This picture shows the Huawei Mate X foldable phone in its full glory

After many rumours and speculations, it is finally confirmed that Huawei will indeed be launching a foldable phone thanks to an image that shows an advertisement banner being installed presumably at the Mobile World Congress 2019 venue in Barcelona.

The copy on the advertisement banner says “World’s *** Foldable 5G Phone”.

The image tells us a great deal about the Mate X. Immediately you can see how it differs from the Galaxy Fold especially in the way the folding display is oriented. Where the Galaxy Fold features a folding display on the inner side of the device, the Mate X has its folding display facing outside.

From teaser images provided by Huawei, we can also see that the Mate X will very likely feature two displays on the inside.

We also know that the device will feature 5G connectivity and possibly a triple camera setup.

The outward facing folding display raises concerns about durability and scratch resistance which is a problem that I’m very curious to see how Huawei addresses.

Earlier this month, Samsung surprised the world with its foldable display phone, the Galaxy Fold. The ground-breaking device features a 4.6-inch HD+ Super AMOLED display on the outside and a 7.3-inch AMOLED Infinity Flex display on the inside with a rather odd 4.2:3 aspect ratio.

The Galaxy Fold is priced from US$1,980 which is about RM8,051 and will be available in the second quarter of 2019 probably around April.

Now that we know Huawei is also ready to release its own foldable phone and it will be at least two months until Samsung ships the Galaxy Fold out to consumers, the race is on to see which brand can bring their folding smartphone to consumers hands first. 2019 is going to be very, very interesting.

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