2019 was going to be the year of the foldable, at least that’s what we all thought at MWC this year when we got our first glimpse of the new devices. For us, there was a clear favourite of the two main foldable phones and that was the Huawei Mate X – it simply had the superior design and usability.
Since then Samsung has launched, pulled/delayed and delayed again its foldable phone due to the complexity of the engineering. It’s almost September, and the phone isn’t available for sale. Unfortunately, following in Samsung’s footsteps, Huawei took the wise decision of delaying its own device. Presumably, this was to allow time for more testing and perhaps product iteration.
A Huawei representative was quoted as saying today that the Mate X will not hit it’s September launch date, and may not even hit the market in November. Huawei remains hopeful, though, of getting the device out before the end of 2019.
Considering the engineering behind these devices is obviously complex, we applaud any OEM who makes the decision to delay a product until it’s actually ready. We’d prefer a company waited and released a device second rather than releasing first with something faulty.
That said, so much noise was made early this year about foldable phones, and in the time since, we’ve only really seen one OEM release one to market, and even then, it’s a loose definition of foldable – LG’s V50 ThinQ with Dual Screen barely fits the bill … but it is available for sale.
Come on Huawei and Samsung – catch up!
