After Samsung, Huawei announces folding 5g smartphone

BARCELONA: Huawei Technologies unveiled a folding smartphone on Sunday which it said was primed for next generation 5G mobile connections.

Huawei, the world’s third-largest smartphone vendor after Samsung and Apple, said it had taken the lead on developing phones for 5G – which promise super fast internet speeds for consumers and businesses – because it was also involved in developing the networks.

 

Speaking ahead of the mobile industry’s biggest global event in Barcelona, Richard Yu, head of Huawei’s consumer business group, said the Huawei Mate X will have two back-to-back screens which unfold to become a eight-inch tablet display.

Earlier this week, Samsung Electronics unveiled a nearly $2,000 folding smartphone and announced that the smartphone named Galaxy Fold will go on sale on April 26 and take advantage of new and faster 5G mobile networks. The device looks similar to a conventional smartphone, but then opens like a book to reveal a display the size of a small tablet at 7.3 inches (18.5 cm).

The device “answers skeptics who said that everything that could be done has been done,” DJ Koh, chief executive of Samsung Electronics, said at an event in San Francisco. “We are here to prove them wrong.”