It’s been a long time coming, but Huawei is getting ready to put the foldable Mate X on sale, in China to start with, and with an eye-watering price tag to match. Just how much? Expect to part with upwards of $3000 AUD to get your hands on the Huawei Mate X.
Huawei’s Mate X is one of two genuinely foldable phones announced earlier this year, and while Samsung’s Galaxy Fold was plagued with problems shortly after its announcement (including a screen that conveniently peeled right off), Huawei’s Mate X wasn’t without its own challenges.
Since it was announced back at MWC ’19 in Barcelona, the Mate X has – largely – been vapourware, having found its way into the hands of Huawei staff and few others. While it hasn’t suffered the same kind of public screen disintegration, the outward-folding display comes with its own questions around durability, and Huawei doubtlessly does not want nor need further controversy.
There’s also some doubt that Huawei’s Mate X was ready in time to get it certified / licensed for Google’s Mobile Services before the mid-April trade ban was imposed, meaning that Mate X could be a very expensive Android device with little application support.
The company has confirmed it’s coming, hitting Weibo with the announcement and the RMB 16,999 pricetag. However, for that price – about $3500 in the local currency – you’re getting a good looking foldable with 5G support … though Google Apps (at least in China) won’t be there.
The other advantage to the long lead time between announcement and retail is that the Mate X has enjoyed a bit of a feature bump – last year’s Kirin 980 is gone, replaced by this year’s Kirin 990, alongside 8GB of RAM, 512GB storage, and of course the Balong 5000 5G modem to enable that 5G connectivity.
We’ve been in touch with Huawei’s local arm to find out more about when these upcoming devices might be coming to Australia. We’ll bring you more when we know more!