Huawei's tri-fold phone could launch globally much sooner than expected

If you thought there would be no more announcements in the wonderful world of tech before Christmas, then think again. Huawei has announced it will be launching a new flagship foldable smartphone on 12 December in Dubai.

The Chinese manufacturer might have had a bit of a tricky time over the last few years, with US companies like Qualcomm and Google banned from working with it, but it’s still got some great devices. It also continues to deliver superb camera experiences on its phones and great fitness features in its smartwatches.

Only a couple of months ago, Huawei also announced the world’s first tri-folding phone in the China in the form of the Mate XT Ultimate, and it revealed the Mate X6 in the country at the end of November too, giving us a glimpse of what it is working on.

We’re still waiting for a global launch of both those devices, and while Huawei hasn’t revealed what folding phone it plans to reveal next Thursday, a report on 91Mobiles has speculated it could be either of those.

The Huawei Mate XT Ultimate has a 6.4-inch outer display, a 7.9-inch dual display and it expands out into a 10.2-inch tablet display. There are three cameras on the rear including a 50-megapixel main sensor, 12-megapixel ultra wide sensor and 12-megapixel periscope telephoto sensor. There’s also an 8-megapixel front camera and a 5,600mAh battery.

For the Mate X6, this was announced in China featuring a 6.45-inch outer display and 7.93-inch inner display. Both have a 120Hz refresh rate and they are both LTPO 2.0 panels. There’s a triple rear camera here too, with a 50-megapixel main sensor, 40-megapixel ultra wide sensor, 48-megapixel telephoto macro sensor and an infrared sensor.

Both displays on the Mate X6 have a selfie camera, which is the same 8-megapixel sensor, and there’s a 5,200mAh battery capacity.

Whether either of these devices will launch on 12 December in Dubai remains to be seen for now, but at least there isn’t too long to wait till we find out.