I Used Huawei's $3,000 Tri-Fold — Mate XT 2 Hands-On
This is the brand-new Huawei Mate XT 2 tri-fold, and I flew to China to go hands-on with it. Huawei covered the expenses and sponsored this video — but still, a tri-fold that looks like this is absolutely insane. The biggest change this year is how it opens, and that one decision fixes the thing that held the original back.
This is a hands-on first look, not a full review — Huawei sponsored the trip.
Quick Verdict
The Mate XT 2 is the first tri-fold where I can point at things a regular phone physically cannot do: fold a wing up as a privacy wall between your screen and the person beside you, run three phone-sized apps at once across all three panels, and carry a 10.2-inch display in your pocket. The new "wingfold" design seals the flexible screen inside the body when closed, solving the original's biggest durability problem, and there's clever hardware here — a dual-pixel privacy display, ECG electrodes in the frame, and Huawei's first "Logic Folding" chip. The elephant in the room is that it's 299g and around $3,000 (¥19,999 to start, more for the privacy screen). It's not for everybody — but if you love foldables, this is your next step.
The Big Change: From Accordion to Wingfold
The first Mate XT was a Z-fold accordion — when closed, a flexible panel sat exposed on the outside, which wasn't great for durability and scratched easily. The XT 2 is a wingfold, a U-shape: you open the left, then the right, and the flexible screen ends up sealed inside the body. That does a lot, because now when it's closed, the chassis takes the hit instead of the display. The new fold also improved protection — it's IP58 and IP59, so not fully dust-tight (I'm still not taking it to the beach), but you can drop it in water for 30 minutes and it's fine.
For a tri-fold it's surprisingly thin: 12.3mm closed, 3.5mm open. The part people will miss is that the original was 12.8mm closed with the exact same battery — so Huawei made it thinner, kept the battery identical, and gained just 1g. It's 299g, heavier than most phones, but closed you get a regular-phone experience, and open you get a beautiful 10.2-inch display. That closed experience matters more than people think — I use the cover screen about 85% of the time, only opening it to watch something or actually get work done.
Privacy: Physical Wings and a Hardware Privacy Screen
A display this big is easy for others to see, and foldable buyers skew toward business, so privacy matters. There are two ways to get it. First is physical — because it opens left and right, you can use the wings as blockers: if someone's on your right, flip the right wing up and your content shifts left (same on the other side, or fold both to center everything).
But you don't want to do that constantly, so there's a built-in privacy display Huawei calls Ling (inner screen only), done differently than I've seen before. It's a dual-pixel array — two distinct subpixel sets in the same zone, one for normal viewing and one that limits light at side angles. This is hardware, not software dimming, so head-on it's essentially unimpaired while side viewers see nothing. You enable it by double-tapping the power button or rear display, and you can set it per app (so your banking app turns it on by itself). I've been critical of privacy displays before because they often hurt viewing angles and brightness even when off — that doesn't seem to be the case here.
The catch: the privacy display isn't on every model. It's bundled with the top configuration, and so is the 120Hz inner screen — the base model's 10.2-inch display runs at 90Hz with no privacy feature. So the headline feature sits behind the most expensive model. The good news: the cover screen is 120Hz on every model, 6.5 inches, and peaks at a crazy-bright 6,500 nits. Both panels are 1440Hz PWM, so flicker-sensitive folks should have an easier time.
Software, Cameras, and Health
HarmonyOS 7 runs three apps at once, one per panel, each pane roughly the size of a candy-bar phone — so it's not one big screen, it's three phone screens attached. There's pen support on the inner display with very low latency, and yes, you can still see two creases, but they're very minimal compared to previous foldables.
Cameras are a trio: a 50MP main with variable aperture (f/1.5–f/4) for better bokeh and low light, a 50MP periscope at 3.5× optical, and a 40MP ultrawide. I shot on a bright day so everything looked good, but even pushed to max digital zoom it held up well (with AI cleaning up the background). Selfie cameras are 8MP inside and out — mostly for video calls, since you'll usually articulate the panels and shoot with the rear lenses using the cover screen as a viewfinder. Video goes up to 4K 60.
One thing people are talking about: the metal frame doubles as ECG electrodes — touch-sensitive spots on both edges let you take an electrocardiogram on a tri-fold. I did not expect that, and it'd be perfect for someone like my dad.
The "Folded Chip" and the Rest
Every model gets 16GB of RAM, with storage from 256GB up to 1TB (and a 2TB edition with the stylus). It's the first phone to debut with HarmonyOS 7, running the new Kirin 950 Pro — Huawei's first chip built on "Logic Folding." Historically everything followed Moore's Law (shrink transistors every year), but that's been hitting physics; instead of shrinking, they stack — folding the circuit upward so a signal travels a fraction of the distance it used to. I haven't run tests, but on stage Huawei claimed 24% faster single-core and about 52% multi-core versus last year. A folding phone running a folded chip is kind of neat.
Battery is 5,600mAh silicon-carbon (same as last year) — hands-on only, but in a design like this it should comfortably be an all-day phone. Charging is 66W wired and 50W wireless, and you get a hard-shell case with a built-in stand, which you'll want for propping it up.
Final Thoughts
The tri-fold has always been the cool phone to look at, and the problem with earlier designs was always durability — which matters more on foldables because there are more moving parts. This wingfold design fixes that, and it's the first tri-fold where I can point at things a regular phone simply can't do. The elephant in the room is the ~$3,000 price and 299g weight, so it won't be for everyone. But if you know who you are and you love foldables, this is naturally your next step — clever, and the start of a new generation of getting more screen into something you can still pocket. I just wish we got more devices like this in Canada.
This was a sponsored hands-on — Huawei covered the trip. The Mate XT 2 has limited regional availability.
Published: September 2026
