Huawei | The Verge

Huawei beats Samsung and Apple to market with the first wide foldable

2026-04-20T09:06:16-04:00

Huawei’s Pura X Max (pictured) is the first wide-style foldable over the finish line. | Image: Huawei / The Verge

Huawei has launched its passport-style foldable in China, ahead of similar devices said to be coming from Apple and Samsung. That makes the Pura X Max the first wide foldable phone that's actually available to buy, with today's launch now giving us the full specifications and price after its design was unveiled by Huawei last week.

There are two versions of the Pura X Max, both of which are available to preorder starting today. The standard version starts at 10999 yuan (about $1,613) for 12GB of memory and 256GB of storage, or 11,999 yuan (about $1,800) for 512GB of storage. The Pura X Max Collector's Edition starts at 12,999 yuan (about $ …

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Huawei beats Apple and Samsung with new wide foldable

2026-04-13T04:17:44-04:00

The Pura X Max’s wide aspect ratio should make it a better option for watching horizontal video. | Image: Huawei

Apple and Samsung have both been strongly linked with plans for foldable phones in a boxy, wide aspect ratio, but it looks like another company will get there first. Huawei has just revealed the design of the Pura X Max, a new foldable it's launching in China next week, and its passport-esque form factor is a dead ringer for early leaks of the iPhone Fold.

We don't know too much about the Pura X Max yet, which will get a full release on April 20th alongside the colorful Pura 90 series, but early images shared by Huawei show blue, white, orange, and black versions of the phone, all featuring a triple rear camera. The rear design, with gridde …

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Huawei Mate 80 Pro Max has the world’s brightest phone screen

2025-11-25T07:21:49-05:00

The screen uses dual-layer OLED tech to achieve the effect.

Huawei has just launched its Mate 80 series in China, and the top-spec 80 Pro Max stands out for a dual-layer OLED display that Huawei says can hit an unmatched 8,000 nits of peak brightness. The Mate 80 phones are joined by a new Mate X7 foldable with IP59 dustproofing.

There are four Mate 80 phones, but the Pro Max is definitely the most exciting. Its 6.9-inch dual-layer OLED screen is said to be exceptionally bright at up to 8,000 nits - more than the 7,000 nits boasted by Realme in its recent GT 8 Pro, and far above the 3,300 nits claimed by the Pixel 10 Pro. There's a big caveat to that: peak brightness figures only reflect how bright …

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Huawei Mate 70 Air is a little thick for a thin phone

2025-11-06T07:35:00-05:00

It’s a thin phone, but still packs a triple rear camera.

Huawei is the latest phone manufacturer to release a thin phone: the Mate 70 Air. That's our third Air for the year - after the iPhone and ZTE's Nubia Air - to only two Edges, suggesting Apple's influence still reigns supreme over Samsung's.

At 6.6mm thick, the Mate 70 Air isn't quite as slim as Apple or Samsung's attempts at the formula, but it makes up for it with a positively huge 6,500mAh battery - even larger than the 4,800mAh capacity of the Motorola Edge 70 I reviewed this week. The pressure is only building for Apple and Samsung to deliver better battery life in their second generations.

The Mate 70 Air manages that big battery in …

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Huawei’s second trifold adds stylus support and purple pleather

2025-09-04T06:04:24-04:00

Huawei has announced the Mate XTs, its second-generation trifold phone, which is available to order now in China. It's only a minor upgrade on the first edition, but comes with new colors, stylus support, and a slightly lower price tag.

The biggest addition is the ability to use a stylus on the folding screen, though otherwise the 10.2-inch display - which folds down to 7.9-inch and 6.4-inch options - is much the same as before. Other upgrades include a Kirin 9020 chipset, an improved 40-megapixel ultrawide camera, and new colors: returning red and black models are now accompanied by white and purple versions, all bedecked in imitation leat …

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Huawei’s latest phone fits two telephoto lenses into one camera

2025-06-11T08:14:50-04:00

The Pura 80 Ultra has more lenses than it initially appears.

Huawei has just announced the Chinese launch of its Pura 80 flagship phones, and the Ultra comes with a clever trick: a "switchable" dual-lens telephoto camera that allows two different lenses to share the same sensor.

You can see both lenses side-by-side in the largest of the three camera rings on the 80 Ultra's rear, but they share more than just a housing. Both lenses are attached to the same set of periscopic elements and the same image sensor, with a movable prism that directs light from the chosen lens. That's a different approach to the variable telephotos in some Sony Xperia phones, which use a single lens but move parts of the peri …

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Huawei’s first trifold is a great phone that you shouldn’t buy

2025-05-16T13:12:48-04:00

Let's get one thing out of the way immediately: you shouldn't buy Huawei's trifold phone, the Mate XT. And that's alright, because you probably couldn't if you wanted to - while it's no longer exclusive to China, it's only on sale in a handful of countries, and not in the US or Europe.

Besides, I can reel off a list of major problems with the Mate XT: at almost $4,000 it's far too expensive, it doesn't have native support for Google apps (though you can get around that more easily than you might think), it's limited to 4G, and there are some pretty obvious reasons to worry about its durability. Any one of those individually would be a good …

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Just look at Huawei’s trifold phone

2025-04-17T15:06:47-04:00

I bet your phone can’t do this.

After 24 hours with Huawei's Mate XT - a.k.a. the world's first trifold smartphone - I have this to say for it: the novelty hasn't worn off.

I've tried the Mate XT twice before, first shortly after it launched last September, and then again in February after it was released outside of China. But now Huawei is ready to actually let me review its one-of-a-kind hardware, which at today's exchange rates would set you back just under $4,000.

I'll be spending the next week with my SIM card in the Mate XT, as I get used to life with triple the usual space and none of the usual Google Mobile Services support, but one day in, I figured I'd share m …

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Huawei’s new flip phone is weirdly wide

2025-03-20T07:35:31-04:00

The Pura X opens from the side, not the top.

Huawei has launched a new flip phone that upends the form factor, opening sideways rather than vertically to create a wider device with a tablet-esque aspect ratio. It's the first Huawei phone to ship without Android app compatibility, and debuts the company's in-house AI assistant, Harmony Intelligence - something the industry shouldn't ignore, Nvidia's CEO admits.

The Pura X looks similar to a Samsung Galaxy Flip or Motorola Razr when it's closed, with a palm-sized design and a square cover screen below its triple camera. The giveaway that something's up is that the hinge is on the phone's side, not its top - flip that and you find a 6.3- …

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Huawei’s trifold phone launches outside of China

2025-02-18T10:34:26-05:00

Huawei's trifold Mate XT phone is launching outside of China, but it won't come cheap. The world's first and only phone that folds at two separate points in the display costs €3,499 (about $3,660) - and like other Huawei phones, won't officially support any Google apps.

The Mate XT launched in China in September 2024. It features a dual-hinge folding display that gives users three different screen configurations: a 6.4-inch panel when closed, a 10.2-inch tablet-sized screen when fully opened, and a 7.9-inch display when only partially unfolded.

The trifold is also impressively thin, just 3.6mm thick at its thinnest point when open. That's …

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