Credit: Huawei
Huawei's second stab at a foldable phone is shaping up to be a pricey proposition for Australians.
While Huawei's Australian division haven't officially detailed how much the new device will cost consumers, it was reported by Gizmodo Australia last week that Huawei Australia Consumer Business MD Larking Huang let slip the new device will retail for approximately AU$3999.
This puts it well above the $2999 demanded by Samsung's Galaxy Fold and the AU$2699 price-tag attached to Motorola's Razr. So long as we're just talking about smartphones and not flexible PCs like the Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Fold, that means the Huawei Mate XS is looking like it has a lock on being the most expensive foldable to hit the market to date.
The Mate XS features a refined version of the same outward-folding form-factor found in the original Mate X and a more powerful Kirin 990 processor but is otherwise very similar. Like that device, the Mate Xs features a 4500mAh battery, 5G connectivity, 8GB of RAM, 512GB of storage and a quad-lens camera array akin to that found in last year's P30 Pro.
When folded, the Mate X's front display is 6.6-inches in size. When necessary, the device can be unfolded to act as an 8-inch tablet. The back of the device can also be used as a 6.3-inch screen when needed. This, among other things, lets you use the powerful triple-lens optics on the device for selfies.
In some ways, the design here is something of a reversal of Samsung's book-like Galaxy Fold. For a full breakdown of how the original Mate X compared to the Galaxy Fold, click here.
Huawei Australia previously confirmed to PC World that the Mate Xs will be available to preorder from March ahead of a local launch in April.
