There's a foldable phone planned that could make Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 6 look old fashioned already

Huawei is reportedly planning to steam ahead and create a very new type of foldable phone – one that its current competitors apparently won't be able to rival.

Leakers have this week indicated that Huawei is working on a triple-folding phone. It is said to sport two distinct folds rather than one, and can therefore fold out to offer a significantly larger tablet-style display. 

This would be the first of its kind, but Huawei reportedly has a prototype working already in its factories. Reports of the prototype started on Weibo but have been validated now by big names including Ice Universe on X (formerly Twitter). 

This all indicates that we're talking about a phone like the Huawei Mate X lineup, or the Samsung Galaxy Fold rather than Flip – one with a vertical crease down it, rather than a horizontal one. 

According to various leakers, the real key to this prototype and Huawei's continuing work on foldables is that it's been making big strides in thinner tech for its folding displays. This has seen it unlock more options in terms of sizes and shapes, along with an extra fold as in this case.

Interestingly, Ice Universe followed up the confirmation of the leak by castigating Samsung for what they claim has been "several years of complacency and continuous laziness". They said that even taking into account the rumours of thinner foldables coming from Samsung this week at Galaxy Unpacked, "its thickness is still not comparable to the latest folding machine of Chin[ese] brand[s]". 

So, this makes it seem like Huawei has a fairly clear run at getting the first triple-folding phone onto the market, although there's a huge caveat here in that these are only leaks. We don't have any official word from Huawei, and shouldn't expect anything until it's ready to start selling the phone. 

That could well still be a year or more away, so until we start to hear rumblings of an actual release date, the next phase in foldable tech will remain a theoretical one.