Huawei is known to be working on a foldable smartphone for some time now, and it seems the company is ready with something worth showing to a crowd. The Chinese phone maker reportedly held a private demo of a foldable smartphone prototype recently. The phone will come with 5G support and was demoed to some carriers in Korea. Huawei plans to introduce the phone at MWC 2019 in February.
Huawei’s foldable smartphone will be bigger than Samsung’s
Earlier at its annual developer conference (SDC), Samsung revealed the Infinity Flex Display which will be used in the company’s foldable smartphone. Reportedly called the Galaxy F, Samsung’s foldable device is a 4.5-inch smartphone which folds out into a 7.3-inch tablet. Huawei’s one, however, is even bigger, as it reportedly features a 5-inch display on the outside, and a 8-inch display on the inside. As reported in May, Chinese display manufactures, BOE, is supplying the foldable display panels to Huawei.
Huawei is pretty much ready with the product, but will, of course, have to wait for 5G network tests. The company plans to launch the device as soon as the new network gets commercialized. As things stand, the United States will probably be the first to flip the switch on the next-gen network. But given the relationship between Chinese vendors and the US, Huawei’s phone may not see the daylight there before anywhere else.
At the private demo event, representatives from Huawei Korea met with Korean telecom operators and government officials. It now remains to be seen if the Asian country becomes the first to get the Huawei foldable smartphone. Even then, it’s highly unlikely that the phone will hit retail shelves before the second half of 2019. Come MWC 2019, we will have a better view of all this.
