Huawei teased it would show off a foldable 5G phone at MWC this year, but the cat might be out of the bag before the phone event even starts. Someone took a photo of what is allegedly promotional material, which shows a possible first look at the next-gen folding phone, and its apparent name: The Huawei Mate X.
Twitter user @gimme2pm tweeted out an image showing the alleged phone in three stages: fully unfolded in tablet-like mode, partially folded in half (clamshell-style), and fully folded into smartphone-size dimensions. Slashleaks tracked the image's source down to a post on Hupu by user POKERTEA.
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We can’t glean anything technical from the poster, sadly, but we can see clear design elements. Like every folding phone we’ve seen but the Xiaomi concept, the Mate X folds in half along a central spine. Like the just-unveiled Samsung Galaxy Fold, Huawei’s phone seems to fold flat, unlike the Royole Flexpai. But like the latter, the Mate X's screen is on the outside, like a book cover.
There’s something else in the photo detail: a lipped ridge on one end that isn’t covered when folded into smartphone mode. It’s hard to tell, but it looks like there could be multiple cameras peeking out from the edge. In other words, these lenses aren’t covered when the Mate X is in smartphone mode, and peer out the back when unfolded into tablet mode.
A conceptual race to a foldable finish
Though covered by scaffolding, the photo’s poster text reads “World’s fastest foldable 5G Phone.” It’s pretty likely that the other front runner for high-powered foldable phone, the Samsung Galaxy Fold, is going to pack the latest Snapdragon 855 or the company’s newest Exynos chip, so Huawei could go toe-to-toe by packing the Mate X with its own next-gen Kirin chip.
The only thing we do know is the foldable phone will include Huawei’s Balong 5000 modem, which will enable it to access 5G networks.
And, of course, the name. You might remember the last time Huawei used the “X” moniker in its Huawei Mate 20 X, the plus-sized version of the phone designed primarily for gaming and watching media. It had a massive 7.2-inch display, and considering the fully-unfolded Galaxy Fold reportedly has a 7.3-inch screen, we might see something similar with the Mate X.
Whether Huawei’s foldable handset will beat Samsung’s to market is another question, as Huawei CEO Richard Yu previously boasted the company would unveil the ‘world’s first’ 5G foldable at MWC.
Considering the Galaxy Fold is launching on April 26 in the US and May 3 in Europe, perhaps Huawei is racing to release its first – something we may have to wait until MWC next week to discover.
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