The Huawei Mate X serves as an exciting entry in the short-lived history of foldables and now we have word of a successor on the horizon that takes design cues from notable rival, Samsung.
In the shadow of the recently-unveiled Galaxy Z Fold 2, Huawei’s presence in the foldable market has been comparatively quiet of late.
The company pushed the envelope with its first entry, the Mate X in late-2019 (and its successor, the Mate Xs), however, it struggled to release both devices in markets outside of China as a result of the ongoing effects of the US government’s entity list.
Now, word of a successor, tentatively dubbed the ‘Mate X2’ has surfaced, primarily thanks to known leakers and analysts Evan Blass and Ross Young.
Blass made mention of a Mate X2 on 7 August, in amongst a list of codenames pertaining to other unannounced Huawei mobile hardware, including the Mate 40 Pro. Young – who appears to have an inside track on the mobile display industry – then promptly followed up with insight on the nature of the Mate X2’s design and the materials its folding screen might utilise.
Mate X2 is in-folding like the Z Fold 2 and will be sourced from Samsung and BOE. No UTG, CPI instead. But perhaps you already knew all that…:)
— Ross Young (@DSCCRoss) August 7, 2020
The X2 is described as sporting an ‘in-folding’ design, similar to that of the Galaxy Z Fold 2. This is a major departure from Huawei’s original foldables, likely driven by a need to better protect the screen from wear and tear by placing it on the inside face of the device when folded.
Young also makes mention of screens being supplied from both Samsung Display and notable Chinese rival display manufacturer, BOE. If this turns out to be true, it would be the first example of a Samsung foldable display arriving on a product from another manufacturer.
Unlike Samsung’s current clamshell foldable – the Galaxy Z Flip – which uses what Samsung calls UTG (ultra-thin glass), the Mate X2’s folding screen will be hewn from CPI (colourless polyimide) – a heat-resistant polymer that Samsung also happened to use on the original Galaxy Fold.
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