Huawei's stunning tri-fold phone is 5 years in the making

Huawei's jaw-dropping tri-fold Mate XT foldable is the smartphone Huawei always wanted to make.

I rarely write about gadgets I haven't used. But Huawei's tri-fold Mate XT Ultimate smartphone, unveiled earlier this week, had me sitting up.

Though an initial critic, I've become a fan of foldables for some years now. I've used the Huawei Mate Xs, Mate Xs 2 and Honor Magic V2 over the last three years.

Advantages of foldables

As I wrote in the Straits Times in 2021, a foldable smartphone offers various advantages:

• Larger display when you need it.
• Great for PDFs, spreadsheets, web apps.
• Veritable mobile office with a wireless keyboard.

A tri-fold flagship

In my view, the Huawei Mate XT Ultimate is a flagship foldable to have.

• Single flexible 10.2-inch OLED screen.
• 3.6mm unfolded; 12.8mm folded.
• Weighs a mere 298 grams.

You can use the Mate XT:

• Unfolded, like a normal phone (6.4-inch).
• In dual-screen for browsing, reading (7.9-inch).
• Or with all 3 screens for productivity tasks (10.2-inch).

And everything else is there: 66W wired charging, 50W wireless charging, reverse charging, and even a camera based on the (bi-fold) Mate X5 foldable.

Always been the goal

At a time when every other phone maker had focused on making foldables that fold like a book, why did Huawei insist on making the Mate Xs and Mate Xs 2?

I think the Mate XT answers this question - incorporating both inward (Mate X5) and outward (Mate Xs) folding mechanisms in a single foldable smartphone.

I saw an online comment dismissing Huawei's attempt as simply a marketing gimmick.

I disagree. I believe Huawei had always wanted to make a tri-fold device, and the Mate Xs - released in 2020, was an engineering exercise with the Mate XT in mind.

Delayed by sanctions

Finally, the Mate XT is the more impressive given the broad sanctions imposed by the US government to prevent Huawei from competing.

This was recently ratcheted up with further sanctions preventing Qualcomm from selling even (super old) 4G-only chips to Huawei.

The reason? To force Huawei to expand its finite chip-making capabilities from devices like the Mate XT, instead of relying on Qualcomm chips for lower-end devices.

It's probably another reason why China users are so enthusiastic about the Mate XT; it's also about what it represents.

And if you can't get the Mate XT outside China, now you know why.

PS: I've been able to use Huawei smartphones with all apps - other than ChatGPT. No dodgy hacking needed.