Huawei has scheduled a launch event for February 18 in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, and from the looks of the promo image, the Mate XT will be making an appearance. The slogan “Unfold the classic” is associated with Huawei’s foldable Mate series, and the image being used is the same one that teased the triple foldable launch in China last year. It’s pretty clear that Huawei isn’t trying to hide what’s coming – and honestly, why would it?
The global version of this phone is likely to be pretty much the same as the Chinese one, just with different software. Huawei probably won’t go all in on HarmonyOS NEXT globally, skipping out on Android entirely.
Take the recently released Mate X6 as an example – it comes with HarmonyOS NEXT in China, which uses a custom kernel rather than the Android AOSP (Android Open Source Program). The global version, however, kept EMUI. So, it’s likely that Huawei will stick with EMUI for the Mate XT as well, but we’ll have to wait and see how it all plays out.
As for the rest, the Mate XT features a massive 10.2-inch display when fully unfolded, offering plenty of room for productivity apps while still delivering a great cinematic experience for videos. You might be surprised that it only has a 90 Hz refresh rate – while it’s lower than the 120 Hz on most flagships, the difference isn’t very noticeable and still provides smooth scrolling and animations.
Due to the US ban, Huawei has had some struggles in the chipset department. The Mate XT Ultimate Design packs the Kirin 9010 processor, built on an older 7nm process. While this puts it behind newer chips like Apple’s A18 or Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 8 Elite, it still manages to handle everyday tasks without any major hiccups.
Huawei’s first tri- or multi-fold smartphone is priced high in China, starting at about $2,800 when directly converted to USD. The global price might be even higher, but we’ll have to wait until later this month to find out exactly how much it’ll cost.
Expanding the Mate XT Ultimate outside of China now is a smart move for Huawei, especially with Samsung reportedly working on its own multi-fold device, possibly called the Galaxy G Fold, which might debut this year. While details are still thin on Samsung’s device, it might have the edge, particularly in terms of software and availability.
