While many tech journalists were wrapping up their coverage of a notable phone launch in the West last week, Huawei was busy innovating in its home country of China.
The company was showing off a new foldable device to the local press, the likes of which had only been seen in science fiction until now. And I got to spend some time with it in person.
The Huawei Mate XT Ultimate Design is the world’s first “tri-fold” foldable phone. Teased by the company’s CEO Richard Yu in an interview last July, the XT combines the sensibilities of the company’s inward-folding Mate X5 and outward-folding Mate XS 2 into a single device.
Closed, it looks like a classic 6.4-inch smartphone, but the screen can fold out accordion-style to become a full-fledged 10.2-inch tablet at its maximum extension.
First-generation products like this usually come with some pretty glaring compromises, and while this new form factor isn’t immune to criticism, testing it out immediately put one of my biggest concerns to rest: the hinge (or rather, hinges).
When I first handled Huawei’s first foldable smartphone, the original Mate X, bending its then-ambitious Falcon Wing hinge to open and close it produced a gut-wrenching cracking sound and sensation. Thankfully, the company’s subsequent foldables have overcome this issue, but I thought Huawei would have to go back to the drawing board to make the Mate XT. I was wrong.
The “Tiangong hinge” feels incredibly solid, providing a nice amount of tension without being too stiff to easily manipulate into the format you’re looking for. At the same time, it’s not so loose that you’d worry about it bending or unbending under its own weight.
This is made all the more impressive by the incredibly thin profile the XT has when fully extended into its tablet form, measuring just 3.6mm at its thinnest point (that’s thinner than the current champion of the slim foldable, the Honor Magic V3).
The Mate XT truly delivers on the user experience that foldables have always promised us.
As for the LTPO OLED panel itself, while it doesn’t quite match the company’s MatePad tablets with stylus support or an IP rating for water and dust resistance, it does have an attractive 144Hz dynamic refresh rate, pleasing colors, and more competent contrast and viewing angles than I expected.
The real magic, of course, lies in the XT’s ability to morph across three discrete form factors: the 6.4-inch phone (with a resolution of 2232 x 1008), a 7.9-inch dual-screen arrangement (with a resolution of 2232 x 2048) – reminiscent of foldables like the Google Pixel 9 Pro Fold and Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 6 – or its full-size 10.2-inch tablet mode; exploiting the panel’s full 2232 x 3184 resolution.
The Mate XT actually delivers the user experience that foldables have always promised us, solving the problem of having to carry multiple devices at once. Pair a mouse and keyboard, and it’s possible that such a design could allow you to do without a laptop, too.
With two apps able to run in split-screen, while a third remains mobile in a floating window, the device’s Android-based HarmonyOS 4.2 user experience is excellent for multitasking.
Huawei is certainly not the first to offer a three-dimensional foldable phone, but even previous examples, such as those from TCL, never got beyond the concept stage. The big difference here is that the Huawei Mate XT is actually coming to market: it is now available for purchase in China.
As you can imagine, the cost of innovation for a device like this doesn’t come cheap. Given the already high price of existing single-hinge foldables, like the Pixel 9 Pro Fold at £1,749/$1,799 and the Galaxy Z Fold 6 at £1,799/$1,899, you shouldn’t be surprised to learn that the Mate XT is even more expensive.
Pricing starts at CNY¥19,999 (around £2,135/$2,820) for 16GB of RAM and 256GB of storage, though there are also two tiers above that, with the fully-equipped 16GB RAM/1TB version costing CNY¥23,999 (£2,560/$3,380). And keep in mind that these direct conversions to UK and US figures generally underestimate the true price in the West.
But even with the astronomical price tag of this first-generation dual-hinge foldable smartphone, just an hour after its launch, pre-orders have reportedly already surpassed 2.7 million.
The most recent statements at the time of writing indicate that this figure has since risen to over 6 million (Huawei has also confirmed to us that it is prepared to manufacture the XT at this scale, if necessary).
Sure, pre-orders don’t equal sales in a 1:1 ratio, but they at least confirm the engagement and demand for a new product like the Mate XT; so much so that major rivals in the foldable space (namely Google, Honor, OnePlus, and Samsung) will undoubtedly take notice.
Additionally, sources confirmed to us at Tech Advisor that the company is planning an international release in the first quarter of 2025, which means direct competition with the big foldable hits in Europe and North America relatively soon.
Of course, Huawei’s lack of native access to Google apps (including the Play Store) rules out casual users. But this device is likely to be of interest only to enthusiasts, for whom the workarounds required to gain access to Google shouldn’t be a major issue.
Either way, it looks like Huawei is on the right track with this new tri-fold design, and it could usher in a new era for foldable devices.
