Hands-on with the world's first triple fold smartphone that's exclusive to one country

At the beginning of August the Huawei CEO for Consumer Business Group was spotted on a plane holding the world's first tri-foldable smartphone. The following the month the device was officially unveiled, and I have managed to spend some time with it for a hands-on experience.

The Huawei Mate XT Ultimate Design is the official name of the device, and while I was in China I walked past a Huawei store where they had one available. This device is truly an impressive feat of engineering with its dual-hinge design that enables users to fold the Mate XT into three forms - triple folded (completely collapsed), unfolded, and completely unfolded. At each of these stages users will get a different screen size, with the triple fold rocking a standard 6.4-inch display that's then bumped up to a 7.9-inch display when unfolded, and then a 10.2-inch display when completely unfolded.

The above video shows each of these folding stages, and through my brief time holding the device I was truly impressed at the ease of the folding, along with the thinness of the device. Huawei designed the Mate XT with a shockingly thin battery that enables the device to be just 3.6mm thick, but still sport a 5,600mAh. However, due to the triple folding design when completely folded together the Mate XT Ultimate Design is a chunky 12.8mm thick, or half an inch.

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Moving back to the displays, Huawei has done some pretty incredible work at reducing the creases that are caused by the folds, and judging from the other foldable smartphones on the market I would say Huawei's engineering is about on par with the likes of Samsung - they are noticeable, but only at side angles not when you are holding the device in front of you.

When first holding the device it was quite confusing which way the screens folded as it's not immediately obvious, and considering the price of this smartphone was an insane 21,999 yuan for the 512GB model, which is about $2,800 USD, I wanted to be sure that I was folding the right way.

Unfortunately, I wasn't able to access the operating system during the brief time I had with the device, but was told that multi-tasking with apps is currently only supported on two screens, with a third app being kept in the device's slide-over mode.

Huawei's Mate XT Ultimate Design is exclusively being released in China, and regardless of its exorbitant price and popularity, it's one of the most impressive pieces of technological engineering I have come across.

Specifications

Brand Huawei

Model Mate XT Ultimate Design

Release date 10th September 2024

Dimensions (mm) 156.70 x 219.00 x 3.60

Weight (g) 298.00

Battery capacity 5600mAh

Removable battery No

Fast charging Proprietary

Wireless charging Yes

Wireless Charging 50W

Colours Dark Black, Rui Red

First Display

Refresh Rate 60 Hz

Screen size (inches) 6.40

Touchscreen Yes

Resolution 1008x2232 pixels

Second display

Screen size (inches) 7.90

Touchscreen Yes

Resolution 2048x2232 pixels

Third display

Screen size (inches) 10.20

Touchscreen Yes

Resolution 3184x2232 pixels

Hardware

RAM 16GB

Internal storage 256GB

Camera

Rear camera 50-megapixel (f/1.4-4.0) + 12-megapixel (f/2.2) + 12-megapixel (f/2.4)

No. of Rear Cameras 3

Front camera 8-megapixel (f/2.2)

No. of Front Cameras 1

Lens Type (Second Rear Camera) Ultra Wide-Angle

Lens Type (Third Rear Camera) Telephoto

Software

Operating system HarmonyOS 4.2

Connectivity

Wi-Fi Yes

Wi-Fi standards supported - 802.11 a/b/g/n/ac/ax

GPS Yes

Bluetooth Yes, v 5.20

NFC Yes

USB Type-C Yes

Headphones Type-C

Number of SIMs 2

Active 4G on both SIM cards Yes