Huawei will announce a new flagship foldable phone later this month, according to a Weibo post on the company’s official page. Based on the name, the Mate X2 sounds like it should be a more substantial followup to the original Mate X than Huawei’s last foldable phone, the faster and slightly tweaked Mate XS.
Unless Huawei is being deliberately cryptic, the teaser image for the Mate X2 actually suggests that the phone could possibly switch to a different folding screen design with the flexible panel on the inside, like Samsung’s Galaxy Z Fold line. The previous Mate X phones had a single panel that wrapped around the outside when closed, like Royole’s Flexpai devices.
Otherwise, there’s not much in the way of details on the Mate X2 yet. It’s likely that it’ll have the same Kirin 9000 processor found in the Mate 40 Pro, and of course Huawei probably still won’t be able to include Google apps and services on board, limiting the device’s viability outside of China unless something changes unexpectedly quickly with the new Biden administration’s approach to sanctions. Huawei’s hardware is always worth paying attention to, though, so stay tuned for more news and details on February 22nd.
