Huawei Shows Off Mate XT Ultimate Tri-Folding Phone!

Talk about a true innovation in design!

Huawei has just shown off the Mate XT Ultimate; the world’s first tri-folding smartphone, potentially giving us a sneak peek at what foldables will be capable of. It’s a phone that’s basically made up of three segments, which then fold out in multiple stages.

But is the new, novel form-factor the only thing this phone has going for it?

How is the “Ultimate Design”?

With its design being the primary selling point, we'll take a look at that first.

More than any other foldable, the Huawei Mate XT Ultimate feels the most like a tablet when folded out, thanks to its 10.2-inch LTPO OLED display. Fold the left section and you now have a 7.9-inch foldable phone. Completely fold it all the way, and you get a slab phone with a 6.4-inch display.

Surprisingly, it’s not too thick either when all folded up. It’s definitely not as slim as most standard slab phones but it’s not absurdly thick either. Initial impressions from China puts it around the Samsung Galaxy Z Fold5 when it’s all closed up.

It’s not surprising though, since the Huawei Mate XT Ultimate measures only 3.6mm when completely unfolded. This means the phone is quite light, weighing in at just around 298g. However, the weight distribution does make it a little wonky to use one-handed, with much of the weight focused on its camera island.

Huawei appears to have made each “mode” with an intended purpose in mind. Fully-closed, the standard single-screen is perfect for day-to-day phone use, dual-screen is meant for web browsing and reading, and the whole unfolded array is best for detailed work or study.

How’s the Camera Performance?

Speaking of the massive camera island, Huawei has given the Mate XT Ultimate some capable cameras and sensors. There’s a 50MP main camera with phase-detection autofocus (PDAF) and optical image stabilization (OIS) for clearer shots. A 12MP periscope telephoto provides up to 5.5x optical zoom and OIS is used for zooming in, and finally there’s a 12MP ultrawide for all those wide-angle shots.

And yes, there’s a few AI features here too, mostly revolving around photo retouching and editing as well as improvements to their Xiaoyi voice assistant. However, there’s no news as to whether these features work on-device or over the Cloud.

But how is the Huawei Mate XT Ultimate as a Smartphone?

Right now, it’s hard to compare the Mate XT Ultimate in terms of performance. It’s only available in China for the moment with no news as to whether it’s going to ship to other countries. Huawei has also been quiet regarding the folding phone’s more concrete specifications though we do have a few more details.

For starters, the phone will supposedly come with 16GB of RAM and up to 1TB of storage. It’s also going to run on the latest HarmonyOS system given the ban Huawei has experienced. There’s no detail on the chipset but we suspect it to be one of their best Kirin chips given the price point and overall capabilities of the phone.

Battery performance should be decent, given that it’s sporting a 5,600mAh cell. And even then, it also supports 66W wired charging and even 50W wireless charging for quick top ups throughout the day. It can even do reverse wireless and wired charging in a pinch, though only at 7.5W and 5W respectively.

Of course, this is a rather pricey package even when compared to other high-end smartphones. It starts at CNY 19,999 (approx. PHP 157,344) which is well beyond the price of even most high-end flagship phones. For example, you can buy like three Galaxy S24 Ultras, at least based on our pricing here at Kimstore.

It’s also only available in China for now, as with most Huawei smartphones. Still, this is definitely one cool device and it’s interesting to see how Huawei or any other manufacturer does with the foldable form factor in the future.

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