Ooof, talk about a gut-punching let-me-double-check-my-credit-score price—Huawei’s global version of the Mate XT tri-folding smartphone has been announced and it looks like folks will need to fork up a lung and a kidney just for the bragging rights. At about $3,300, the phone is being sold outside of China for the first time (minus the U.S. of course, thank you trade sanctions). It’s too early to tell how well the Mate XT will contribute to Huawei’s bottom line, although affluent customers (whom we assume the phone is targeted to) ought to give the phone (and brand) a nice social boost.
Perhaps wanting to ride the hot sales (and renewed interest in the brand) on the local China market, this week Huawei made headlines by offering the Mate XT, the first ever tri-fold smartphone, to global markets. However, at an MSRP of roughly $3,300, this phone seems to relegated to those with plenty of money to burn. For reference, that’s almost twice as much as the 256GB version of the Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 6 and Oppo Find N3. Ruminate on that for a second.
That said, the Mate XT is quite the powerhouse meant to showcase the best Huawei has to offer. With the 90Hz OLED display, users get three modes to play with: single (6.4 inches diagonal), dual (7.9 inches), or a fully expanded triple screen (10.2 inches).
Powering the device is the Kirin 9010 octa-core paired with a Maleoon 910 GPU, plus 16GB RAM and up to 1TB of storage. The triple rear cameras consist of a 50-megapixel f/1.4 OIS, a 12MP f/3.4 periscope (5.5x optical zoom), and a 12MP f/2,2 ultrawide. The front shooter is more staid with an 8MP f/2.2 sensor. With moderate use, the Mate XT’s 5,600mAh battery can get users to a full day.
Aside from the limiting price of entry (at least it’s not some limited gold edition), Huawei’s decision develop the Mate XT’s HarmonyOS as a supposedly Android-free in-house built operating system is a risky move. With Android being the most used smartphone OS globally, Mate XT users won’t have access to the vastly larger library of apps in the Google Play Store. Sure, one can sideload popular apps like Netflix, Instagram, or Google Gemini, but most owners will probably not want the extra hassle.