Samsung's new phone looks straight out of science fiction

For years, sci-fi shows have depicted futuristic computers with shape shifting screens that can fold or expand depending on the situation. Now, Samsung is banking on that concept to try to steer the future of smartphones. 

The new Samsung Galaxy Z Trifold folds in two places - almost like a brochure - to cram an iPad-sized screen into your pocket, reports CNN. 

Samsung showed it to the press on Sunday at the CES tech conference in Las Vegas ahead of its upcoming US release, and after launching it in limited quantities in its home market of South Korea. The idea is promising although not without compromises, as is typical of new devices like these. 

The phone is impressively slim as a tablet, but clunky as a phone. And it'll almost certainly be too expensive to woo many early adopters, let alone the average smartphone shopper. (Samsung hasn't announced pricing yet, but its Galaxy Z Fold 7, which has a smaller screen that folds in half instead of folding into thirds, starts at $2,000.) 

Whether the phone catches on broadly may not matter. It's an effort by the world's largest smartphone maker to prove that the rectangular devices carried by billions haven't peaked and still have a long runway to evolve. Liz Lee, associate director at Counterpoint Research, said in an email to CNN that the phone is likely a "strategic pilot" to test how new technology lands with consumers. 

And given that Samsung is the world's top phone maker and nearly every Android phone brand has followed in its footsteps with book-shaped foldable phones, even relatively rare products like these can carry weight. 

Samsung's goal with the Galaxy Z TriFold is to provide a screen that gets bigger when you need it to and smaller when you want to carry it with you, building on its moderately successful Galaxy Z Fold series.