Huawei is launching its foldable Mate X in September and apparently the delay is more 5G-related rather than being all about avoiding Samsung’s mistakes with the Galaxy Fold’s plethora of issues.
Initially slated for a June release, news of a delayed launch came just a couple of weeks ago, with a spokesperson from the company telling CNBC that “We don’t want to launch a product to destroy our reputation.”
At the time, senior vice president Vincent Pang said that Huawei would endeavour to release its foldable phone as soon as possible, and since then, we’ve seen a patent for a new foldable design, that made us wonder if we’d see the previously unveiled one scrapped.
In an interview with TechRadar, Pang has clarified a few things – one of which is that Huawei has definitely tested the crap out of the Mate X to avoid a Samsung incident, although he remained coy about the details, saying they were “a secret”.
He also confirmed that the Mate X is still going to be the same hardware that we saw earlier this year at MWC.
The phone is “coming in September – at the latest,” says Pang, “probably earlier, but definitely September is guaranteed.” The Mate X will launch in “any country that has 5G”, although it won’t be coming to the US what with the trade ban, but it will run Android “because it has already been announced”.
Huawei has a list of phones that will be getting the Android Q update if all of that noise has you concerned.
We got a hands-on with the Mate X at MWC and you can read all about that right here.