Huawei is ushering in the era of the tri-fold phone, but are the benefits worth it?

Key Takeaways

The Huawei Mate XT is the first mass-market tri-fold smartphone, and its currently exclusive to the Chinese market.
Tri-fold phones offer an extra crease for added functionality, but they’re expensive and fragile.
It’s unclear whether tri-fold phones will take off or if they’ll ultimately fade into memory.

Just when we thought the foldable phone market was beginning to normalize, Huawei has thrown a wrench into the mix with its impressive new Mate XT handset.

What makes the Mate XT stand out from its foldable counterparts is the presence of an additional crease — effectively making this device the world’s first tri-fold smartphone.

The Mate XT is currently only available within Huawei’s domestic market of China, but it provides us with a glimpse into the possible future of smartphone design. Here’s what makes the prospect of a tri-fold future so appealing, and what might stop it from ever getting off the ground.

Huawei Mate XT

The Huawei Mate XT is the world’s first mass-market tri-fold smartphone, which is currently being sold exclusively within China.

Why are tri-fold phones appearing on the market?

In short, the smartphone market has plateaued

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It’s no secret that the smartphone industry has reached a relative state of maturity. In the early 2010s, a year-over-year phone upgrade was practically a spectacle (think: going from the iPhone 3GS to the iPhone 4, or going from the Galaxy SII to the Galaxy SIII).

Over the course of just a few years, innovation allowed for the rapid evolution of candy bar-style handsets — until it stopped. Today, just about every phone looks roughly the same, offers comparable hardware specifications, and even offers a similar user experience.

The introduction of foldable smartphones was set to reignite hype and innovation within the market, but we instead saw the product category mature in a mere couple of generations. Modern foldable phones have consolidated in form factor, and they all share the same yet-unsolved technological constraints to boot.

Huawei’s novel tri-fold Mate XT can therefore be seen as an attempt to spice up the handset landscape once again, and hopefully harken back to the exciting days of yesteryear in the process.

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What do tri-phones offer over regular folding devices?

That extra crease comes in handy

With its tri-fold design, Huawei’s new Mate XT smartphone provides a level of flexibility that standard foldable phones can’t compete with. The extra crease allows for a much larger display size when fully unfolded, compared to the Samsung’s Galaxy Z Fold 6 or the OnePlus Open.

Aside from the massive increase in screen real estate, tri-folders can benefit from the ability to be partially unfolded — in the case of the Mate XT, you can unfold the phone halfway and use it in a similar manner to standard foldable devices.

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Are tri-fold phones here to stay?

To start with, OEMs will have to work out very real durability issues

Android Police

There are two major factors at play that are preventing tri-fold smartphones from hitting a mass-market audience: price and durability.

Huawei’s Mate XT is largely a showcase device — something akin to a proof-of-concept, while allowing the company to flex its impressive engineering might in the process. Standard foldable phones are pricey enough as is, but the Mate XT comes with an eye-watering MSRP, when converted from Yuan to USD:

Roughly $2,800 for the 16GB RAM & 256GB storage configuration
Roughly $3,100 for the 16GB RAM & 512GB storage configuration
Roughly $3,380 for the 16GB RAM & 1TB storage configuration

At prices at or exceeding $3,000, it’s understandable why there isn’t a tri-foldable phone in your local AT&T store quite yet.

The other major concern, durability, is a big one.

The other major concern, durability, is a big one. Regular folding phones are notoriously fragile, with hinges that are prone to dust ingress, and flexible plastic displays that can be scratched with just a fingernail.

If the Mate XT is anything to go off of, tri-fold phones will suffer from these same drawbacks. Smartphones remain arguably the most abused piece of tech in our daily lives, and the durability issue is one that needs to be sorted out before the tri-fold revolution can ever take hold.