Huawei unveils world’s first tri-fold phone

This week, the smartphone industry was shaken by a much-anticipated but still groundbreaking announcement from Huawei: the unveiling of the world’s first triple-screen folding smartphone, the Huawei Mate XT Ultimate.

The timing was impeccable: just days after Apple revealed its latest iPhone 16 series. While Apple made much of these being the first AI phones, it played down the fact that the AI features would only become available next month. This suggested that Apple had not been able to bring its innovation to market as quickly as hoped, resulting in its share price falling marginally as its launch event ended. It recovered but, unlike with previous iPhone launches, it did not generate any additional investor enthusiasm.

Huawei, meanwhile, leveraged the week’s massive attention on phone launches to draw attention to its innovation and its ability to leap forward in smartphone technology. 

With a dual-hinge design and expansive 10.2-inch display, the Mate XT blends futuristic engineering with specs geared to both productivity and entertainment.

Huawei executive director Richard Yu was ebulient at the launch in Shenzen.

“Today we bring you a product that everyone can think of but could not make,” he said. “Today we will once again rewrite the history of the industry, turn science fiction into reality, and lead a new era of folding devices.”

He gave a nod to the impact of the 2019 US ban on Google services being supplied to Huawei, which saw it crashing from a global number two rankling, saying: “Our team has been working hard for five years and has never given up.”

Multiple configurations

The triple-fold mechanism allows the phone to transform into multiple configurations: as a traditional smartphone with a single screen, a mini-tablet with a partially unfolded 7.9-inch display, or a fully expanded tablet offering a 10.2-inch screen. The flexibility provided by this multi-hinge system offers unprecedented multitasking capabilities, which will particularly appeal to users who need more screen real estate on the go.

Huawei has engineered the Mate XT to be one of the thinnest foldable phones on the market, measuring only 3.6mm thick when fully unfolded, making it the thinnest smartphone in the world.

Specifications

Key specifications include:

• Display: The Mate XT’s main feature is its triple-folding OLED display. When completely unfolded, it has a 10.2-inch screen with a 2232 x 3184 resolution. It can be used in various modes—single screen, dual screen, or full triple screen:
  • Single Screen (2232 x 1008 pixels): 73.5 mm wide, 12.8 mm thick, 6.4-inch
  • Double Screen (2232 x 2048 pixels): 143.0 mm wide, 7.45 mm/4.75 mm thick, 7.9-inch
  • Three-screen (2232 x 3184 pixels): 219.0 mm wide, 3.6/3.6/4.75mm thick, 10.2-inch
• Camera: The rear camera setup includes a 50 MP main lens, a 12 MP ultra-wide lens, and a 12 MP telephoto lens offering 5.5x optical zoom. The front-facing camera, housed in a punch-hole cutout, is an 8 MP shooter.
• Battery:  5,600 mAh silicon-carbon battery, which supports 66W wired fast charging and 50W wireless charging. 
• Operating System: The Mate XT runs on Huawei’s HarmonyOS 4.2
• AI Capabilities: The OS integrates artificial intelligence, with features including real-time translation, voice recognition, and cloud-based content generation. 

Pricing

The base model with 256GB of internal storage and 16GB of RAM starts at 19,999 yuan (around $2,800), while the highest-tier model, which offers 1TB of storage, is priced at 23,999 yuan (approximately $3,371).  This makes it the most expensive regular production phone on the market. American analysts have tended to compare the price to that of the iPhone 16 Pro Max, but that is a meaningless comparison, given the single screen of the Apple device.

Pre-orders for the Mate XT opened in China immediately after the launch event, and Huawei has announced that more than four million pre-orders were made within hours. However, the device is currently only available in China for now.