The world's second tri-fold phone is here, and it's still Huawei.
Huawei unveils new tri-folding phone
On the afternoon of 4 September, Huawei unveiled its second tri-folding screen phone, Huawei Mate XTs, in Shenzhen, with a new Extraordinary Master logo. Compared with the first generation of tri-folding, the new generation of Mate XTs continues the "Z" tri-folding design, and has upgraded in communication, imaging, APP adaptation and cross-device collaboration.
In terms of price, the Huawei Mate XTs Extraordinary Master is priced from RMB 17,999, with the top price reaching RMB 21,999. The overall pricing is a step down from the first generation. On 10 September last year, Huawei released the world's first triple-folding screen phone, the Huawei Mate XT Extraordinary Master opening price of 19,999 yuan-23,999 yuan.
Last year, Huawei released the first triple-folding machine, the listing was sought after, due to limited production capacity, the purchase of the machine are required to wait a long time.
So far Huawei is the only global mass production of tri-folding screen mobile phone manufacturers. "The threshold of tri-folding technology and the difficulty of mass production is very high, and the only one that can surpass Huawei in tri-folding mobile phones is Huawei." Huawei executive director and terminal BG chairman Yu Chengdong revealed.
However, there is also news that Samsung may launch its first tri-folding mobile phone in the second half of this year, becoming the second manufacturer in the world to mass produce tri-folding mobile phones after Huawei.
In the past two years, Huawei released new mobile phones are "secretive" about the chip configuration. But Huawei this time deliberately disclosed Huawei Mate XTs chip for Kirin 9020, which is also the Kirin chip after four years to reappear Huawei conference.
Yu Chengdong said, Huawei mate xTs extraordinary master equipped with Kirin 9020 chip, soft and hard core cloud synergy, system level deep optimisation, performance and then breakthrough, the whole machine performance increased by 36%.
In terms of communication, Huawei Mate XTs is equipped with the second generation of Linghuo communication technology and Tiantong satellite communication; in terms of imaging, Huawei Mate XTs adds a red maple original colour lens, and the main camera is upgraded to 50 megapixels.
The Huawei Mate XTs comes pre-installed with the latest HarmonyOS 5.1 system, which supports triple-screen multitasking and real-time file transfer with Huawei tablets and laptops, among other things.
A video of the launch demo shows that the phone supports users to freely drag and drop text between several screens, as well as watching videos on one screen and editing videos on another, among other things.
"For the first time, Huawei's Mate XTs packs PC versions of office software, financial software, and drawing software into a mobile phone with a stylus and folding keyboard." Yu described the new machines as capable of unleashing greater mobile productivity, equivalent to putting a PC in your pocket. Yu also revealed that up to now, the number of Hongmeng 5 terminal devices has exceeded 14 million.
Huawei Mall official website shows that the Mate XTs Extraordinary Masters began full pre-sale at 18:08 on 4 September, and the new product was first sold at 10:08 on 12 September.
IDC China research manager Guo Tianxiang said, Huawei mate xTs belongs to the small modification, the product itself does not change much, mainly the chip image for upgrading, support stylus and so on. With the improvement of shipments and yield rate, the cost of Huawei tri-folding screen mobile phone may be reduced, which will be beneficial to more consumers, in addition, it is expected that the subsequent Huawei tri-folding products will be sold overseas.
IDC data show that, as the world's first tri-folding product, Huawei Mate XT as of July this year, shipments of more than 700,000 units, which, through the flexible switching between large and small screens, accurately covers the user's needs for use in the full range of scenarios such as life and entertainment, mobile office, etc., and has become a benchmark product for the high-end folding screen market.
In the case of the overall mobile phone market is relatively weak, the folding machine market performance is better than the market. Because of this, in recent years, major mobile phone manufacturers have launched a variety of folding machines, and there is also recent news that Apple will also release its first folding screen mobile phone next year.
According to IDC data, in the first half of 2025, China's folding screen mobile phone market shipments reached 4.98 million units, a year-on-year growth of about 12.6%, Huawei dominated the market with a 75% market share, and became the first folding screen cumulative shipments exceeded 10 million units of domestic manufacturers.
IDC predicts that the global folding screen mobile phone market shipments in 2025 will be about 19.83 million units, a year-on-year growth of 6.0%; by 2029, global folding screen mobile phone shipments are expected to be close to 27.29 million units, with a 5-year compound growth rate of 7.8%.
IDC said that at present, with the development of component technology into a bottleneck, folding screen mobile phone in the "thin and light" breakthrough space gradually narrowed, the future innovation in the field of hardware will be more focused on the continuous iteration of the product form.
