Huawei's newest foldable phone in UAE soon

Dubai - Chinese giant also announces 2019 performance, showing continued strong growth

Huawei on Monday introduced its new products and services - including a follow-up to its original foldable smartphone - in a bid to advance its strategy of promoting a 'seamless' life powered by emerging innovations.

Dubai was part of the 'virtual' Press conference, which was made in lieu of the company's event that was supposed to be held at the annual Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, which has since been scrapped.

Richard Yu, CEO of Huawei Consumer Business Group, showed off the Huawei Mate Xs, which has a similar outward foldable design as 2019's Mate X - but significantly faster and more durable.

Unfolded, it has an eight-inch screen; folded, it has front and back displays that are 6.6 and 6.38 inches, respectively. The device is 5G-ready with a Kirin 990 5G chip and has four cameras, composed of a 40MP main sensor, a 16MP ultra-wide lens, 8MP telephoto and time-of-flight.

The Mate X wasn't made available globally, but this time Huawei will be rolling it out everywhere: Pre-orders in the UAE will start on March 15, with a later date to be announced for general retail.

The Mate Xs is priced at 2,499 euros, with local pricing to be announced soon.

Yu also announced the company's performance in 2019, revealing that it was able to post an 18% year-on-year growth on the back of an estimated 850 billion yuan ($120.8 billion).

Smartphones continued to be its key driver, recording over 240 million shipments, up 16.8 per cent, helping maintain second place worldwide.

Huawei also enjoyed rapid growth in other categories, including PCs (200 per cent), wearables (170 per cent) and wireless audio (200 per cent). It also increased its R&D investments to 15 billion euros.

Apart from the Mate Xs, Huawei also announced several other new products, including the MatePad Pro 5G, which is the first tablet PC to feature wireless and reverse-wireless charging, and the revamped Huawei App Gallery.

- alvin@khaleejtimes.com

• Mobiles