Huawei’s third tri-fold phone, the Mate XT 2 Ultimate Design, launched in China today. Richard Yu, chairman of Huawei’s consumer business, presented it at the same event that released HarmonyOS 7, Huawei’s own operating system. It follows the Mate XT of 2024 and the Mate XTs of 2025, and starts at CNY 19,999, about KES 385,600, for the 16GB and 256GB model.
This is a China-only launch, so the phone runs HarmonyOS 7 and none of Google’s apps or services. If it goes global, expect the first Mate XT’s pattern: international markets about five months after China, on EMUI, Huawei’s Android-based export software, still without Google services. Huawei hasn’t sold smartphones in Kenya for a while now, so a Mate XT 2 here would come through an importer, as we noted this morning.
Change to how it folds
The first two Mate XTs folded in a Z shape, leaving one third of the flexible screen outside the closed phone. The Mate XT 2 folds inward, both side panels closing over the centre so the flexible screen sits entirely inside. Huawei calls this a wing fold. With the main screen hidden when closed, there is now a 6.5-inch cover screen at 2442 by 1140 pixels and 6,500 nits peak brightness.
The phone is 12.3mm closed, half a millimetre thinner than the Mate XT, and 3.5mm open at its thinnest panel. It is rated IP58 and IP59, a first on a tri-fold. The cover screen’s Basalt Kunlun glass is claimed to survive drops 30 times better and scratches 16 times better than before; the inner screen’s composite layers are claimed to be 200% more impact-resistant.
Open, the inner screen is 10.2 inches at 2232 by 3184 pixels (382 ppi) in a 12.8:9 ratio, on ultra-thin glass with 1440Hz PWM dimming. It comes in two versions. The standard panel runs at 1 to 90Hz. The Lingdun privacy panel runs at 1 to 120Hz and carries a second set of narrow-angle pixels: a double tap on the cover screen or a press of the side key blacks the display out to anyone looking from the side, except the bottom edge, while it stays clear head-on. The cover screen is 1 to 120Hz on both versions.
Kirin 9050 Pro
This is the first phone with the Kirin 9050 Pro, which Huawei says is the first chip built on its logic-folding design, with logic units stacked in layers rather than laid out flat. It has nine CPU cores. Huawei claims 24% higher single-core and 52% higher multi-core performance than the Mate XTs, 142% faster rendering from the Maleoon GPU with real-time ray tracing, and a 42% faster phone overall. The Da Vinci NPU runs a 30-billion-parameter mixture-of-experts model on the device, 2 billion of them active at a time. The Balong modem supports Tiantong satellite calling and BeiDou satellite messaging, with paging claimed to succeed 42% more often. A vapour chamber with graphene cooling is claimed to cut gaming temperature rise by 2.5C.
Cameras
The rear camera setup comprises these lenses:
- a 50-megapixel RYYB main camera on a 1/1.28-inch sensor with an F1.49 to F4.0 variable aperture and 18EV dynamic range,
- a 50-megapixel RYYB periscope telephoto at F2.2 with 3.5x optical zoom, optical stabilisation and telephoto macro, and
- a 40-megapixel RYYB ultrawide.
- Beside them sits the third-generation Red Maple sensor, which reads the colour of the light in a scene rather than taking pictures, so the phone can correct white balance; Huawei claims it improves colour accuracy by 95% over the Mate XTs.
ECG
The phone also takes an ECG. The metal frames on either side are the electrodes: open the phone, start the reading from Control Centre, hold both frames for about 30 seconds, and the trace draws on screen, flagging sinus rhythm, atrial fibrillation and premature beats. The function holds a Class II medical device registration from China’s National Medical Products Administration.
HarmonyOS 7 runs three apps side by side, adds a PC application zone, and supports a folding keyboard and the M-Pen 3 Mini stylus, CNY 1,199 (about KES 23,100). A CNY 499 (about KES 9,600) rotating stand case is bundled.
Prices, colours and the rest of the spec sheet
Five configurations, all with 16GB of RAM, in black, white and purple:
- 256GB: CNY 19,999 (about KES 385,600)
- 512GB: CNY 21,999 (about KES 424,150)
- 1TB: CNY 23,999 (about KES 462,700)
- 1TB with the Lingdun privacy screen: CNY 24,999 (about KES 482,000)
- 2TB with the privacy screen and stylus: CNY 29,999 (about KES 578,400)
The battery is 5,600mAh with 66W wired and 50W wireless charging, the same as the Mate XTs, and the phone weighs 299g, one gram more. Folded it measures 157.2 by 77 by 12.3mm; open, 219.2mm wide. It has 8-megapixel selfie cameras on both screens, a side fingerprint reader, stereo speakers, Wi-Fi 7, Bluetooth 6.0, eSIM, NFC, UWB, an infrared blaster and USB 3.1 with DisplayPort output. Huawei has not published a firm retail date; China listings point to September 12 or 13.
Samsung’s Galaxy Z TriFold sold from December 2025 at $2,899 and was discontinued in March 2026, so the Mate XT 2 has no rival on sale.
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