The world’s most audacious folding phone is getting a sequel. Huawei has confirmed on Weibo that the Mate XT 2 — officially the Mate XT 2 Ultimate Design tri-fold — will be revealed in China on September 7 at 14:30 local time. The same event will double as a stage for HarmonyOS 7, Huawei’s freshly minted software platform that ships on the new device.
If you missed the original, the Mate XT was the phone that folded not once but twice, opening out like a metal-and-glass accordion into a tablet-sized slab. The XT 2 keeps that headline trick, and the rumour mill suggests the folding mechanism itself may have been reworked — with chatter pointing to an inward-folding design that tucks the flexible panel away for protection when closed. That would leave a cover display for everyday one-handed use and a sprawling internal screen for everything else.
On the hardware front, the leaks are getting specific. The XT 2 is tipped to run Huawei’s Kirin 9050 Pro chipset, built on a 3-nanometer process — a meaningful step for a company that has spent recent years engineering around silicon constraints. The unfolded display is rumoured to measure roughly 10.2 inches, comfortably in small-tablet territory, and Huawei is said to be squeezing in a battery larger than 6,000 mAh to feed all that screen real estate.
None of that is cheap, and nobody expects it to be. Huawei hasn’t confirmed pricing, but unofficial estimates put the base model at around 20,000 yuan (roughly $2,800). That’s flagship-plus money even by folding-phone standards, though the tri-fold form factor remains a genuine one-of-a-kind proposition — there’s simply nothing else quite like it on shelves.
A few things to keep in mind before you get too excited:
- China first. Only a China launch has been announced so far, with no word on a wider global release.
- Specs are still rumours. The Kirin 9050 Pro, the 10.2-inch panel and the battery figure all come from leaks, not from Huawei’s official confirmation.
- HarmonyOS 7 is part of the story. The XT 2 is as much a showcase for Huawei’s software independence as it is a hardware flex.
What Huawei has actually confirmed is short and sweet: the tri-fold is back, it launches on September 7, and it runs HarmonyOS 7. Everything else is the kind of pre-launch speculation that surrounds a device this unusual. The original Mate XT proved the tri-fold wasn’t just a concept-video fantasy — now the sequel gets to show whether Huawei can refine the idea into something more than a spectacular party trick.
