Recently, we’ve seen a couple of shots of the super-sized Huawei tri-fold smartphone in the wild, and now it looks like we’ve got an idea of when it might arrive. With the brand racing against Samsung to bring the first triple foldable to the market, it appears that Huawei might be the first to cross the finish line.
At an event celebrating the delivery of the Stelato S9, an electric car that runs Huawei’s HarmonyOS, a customer asked Richard Yu when we could expect the tri-fold phone’s launch. The answer (via MyDrivers) was simply “next month,” which is September, at the time of writing. Yu should know better than anyone, as he’s the one we’ve seen using what could be one of the best foldable phones of 2024 twice in the last month.
At this stage, it feels like no accident that images of this device have leaked. We were first shown the impressively large foldable display, followed by a rear shot that showcased the slim dimensions of this device. I doubt it’ll be too long before the official teasers grace our screens.
This unnamed Huawei tri-fold is the first of its kind, leaving us with plenty of questions. It would make most sense for the cover display to be a foldable panel that seamlessly joins the main display, but that would leave the fragile folding panel exposed at all times. Huawei has tried this in the past with its Mate Xs series, but those devices aren’t known for their ruggedness and are far less popular than the brand’s best flip phones.
When it launches next month, the triple foldable will likely be one of the priciest phones on the market, and being a Huawei device, it’ll lack support for Google services. We’re also expecting a HarmonyOS operating system update that turns its back on Android code, which could make the new tri-fold even more difficult to use outside of China when it arrives. That said, there’s no other phone with a design like this, and there’s every chance it could win over hardware enthusiasts.
For now, we’ll be keeping an eye on the ground for more news on this jumbo-sized foldable. September could turn out to be a pretty big month for the smartphone industry, with the big reveal of the iPhone 16 also expected within weeks and IFA 2024 taking place in Germany. As ever, we’ll be reporting on all the biggest developments.