Huawei takes a dig at Samsung, says Galaxy Fold design not good

The foldable phones have arrived – at least that’s what major OEMs like Huawei (with the Mate X) and Samsung (with the Galaxy Fold) would have you believe. While the jury is still out on who did it better, Huawei has already crowned itself the leader in foldable phone design seemingly calling Samsung’s take “not good.”  

In an interview with Business Insider, Huawei 's consumer CEO Richard Yu has said that Huawei had tested multiple design prototypes before coming out with the Mate X – and one of them was very similar to what Samsung employs in the Galaxy Fold. "We had several solutions, but we cancelled them. We had three projects simultaneously. We had something even better than [the Samsung Galaxy Fold], killed by me,” Yu was quoted as saying. 

Huawei killed off the said design because it wasn’t ideal – it would have made the Mate X thicker. "I feel having two screens, a front screen and a back screen, makes the phone too heavy.” 

Although both the Mate X and Galaxy Fold are foldable phones, they take different routes to reach their goal. While Huawei’s Mate X folds outwards (and has just one display), Samsung’s Galaxy Fold folds inwards (and has two displays).  

As opposed to the Galaxy Fold, the Mate X give users access to three screen sizes – two independent smartphone-like screens with 6.6-inch and 6.38-inch sizes respectively, and an 8-inch tablet form factor without any notch. The Galaxy Fold has two screens – a 7.3-inch primary tablet kind (with a notch for the cameras) and a smaller 4.6-inch phone form factor. 

Like the Galaxy Fold, the Mate X also has a hinge in the middle, only Huawei seems to have found a way to make a truly back to back fold with no gaps in the middle. Huawei calls it a falcon wing design – a design it apparently took three years to perfect, using a patented hinge with over 100 custom components. 

Huawei says its Mate X is also slimmer than the Galaxy Fold – the Mate X is 5.4mm when opened and 11mm when closed while the Galaxy Fold, it says, is 6.8mm when opened and 17mm when closed. 

Although there were multiple smartphone launches at MWC 2019 (and even though Samsung launched its Galaxy Folder earlier), it was Huawei’s Mate X that actually stole the show. Of all the foldable designs we’ve seen, the Mate X offers one that is closer to perfection as far as being truly futuristic as well as functional is concerned. It is not surprising then that Huawei is being as vocal as it is about what it has managed to achieve.   

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