China's Huawei Shows the World Its $2,800 'Trifold' Phone 66
An anonymous reader shares a report: Over successive administrations, the U.S. government has used stiff trade restrictions to try to stifle the Chinese telecom giant Huawei. In turn, the company never misses an opportunity to show that it is still standing. Last year, at the tail end of a visit to China by Gina Raimondo, the U.S. commerce secretary, Huawei unveiled a smartphone that was powered by an advanced semiconductor made in China. The chip was exactly the kind of technology that the United States, in an effort led by Ms. Raimondo, had tried to prevent China from developing.
The Huawei phone, called the Mate 60 Pro, was heralded in China as the triumph of a national champion over American constraints. It sold out within minutes on Chinese e-commerce platforms. Many shoppers chose to pair their purchase with a phone case emblazoned with a photo of Ms. Raimondo's face. In the Chinese tech hub of Shenzhen on Tuesday, Huawei again made a bid for the spotlight with the announcement of a new device just hours after Apple introduced its iPhone 16 in California. Huawei's latest phone, the Mate XT, is heavy on novelty: It can be folded, twice [non-paywalled source].
The tablet-size device folds along two vertical seams to become the size of a typical phone. It is the first commercially available trifold smartphone. It comes in two colors, red and black, and will go on sale on Sept. 20. "It's a piece of work that everyone has thought of but never managed to create," said Richard Yu, Huawei's consumer group chairman. "I have always had a dream to put our tablet in my pocket, and we did it." The Mate XT, with a screen that measures 10.2 inches diagonally, is equipped with artificial intelligence-enabled translation, messaging and photo editing features. Mr. Yu also unveiled a thin keyboard that folds in half to the same size as the phone. He showed the audience how he carried both together in the pocket of his suit jacket. Starting at $2,800, the Mate XT is priced like a luxury product.
The Huawei phone, called the Mate 60 Pro, was heralded in China as the triumph of a national champion over American constraints. It sold out within minutes on Chinese e-commerce platforms. Many shoppers chose to pair their purchase with a phone case emblazoned with a photo of Ms. Raimondo's face. In the Chinese tech hub of Shenzhen on Tuesday, Huawei again made a bid for the spotlight with the announcement of a new device just hours after Apple introduced its iPhone 16 in California. Huawei's latest phone, the Mate XT, is heavy on novelty: It can be folded, twice [non-paywalled source].
The tablet-size device folds along two vertical seams to become the size of a typical phone. It is the first commercially available trifold smartphone. It comes in two colors, red and black, and will go on sale on Sept. 20. "It's a piece of work that everyone has thought of but never managed to create," said Richard Yu, Huawei's consumer group chairman. "I have always had a dream to put our tablet in my pocket, and we did it." The Mate XT, with a screen that measures 10.2 inches diagonally, is equipped with artificial intelligence-enabled translation, messaging and photo editing features. Mr. Yu also unveiled a thin keyboard that folds in half to the same size as the phone. He showed the audience how he carried both together in the pocket of his suit jacket. Starting at $2,800, the Mate XT is priced like a luxury product.
Well yea, because Huawei doesn't have to turn a (Score:5, Insightful)
profit. They're a literal wing of the CCP.
Re:Well yea, because Huawei doesn't have to turn a (Score:5, Informative)
That's how they operate...very little is innovated from scratch in China.
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Very little is innovated from scratch anywhere in the world when it comes to this sort of tech. It all builds on the developments and patents of the past. It was a fantasy to think that simply flipping a switch and cutting China off would leave them stranded.
China is actually full of many very smart people. You should know, your trained them in western universities.
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The lack of innovation in China has nothing to do with the IQ of individuals in China. It has to do with systemic Chinese cultural issues which were what caused their relative stagnation over a period of several thousand years combined with the stagnation inherent in large authoritarian systems like the CCP.
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Sorry but that is horseshit. If you want to see a counter example, read TFS.
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And it's going to have a stupidly high failure rate. Samsung hasn't made a tri-fold not because they didn't want to, but because doing so makes the normal fold screens look like blocks of hardened steel as regards to durability because of that outer hinge. Combine that with the fact you can't make any sort of case for the thing at all and broken phone rates are going to go through the roof.
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And that is why we keep falling behind Huawei. Until we accept that Huawei is an R&D powerhouse, we can't compete with them.
6G and next gen WiFi are going to be full of Huawei tech, like 5G was. They are going to have their equipment on the market a couple of years before Western companies do. And not just Huawei, we are already behind on EV tech and unable to match Chinese batteries for quality or output. DJI has the high end drone market sewn up. All the major 3D printer manufacturers are Chinese.
Thei
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No one says WE don't need to do better....
But WE need to also end all dependence we have upon china for any and all goods we currently need them for...they are not our friend.
