The Chinese technology giant unveiled its Huawei Mate XT, the industry’s first triple-foldable phone, on Tuesday just hours after Apple introduced its artificial intelligence-enhanced iPhone 16 lineup. Both the Mate XT and iPhone 16 will go on sale on Sept. 20, though the Huawei Mate XT is expected to be available only in China.
Huawei’s Mate XT, a triple-foldable smartphone was unveiled at a launch event on Tuesday, as announced on its social media account WeChat.
Huawei’s Mate XT, the upcoming triple-foldable smartphone, has seen pre-orders exceed three million units on the company’s official online retail platform. The Chinese technology giant company has confirmed the orders.
Huawei’s triple-foldable smartphone, the Huawei Mate XT has arrived and it costs an “ultimate” price. ¥19,999 or about SGD$3,660
Huawei Mate XT basic model with 16GB of RAM and 256GB of storage. The top-of-the-line model with 16GB of RAM and 1TB of storage is expected between ¥23,999 or about SGD$4,440. With that pricing, you do get a 10.2-inch display running on HarmonyOS 4.2 when the device is fully opened. You can also unfold it once to have a 7.9-inch display.
The Huawei Mate XT comes with an OLED display with a 5,600mAh battery, a rear camera setting with a 50MP main camera, two 12MP ultrawide and periscope cameras, and a front-facing 8MP camera.
It weighs 298gm and goes from 12.8mm (when fully folded) to 3.6mm when unfolded. The trifold smartphone comes with AI features—think text translation, cloud-based content generation, and photo editing—powered by Huawei’s own Kirin chips.
Huawei is the biggest foldable phone seller in China followed by Honor, its spin-off brand.
China is the world’s biggest foldable smartphone market, accounting for half of global shipments in the second quarter. More than 1.5 million foldable handsets were shipped on the mainland that quarter.
Last year, mainland foldable smartphone shipments reached 7.01 million units, with Huawei leading the market thanks to its Mate X5 model, which was launched in September last year.
Unfortunately for Singaporeans hoping to get one, from all reports, this is a China-only smartphone.
