 for the Snapdragon 8 Elite. That doesn’t sound like a huge difference, but it does add up. Additionally, it looks like the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 is having some thermal issues, something Samsung really does not want to deal with for a first-gen product.
The Galaxy Z TriFold will go on sale in Korea next week, for around $2,447 USD (when converted). Which would make it about $500 more expensive than the Galaxy Z Fold 7. Quite pricey, if we’re being honest. And because of that, Samsung is not planning to manufacture a ton of these devices, only around 100,000 from the last estimations we saw.