We do need to push our people to work harder and smarter and stay competitive with china....to mostly get the western world away from their clutches and just let them be by themselves and we in the west stick together like we should have done before we "brought the
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If you really want to end any dependence on China entirely, you are going to have to invest huge sums of money.
Seems like it would make more sense to make sure that critical parts of the supply chain can be moved back, to lessen the risk to the point where China can't do anything without also doing at least as much harm to itself. MAD, if you like.
I also wouldn't count on simply withdrawing Western manufacturing from China on having the effect you intend on them. Their supply chains are fantastic and not ea
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I already do almost always look for alternatives I can buy that are not made in china.
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I look at the quality of the product. Often the Chinese products are the best price/performance option.
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Re: Well yea, because Huawei doesn't have to turn (Score:2)
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China remained mostly communist with minor shifts towards fascism until the late 80's, then shifted more or less fully into fascism, with Xi attempting over the past decade to shift back to communism and failing utterly.
Re: Well yea, because Huawei doesn't have to turn (Score:2)
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The emperor dislikes conspicuous consumption.
China has 20 million "missing girls" due to selective abortions, so women in China can be very picky and materialistic.
If a Chinese guy doesn't have a car, a condo, and the latest phone, he's a genetic dead end.
Re: Well yea, because Huawei doesn't have to turn (Score:2)
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Well maybe not, a lot of them turned up in school records later on. Turns out rural compliance with the 1 child policy wasn't quite so high as the official statistics stated:
https://www.washingtonpost.com... [washingtonpost.com]
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Huawei: "Here is this cool phone we just made, but you can't have it! Too bad, restrictions in your country, haha!"
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I too proposed the idea of a hover board. You just stand on it and command it to go, like Aladin's magic carpet, it can take you from place to place. It works on batteries, so no pollution. No mechanical parts, so very few repairs.
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This is untrue. Huawei is very profitable, despite the sanctions. They are also not a "wing of the CCP", they are a private company. You have been lied to.
The phone may or may not be a loss leader. It doesn't look too cheap to be unprofitable, given what other companies charge for foldables.
Well fuck. (Score:5, Funny)
America is falling behind. Our next phone need to be a quinti-fold [theonion.com]!
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America is falling behind. Our next phone need to be a quinti-fold [theonion.com]!
We cannot let there be a mineshaft-I mean folding gap!
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invent a phone that can roll up like a joint.
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The Onion are damn prophets. We're up to 7 blade razors, in case anyone was wondering.
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Reminds me of the old SNL skit for the Track 3 razor...."because you'll believe anything"
too narrow (Score:2)
I haven't seen the specifications ,., but my guess is that the phone too narrow especially if they're doing tri-fold. I have a Z Fold 5, and 95% of the time I want to use it folded, but it's not wide enough in folded mode. Huge waste. I have an iPhone Pro Max and use that most of the time. My excuse for carrying two phones is Work vs. Personal.
Our goal is to prevent trifold phones? (Score:3)
We're trying to prevent them from having phones? What? Surely the focus should be military applications or important things, no? We stopped selling chips (or at least, good chips), but then also don't want them to develop any kind of chips? And sure, the computing power can be used for less benign applications... but what's China's alternative? Which country nowadays can function without semiconductors?
On the topic at hand though.. Ugh, I hope this thing fails, I don't want ever bigger devices in my pocket and don't want other manufacturers to be tempted to match them.
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Chips have lots of defense uses, obviously.
In fact if future battlefield dominance comes from the ability to cheaply mass-produce hordes of largely autonomous expendable drones, we're in trouble because China is really really good at that.
This article doesn't actually state where a million drones for Ukraine would be coming from, but it has to be mostly China.
https://www.cbc.ca/news/world/... [www.cbc.ca]
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We're trying to prevent them from having phones?
the primary goal was to stimy their economy (by denying access to cutting edge tech, sanctions, import tariffs ... where have you been the last 7 years?)
What? Surely the focus should be military applications or important things, no?
that will come later, since the primary plan is (quite predictably) backfiring miserably and has actually spurred their development and autonomy and their political influence in their hemisphere. let's just hope we all get to survive that clusterfuck when it ... ehm ... "unfolds" (to stay on topic).
Ugh, I hope this thing fails. I don't want ever bigger devices in my pocket
that's weird, nobody forces you to have one, and phone form
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the primary goal was to stimy their economy (by denying access to cutting edge tech, sanctions, import tariffs ... where have you been the last 7 years?)
Yeah, I know we have and are still trying to fuck with their economy, with middling results. I wish it was because of the human rights issues or something worthwhile, but I don't believe that. We've been given unproven justification (Huawei "spying"), and no government body wants to admit that it's really because China's growing economy goes against US hegemony. And as you said, from a technological standpoint, it's backfiring. Instead of making them dependent, or at least heavily relying, on US chips, we'r
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i emphatize. i hate touchscreens and have been looking for pyhsical keyboard devices for years, with less and less choice that often came with big compromises, buying backup devices while they were available and holding on to them until they literally died. at some point i just gave up.
