For a company that is proud of innovations, Apple hasn’t quite been innovating over the years—not least after Jobs passed. Its non-innovation was made even more evident when Huawei announced the world’s first tri-fold smartphone within 24 hours of the announcement of the iPhone 16 series and the iPhone 16 Pro series.
That’s right. There’s no need to wait for the TECNO Phantom Ultimate 2 concept phone to become real because a triple folding phone is coming on the market and the last we heard, the Huawei Mate XT Ultimate Design [CH], as it is called, has surpassed 4 million pre-orders (!).
The new Huawei Mate XT Ultimate Design is a HarmonyOS device powered by Huawei’s very owned Hisilicon Kirin 9010 chip featuring a 12-core processor paired to Maleoon 910 GPU. That is the same chip that powers the new Pura70 Pro, Pura70 Pro+, and Pura70 Ultra, by the way.
For the uninitiated, the Kirin 9010 features 2x 2.3 GHz Taishan, 6x 2.18 GHz Taishan, and 4x 1.55 GHz Cortex-A510 cores. And yes, it is a 5G chip, and also yes, it is a huge middle finger that the good’old US of A. I guess Huawei perfectly exemplified “it is true that what does not kill you makes you stronger.
Anyways, there is no mention of the RAM and storage type but we do know it has USB 3.1 Gen 1 with Type-C interface, of course. However, the real star isn’t the SoC; it’s the panel—or panels? OK. It is just a panel that serves as the main and external panels of the Mate XT.
But first, the dimensions. The device measures 156.7 mm tall (or long, depending on how you see it) and 73.5 mm wide when closed offering a screen real estate of 6.4 inches. It opens to 143 mm and 219 mm in “dual panel” (7.9-inch) and “triple mode” (10.2-inch), respectively.
When closed, it is a manageable 12.8 mm profile, and when in dual screen mode it is 7.45 mm and 4.75 mm. Things get crazier when it opens up completely. In its tablet form with an expansive 10.2-inch (dia.) display, it is just 3.6 mm thin. Despite having a tablet-size display, the device weighs just under 300g (298 grams, to be precise, or about 10.5 oz.).
The display is an OLED item with LTPO tech, 1.07 billion colors, P3 wide color gamut, 1440 Hz high-frequency PWM dimming, and up to 240 Hz touch sampling rate. The 6.4-inch display has 2,232 x 1,008 pixels, the 7.9-inch display has 2,232 x 2,048 pixels, and the full 10.2-inch display offers up to a cool 2,232 by 3,184 pixels.
It has an 8 MP f/2.2 camera when in a 6.4-inch folded state but the star snappers are on the octagon camera bump. Leading the main camera setup is a 50 MP featuring a 1/1.56” sensor with OIS and f/1.4-f/4.0 10-stop variable aperture (!). There is also a 12 MP super wide-angle (f/2.2), and a periscope telephoto camera with 5.5x optical zoom and 50x digital zoom. In addition to OIS, the rear cameras also benefit from EIS and AIS, as well as autofocus.
The device is armed with a total of 5,600 mAh capacity spread across 3 cells, each on one section of the phone. We heard each cell is just 1.9 mm thin. Mind-blown.
The thing about this new triple-fold device is, it does not have the latest tech. I guess it does not need to. It has dual-band Wi-Fi, Wi-Fi 6, Bluetooth 5.2, and it has USB 3.1 Gen 1.
Other notables include Huawei’s proprietary satellite communication tech, NFC, UWB, locations (GPS L1 + L5, A-GPS, GLONASS, Beidou B1I + B1C + B2a + B2b, GALILEO E1 + E5a + E5b, QZSS L1 + L5), NavIC), and support for 66 W super fast charging, 50 W wireless fast charging, and 7.5 W wireless reverse charging.
The new Huawei Mate XT Ultimate Design is offered with 16 GB RAM and a choice of 256 GB, 512 GB, and 1 TB ROM. It is available to order in China, in a choice of red and black colorway, with a very cool starting price of 19,999 yuan [CH], which is about US$2,807 based on the current going rate. Keep going for more product images.
Images: Huawei [CH].