Huawei just answered the question nobody else has yet. Its new Mate XT 2 tri-fold, revealed in China on September 7, is the first foldable phone to ship with a built-in privacy screen, and it lands just days before Apple is expected to announce its own foldable iPhone.
A second-generation tri-fold
Huawei unveiled the Mate XT 2 | ULTIMATE DESIGN as the follow-up to 2024’s Mate XT, the model that pushed the tri-fold into the mainstream. The new phone uses a wing-like body that opens from both sides, and it comes in Purple, White, and Black, with a Brocade Cloud patterned back and a Star Diamond camera ring that Huawei says is cut into 33 light-catching facets.
The first foldable privacy screen
The headline feature is the Smart Shield Privacy Screen, which Huawei bills as the industry’s first foldable display with hardware-level privacy protection. An independent dual-pixel structure keeps full resolution while blocking off-axis viewing, and you switch it on with a double tap on the cover screen or a quick-controls toggle. Huawei says the phone can even sense environments like airports and train stations and nudge you to turn privacy mode on.
Kirin 9050 Pro under the hood
The Mate XT 2 is the first smartphone to run Huawei’s Kirin 9050 Pro chipset, built on the company’s Tau scaling approach. Huawei claims overall performance improves about 42 percent over the previous generation, and the chip debuts HarmonyOS 7 with support for three live multitasking windows across the unfolded screen. It pairs a Maleoon GPU with hardware-level ray tracing and a Da Vinci NPU that can run Huawei’s Pangu 30B on-device AI model.
- 10.2-inch 3K LTPO OLED inner display with a 6.5-inch LTPO OLED cover screen
- 5,600mAh battery with 66W wired and 50W wireless charging
- 16GB RAM with up to 2TB of storage
- True-to-Color Camera 3.0 with an ultra-HDR main, periscope telephoto, and ultra-wide lens
- First tri-fold rated IP58 and IP59 for dust and water resistance
- ECG analysis software cleared by China’s NMPA
Specs at a glance
| Display | 10.2-inch 3K LTPO OLED (folded open) plus 6.5-inch LTPO OLED cover |
| Chipset | Huawei Kirin 9050 Pro |
| OS | HarmonyOS 7 |
| Battery | 5,600mAh, 66W wired / 50W wireless |
| Memory | 16GB RAM, up to 2TB storage |
| Cameras | Ultra-HDR main, ultra-wide-aperture periscope telephoto, ultra-wide |
| Resistance | IP58 / IP59, first on a tri-fold |
Price and Philippine availability
The Mate XT 2 starts at RMB 19,999, roughly USD 2,980 for the 256GB model, and scales up from there.
| 256GB | RMB 19,999 (about USD 2,980) |
| 512GB | RMB 21,999 (about USD 3,278) |
| 1TB | RMB 23,999 (about USD 3,576) |
| 1TB with privacy screen | RMB 24,999 (about USD 3,725) |
| 2TB Special Edition | RMB 29,999 (about USD 4,470) |
Sales in China start September 12, with every configuration carrying 16GB of RAM. Huawei has not yet announced Philippine pricing or an availability date. The tri-fold enters a crowded premium field that already includes Xiaomi’s new 18 Fold, while Huawei’s own Philippine lineup has lately leaned on wider, more affordable books such as the Pura X.
