It’s finally here. The most anticipated launch of 2024, the mobile phone that can change everything. We’re not talking about the iPhone 16, of course, but the Huawei Mate XTthe industry’s first triple foldable mobile phone; a device that, if successful, could cause a real earthquake in the smartphone industry.
We already knew the concept of the Huawei Mate XT; is a triple foldable mobilethe first of its kind commercially available. “Conventional” foldable devices (if you can call them that) feature a set of hinges that, when opened, reveal a flexible screen. This phone, however, has two sets of hinges, so it can be opened twice.
When the mobile is fully opened, it reveals a huge screen of 10.2 inches of OLED technology and 3K resolutionwith a 16:11 ratio. In other words, it is essentially a mid-sized Android tablet, with the ideal size for enjoying high-definition movies or working with multiple applications at the same time.
It’s a much larger size than the largest foldables; the Galaxy Z Fold 6, for example, has a 7.6-inch inner screen. The interesting thing is that if we want it, we can also get it with the Mate XT; just open a hinge instead of both, and we will have a screen of similar size. Finally, with the mobile phone completely closed, only the leftmost part of the screen is displayed, with the size of a normal mobile phone.
The potential is huge. In the presentation, Huawei showed several ways to use this screen. For example, we can put it upright and use it to read magazinesweb pages or books, and with the help of an accessory we can leave it in this position on the table.
In hand, we can distribute the space between several applications, or take advantage of it in a single application to display all the data; such as, for example, to display all the stock market fluctuations in a trading application. HarmonyOS allows these and other configurations. Another interesting accessory is a foldable keyboard, which we can take with our mobile phone to go to work and write anywhere; essentially, we carry a laptop in our pocket
Huawei has not shared many technical details about the inside of the device. At least, we know that the battery is 5,600 mAh, with cells distributed across the three independent chassis; supports 66W fast charging and 50W wireless charging. Huawei has not talked about the processor either, but everything indicates that it is the Kirin 9010, the same one used in the Pura 70 and therefore, it also has satellite communication.
We know something else about the cameras; after all, photography is one of Huawei’s strong points. The main sensor is 50 Mpx, with a variable aperture camera between f/1.4 and f/4.0 that promises excellent results regardless of the scene or situation. It comes with a 12MP f/2.2 wide-angle lens and a 12MP periscope camera with 5.5x optical zoom. On the flexible screen, there is a hole on the left side (the only one visible with the phone closed) for an 8MP selfie camera.
The Huawei Mate XT is available in China with a price of 19,999 yuan (around 2,500 dollars) for the version with 16 GB of RAM and 256 GB of storage, and reaches 23,999 yuan (3,050 dollars) for the version with 1 TB of storage. In fact, they are between 2,500 and 3,000 dollars for a mobile phone, a significant investment that directly targets the most “premium” sector.
To compensate for the high price, in the box we will find a large number of accessories, including a case with stand, a 66W charger, a car charger and Huawei FreeBuds 5 headphones. Last weekend, the Huawei Mate. obtained more than 3 million reservationsand it will be interesting to see how many are realised now that the price is known. What is clear is that the future has never been cheap.
The big question is whether the Huawei Mate XT will be available in Europe and in general outside of China. The company has not talked about it, so it is very likely that we will have to wait even longer.