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The US has been trying to stop China developing high end chip manufacturing, and high end chip designs (e.g. by blocking exports of the design software). It hasn't worked and their development continues at pace.
It doesn't help that Huawei literally invented key parts of the technology in smartphone chips, particularly the radios. By the time they became part of standards like 5G and WiFi, and other manufacturers licenced them, Huawei had been producing parts for a couple of years.
I'd like to a folding phone
Durability? (Score:3)
How is the durability of the current crop of folding devices working out? This thing looks like it will break in about 2.3 seconds of use.
Re:Durability? (Score:4, Interesting)
From what I've read, the durability is slowly getting better. The screens are still easily scratched, and often come in for repairs, but they are slowly getting better.
Instead of that, why not have a phone with one side being the usual screen, the other side being an e-Ink screen which could be programmed to work with various cases to show info on them? This way, one could have the back screen show a clock which would take next to no battery, because an e-Ink display requires no power when not refreshing. Or, a phone that can handle being a full ARM computer. It won't be a gaming rig, but it would provide a desktop in a pinch.
Or maybe focus on software and not have so much insecure crap running on the phone, to minimize the damage that rogue apps can do. I miss the days of xPrivacy, where a rogue fleshlight app that demands all permissions available can have them... but the microphone output is static, song playlists are random garbage, the camera sees black or static, the GPS sees some dummy location, etc. This way, the app can upload what it wants, but the data is either worthless, or maybe poisonous to the snoops.
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I would ascribe this to enshittification, and having repairability as bad as possible so people buy new phones, but on the other hand, those folding mechanisms are delicate and complicated, just to evacuate dust, sand, and pocket stuff. The screens are also pretty thin as well. I know they are quite delicate, but people seem to like them, as they give the square centimeters of a small tablet for the space usage of a phone, which can be a nice thing.
Modular designs likely will be too thick for makers to tr
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why not have a phone with one side being the usual screen, the other side being an e-Ink screen
There was the Yotaphone a few years back, which was exactly this.
https://www.techradar.com/news... [techradar.com]
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The screens are still easily scratched
This is why Gorilla Glass has become the 2nd of my two requirements for a new phone (the other being a headphone jack).
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How is the durability of the current crop of folding devices working out? This thing looks like it will break in about 2.3 seconds of use.
Yeah, the foldable Samsung sucks (my wife has one). The screen just disintegrates.
There actually is a use case - mostly because smart phones have got so large. Folding to fit in a small waist pack or purse is good.
Why? (Score:2)
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Looks like a bit of for the lols, for nationalism, for social credit score. Not necessarily in that order.
a visit to China by Gina Raimondo, the U.S. commerce secretary, Huawei unveiled a smartphone ... heralded in China as the triumph of a national champion ... Many shoppers chose to pair their purchase with a phone case emblazoned with a photo of Ms. Raimondo's face.
At this point (Score:3)
This origami cellphone is starting to look more unwieldy and almost as ridiculous to be seen using as an Apple VR helmet thing.
I think what's desperately needed is general purpose smart glasses that don't make you look like a Daft Punk member. The giant Apple helmet ain't it, and the origami phone ain't it either.
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Transformers are real!
Apple is coming out with the iPtimus Prime
Propaganda Piece (Score:2)
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What's next? will they be making supercars to compete with the Italians? https://newatlas.com/automotiv... [newatlas.com] https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
How thick when folded? (Score:2)
Pocketability is just just a function two dimensions. Thickness also matters. I learned this going from a Sony XZ2 compact to a Pixel 5. The Pixel 5 is two dimensionally bigger but also thinner so it ends up being about the same, maybe even a little better than the Sony. Of course, the question may be mute if the the Huawei is so huge that it is two dimensionally too large even when folded twice.
Trying to prevent China from acquiring tech is... (Score:2)
...futile
They will get what they need on the black market
And, they are smart and may one day invent tech we need
Politicians need to learn how the real world works
File it under: Expensive Landfill (Score:2)
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There is market for the rich who like toys and people who want to look like they are rich via showy toys to get laid despite having a personality worse than a slashdotter's.
It is nice (Score:2)
$2800 (Score:2)
That moment when Huawei makes phones more expensive than Apple.
~$1000 per fold (Score:2)
Flagship non-folding phones (ex: iPhone, Galaxy S) are around $1000
Flagship folding phones (ex: Galaxy Z Fold) are around $2000
This is trifold, so around $3000
Maybe someone will make a $4000 phone you can fold in 4.