Ahead of Apple’s foldable smartphone announcement this week, Huawei has unveiled the Mate XT 2 Ultimate Design in China.
This is the brand’s latest tri-fold smartphone featuring a new inward-folding design, a large 10.2-inch display and an optional Privacy Screen version.
The second-generation tri-fold is powered by Huawei’s new Kirin 9050 Pro, which is based on the company’s Tau Scaling Law.
Huawei’s Consumer Business Group chairman Richard Yu calls it the company’s “most powerful Kirin chip ever” boasting 42% performance gains compared to the previous Mate XTs.
Huawei Mate XT 2 gets an inward-folding tri-fold design
One of the biggest changes on the Huawei Mate XT 2 is the way it folds. Huawei has switched to an inward-folding tri-fold design, following a similar approach to the Samsung Galaxy Z TriFold. When closed, the large flexible display is folded away on the inside, while a separate cover screen is used on the outside.
When folded, the Mate XT 2 has a 6.5-inch OLED cover display with a resolution of 2442 x 1140 pixels. It supports an adaptive 1-120Hz LTPO refresh rate, 1,440Hz PWM dimming and a 300Hz touch sampling rate.
Fully unfolded, the flexible display expands to 10.2 inches with a resolution of 2232 x 3184 pixels.
The standard inner display supports a 1-90Hz LTPO refresh rate, while the Privacy Screen variant supports an adaptive 1-120Hz refresh rate.
Overall, the Mate XT 2 measures 157.2mm tall and 77mm wide when folded, expanding to 219.2mm wide when fully unfolded.
It measures 12.3mm thick when folded. When fully opened, its three sections measure between 3.5mm and 4.0mm thick.
As expected with a ti-fold smartphone, it is quite hefty weighing approximately 299g including the battery.
Huawei Mate XT 2 Privacy Screen
Similar to Galaxy S26 Ultra, Huawei is offering a Privacy Screen technology which costs CNY1,000 (about RM600) extra.
It uses an independent dual-pixel design that can switch between wide and narrow viewing angles without changing the display resolution. When privacy mode is enabled, visibility from the sides is reduced while the display remains visible to the person viewing directly from the front.
Users can also configure to enable privacy mode for selected apps.
Huawei Mate XT 2 gets Tau Scaling Law-based Kirin 9050 Pro
Under the hood, the Huawei Mate XT 2 is powered by the new Kirin 9050 Pro chip with LinxiCore CPU, Maleoon GPU and Da Vinci Architecture NPU. The CPU architecture features 1x prime core, 2x performance cores, 4x efficiency cores for multi-tasking and 2x little cores for daily use. According to Huawei at the launch, the processor is based on its newly established Tau Scaling Law.
To recap, Tau Scaling Law takes a different approach to improving semiconductor performance. Instead of relying solely on shrinking transistor process nodes, Huawei’s approach focuses on reducing signal delays within the chip.
One of the technologies developed under Tau Scaling Law is LogicFolding, which is designed to shorten signal paths and allow more transistors to be packed into a smaller area.
As we previously reported, Huawei claimed its LogicFolding approach could increase transistor density by 53.5%, improve performance-core power efficiency by 41% and increase maximum clock speeds by 12.7% compared to a conventional SoC design.
Huawei added the Kirin 9050 Pro’s GPU also supports hardware-accelerated real-time ray tracing with up to 50 million rays, along with on-device processing for multiple sizes of large AI models.
The Mate XT 2 comes with 16GB of RAM as standard and storage options ranging from 256GB all the way to 2TB.
Out of the box, it runs HarmonyOS 7.0 in China and supports multitasking features designed for the larger display, including running three apps side-by-side.
50MP main camera with variable aperture
For photography, the Huawei Mate XT 2 has a triple-camera setup. This includes a 50MP main camera with a 1/1.28-inch RYYB sensor, optical image stabilisation and a variable aperture feature that ranges from f/1.49 to f/4.0.
It also gets a 40MP f/2.2 RYYB ultra-wide camera and a 50MP f/2.2 RYYB periscope telephoto camera with optical image stabilisation. The telephoto camera has 3.5x optical zoom, 7x optical-quality hybrid zoom and up to 100x digital zoom.
Huawei has also included its third-generation Red Maple colour camera, which is designed to improve colour reproduction.
Both inner and cover displays also get an 8MP f/2.4 ultra-wide cameras for selfies and video calls.
5,600mAh battery with 66W wired charging
Powering the tri-fold device is a 5,600mAh battery, which is similar to the previous Mate XT. It supports up to 66W Huawei SuperCharge via USB-C and up to 50W Huawei fast wireless charging.
The Mate XT 2 is rated IP58 and IP59 for dust and water resistance. In terms of connectivity, it supports WiFi 7, Bluetooth 6.0, as well as satellite calls and two-way BeiDou satellite messaging.
Huawei Mate XT 2 official pricing
The Huawei Mate XT 2 Ultimate Design is offered in five configurations in China:
- 16GB + 256GB – CNY19,999 (about RM12,050)
- 16GB + 512GB – CNY21,999 (about RM13,260)
- 16GB + 1TB – CNY23,999 (about RM14,460)
- 16GB + 1TB Privacy Screen – CNY24,999 (about RM15,070)
- 16GB + 2TB Privacy Screen with stylus package – CNY29,999 (about RM18,080)
The first four variants will go on sale in China from 12 September 2026 at 10:08am.
Meanwhile, the top-spec 16GB + 2TB package will be available from 23 September 2026 at 10:08am. It comes with the Privacy Screen version of the Mate XT 2, a stylus and additional bundled accessories in a special box set.
So far there are no details yet about the tri-fold smartphone’s international availability.
As a reference, last year’s Huawei Mate XT Ultimate Design was launched in Malaysia with a retail price tag of RM14,999. The Kirin 9010 tri-fold device was offered in a single variant with 16GB RAM and 1TB of storage.
