Foldable smartphones from Huawei and Samsung attracted quite a lot of public attention at Mobile World Congress early this year, but launches were delayed as companies had to polish the technology. Samsung’s Galaxy Fold has since been released into the market in select countries (Ian: my local EE store has sold a dozen or so), whereas the Mate X, its rival from Huawei, is coming later.

As it turns out, Huawei plans to launch its Mate X in China on November 15. The foldable smartphone, which is powered by the HiSilicon Kirin 980 SoC (paired with 8 GB of RAM and 512 GB of storage), the Balong 5000 5G modem, and features an 8-inch foldable display with a 2480x2200 resolution and a 9:8 aspect ratio, will cost ¥16,999. This translates into a ~$2074 price in the US.

It is not completely clear when Huawei’s Mate X is set to arrive to other markets (if at all) and what kind of software will it have pre-installed. Considering how expensive the smartphone is, selling it potentially without applications from Google and other US-based vendors may not be a good idea in non-Chinese markets

In addition to revealing the launch date of the Mate X, Huawei also said today that it plans to release a refined version of the foldable smartphone, the Mate Xs, on the HiSilicon Kirin 990 5G SoC. It has a built-in 5G modem, and is set to come to China in March. It is unknown how much will the unit cost and whether it will be available outside of China.

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Sources: Engadget China (via Engadget), VMall (via GSMArena)

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  • CajunArson - Wednesday, October 23, 2019 - link

    Yeah, and there are people who scream that an 18-core HEDT CPU that costs less than half of this joke is a "ripoff".
  • close - Wednesday, October 23, 2019 - link

    Two completely different products. For this money you can buy a lot of things and the bottom line on whether any of those things are worth the money is a complicated combination of objective and subjective. There's certainly no definitive answer.
  • skavi - Wednesday, October 23, 2019 - link

    lol, what a ridiculous comparison
  • nerd1 - Wednesday, October 23, 2019 - link

    Disaster waiting to happen
  • 29a - Wednesday, October 23, 2019 - link

    Did Purch sell this website? I just noticed the Future logo at the bottom and that the video that blocks 3/4 of the screen on my phone is gone.
  • Tams80 - Wednesday, October 23, 2019 - link

    It would appear it's just Future eventually getting around to removing remnants of Purch branding and consolidating.

    https://www.anandtech.com/show/13092/future-plc-to...
  • HardwareDufus - Wednesday, October 23, 2019 - link

    yeah,
    Purch owned TomsHardware, AnandTech, TechRadar and MobileNations (windowscentral, crackberry, androidcentral, etc..) Now each of those sites displays Future as the publisher. They are the iHeartMedia (formelly Clear Channel) of the web....
  • HardwareDufus - Wednesday, October 23, 2019 - link

    resistance is futile, you will be assimilated
  • airdrifting - Wednesday, October 23, 2019 - link

    The folding part of the screen that is also facing outwards spells bad news.
  • Azethoth - Wednesday, October 23, 2019 - link

    I get the dream of a foldable fabric that displays a piano keyboard and then you play it in a venturi tube on the Enterprise and Picard gets laid.

    But this makes me throw up in the mouth a little. Too big to be a nice phone, too small to be a nice iPad. 18 of these and you could have had a Tesla Model 3 instead.

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