Huawei's second-gen tri-fold phone makes Samsung seem behind the curve

While we patiently wait for Samsung to debut its first ever tri-fold folding phone, the brands main successor appears to be streaking ahead. Currently, the only brand to have released a tri-fold phone is Huawei – and now it has doubled its catalogue.

Following on from the Huawei Mate XT, the brand has just announced the Huawei Mate XTs, which brings even more of its best technology into the device. That includes an updated Kirin 9020 processor, while the display is also capable of supporting stylus input.

Speaking of the display, that remains the real piece de resistance here. Fully unfurled, that's a 10.2-inch OLED panel, with a 16:11 aspect ration and a rather meagre 1,800 nits of peak brightness. It features adaptive refresh rate, but only between 1Hz and 90Hz. It won't both many, but worth baring in mind if you're used to speedier displays.

Fold that down once and you'll have a 7.9-inch display, while folding everything up leaves you with a 6.4-inch display on show. That still the best tri-fold design we've seen, as the display in any configuration uses the same panel.

Not only does that make more sense than having separate displays to point different ways on the same panel, it's practical, too. You can lay the device down flat, for example, without risking scratches on the screen which is pointed backwards. It's much more sensible than the rumoured design which Samsung is taking, which is said to fold like a G.

Elsewhere, features like the 5,600mAh battery, 66W wired and 50W wireless charging all make their way over from the previous model. There's also a side-mounted fingerprint scanner, WiFi 6 and Bluetooth 5.2 connectivity.

The device is currently only available in China, with the base model offering 16GB of RAM and 256GB of storage. That costs CNY 17,999, which is equivalent to approximately £1,875 / €2,165 / US$2,520 / AU$3,870.

It's certainly not a cheap handset, then, though it does look like decent value in the context of the UK market. It's not that dissimilar to the list price of phones like the Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 7 and the Google Pixel 10 Pro Fold, but comes with extra screen real estate. I'm excited to see what happens if this device gets a global launch further down the line.