The world's first tri-fold smartphone 'Huawei Mate XT' will be sold outside of China, priced at 550,000 yen
Chinese smartphone manufacturer Huawei has announced that it will launch the Huawei Mate XT Ultimate Design, a tri-fold smartphone that can be folded twice, in the international market on February 18, 2025. The price starts at 3,499 euros (about 550,000 yen).
HUAWEI Mate XT ULTIMATE DESIGN - HUAWEI Global
Huawei's tri-foldable phone hits global markets in a show of defiance amid US curbs | AP News
https://apnews.com/article/china-huawei-trifold-phone-f8a18e6031a881d1febb691dbaeeb156
Huawei Mate XT trifold launches outside of China: Price, specs
https://www.cnbc.com/2025/02/18/huawei-mate-xt-trifold-launches-outside-of-china-price-specs-.html
Huawei to bring price trifold smartphone to world market • The Register
https://www.theregister.com/2025/02/18/huawei_triple_fold_mate_xt/
The Mate XT is the industry's first tri-fold smartphone, announced in China in September 2024. It has a Z-shaped foldable body with a maximum 10.2-inch screen, yet is only 3.6 mm thick, making it the thinnest foldable smartphone currently available.
Huawei's tri-fold smartphone secures over 3.3 million pre-orders even before its release - GIGAZINE
At an event in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, Huawei announced that it would roll out the Mate XT outside of China, marking its return to the international market despite US tech restrictions.
The Mate XT can be folded twice using two hinges, and the screen can function as a 6.4-inch single-screen display, a 7.9-inch dual-screen display, or a 10.2-inch triple-screen display when fully extended.
According to the official website, the OS is EMUI 14.2, Huawei's proprietary platform based on HarmonyOS 4 and Android 12. In addition, although it is not stated in the specifications, the device is powered by the company's own processor, Kirin 9010.
This is because the US sanctions that began in 2019 meant that Huawei lost access to cutting-edge chips and Google's Android. Faced with this headwind, Huawei's market share temporarily plummeted and it disappeared from the international market. According to research by the International Data Corporation, Huawei's share of the smartphone market outside China was only 0.3% at the time of writing.
However, Huawei has reportedly been on the verge of establishing a self-sufficient chip network by 2023, and is reportedly launching plans to producehigh-bandwidth memory with the support of the Chinese government in 2024, making it clear that the company is looking to defy sanctions and return to the global market.
Huawei is building a self-sufficient chip network to overcome US sanctions - GIGAZINE
However, even if the smartphone itself can be made, the weakness of not being able to use Android or Google Play remains, and Neil Shah of Counterpoint Research, a market research company specializing in technology, commented, 'The absence of Google will be a particularly big hole for mainstream international markets that are willing to pay a lot for tri-fold hardware but are unwilling to accept Netflix, the Play Store, and Gemini, the cutting-edge generative AI.'
Meanwhile, smartphone review site PhoneArena , which actually used the Mate XT, pointed out the above disadvantages and the graphics performance that makes games that require high performance stutter, but also praised the flexible screen, the stability of the hinge, and the battery capacity that can be used for a full day. 'The Huawei Mate XT Ultimate Design is a bold, visionary product that has the potential to pave the way for the future of smartphones. As the first tri-fold device, it's far from perfect, but it offers a glimpse of new possibilities for multitasking, media viewing, and smartphone productivity in the future,' it said.
The specific countries, regions, and timing in which the Mate XT will be sold are unknown, and Huawei is urging customers to wait for local announcements.
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