China's Huawei Unveils 5G Phone With Folding Screen

China’s Huawei unveiled a new folding-screen phone last Sunday, joining the latest trend for bendable devices as it challenges the global smartphone market’s dominant players, Apple and Samsung.

Huawei revealed its Mate X phone on the eve of MWC Barcelona, a four-day showcase of mobile devices, as the company battles U.S. allegations it is a cybersecurity risk.

The device can be used on superfast nextgeneration mobile networks that are due to come online in the coming years.

Device makers are looking to folding screens as the industry’s next big thing to help them break out of an innovation malaise, although most analysts think the market is limited, at least in the early days.

The Mate X is the answer to a question Huawei faced as it sought to satisfy smartphone users’ demands for bigger screens and longer battery life, said Richard Yu, CEO of its consumer business group.

“How can we bring the more big innovation to this smartphone industry?” Yu said at a glitzy media launch.

The Mate X will sell for 2,299 euros ($2,600) when it goes on sale by midyear. That’s even more than Samsung’s recently revealed Galaxy Fold, priced at nearly $2,000.

The Mate X’s screen wraps around the outside so users can still view it when it’s closed, unlike the Galaxy Fold, which has a screen that folds shut. Unfolded, the Mate X’s screen is 8 inches diagonally, making it the size of a small tablet.

Yu said Huawei engineers spent three years working on the device’s hinge, which doesn’t leave a gap when shut.