Huawei delays the folding Mate X to avoid Samsung’s mistakes

It’s easy to forget that Huawei still has a range of devices lined up for launch this year, what with the US trade ban and all. Many concerned users won’t be interested in buying a brand new Huawei device amidst trade tensions, especially if it costs $2,600 (almost R40k?!). But Huawei is powering on with its foldable device all the same. It’s just arriving late.

The Huawei Mate X was set to go head-to-head with Samsung’s Galaxy Fold and would’ve been the company’s first foldable display device to make it to market. But Samsung decided to delay its folding device after the first lot of review units experienced issues. Huawei says it wants to avoid making the same mistakes.

Is it really?

We were expecting to see the Mate X launch in June, but a Huawei spokesperson told CNBC the company plans to launch it in September instead. It’s worth noting Huawei has not announced an official release date, but the spokesperson did say the company was doing extra testing to make sure apps work when the device is fully unfolded. And hopefully, also that nothing can get wedged under the bendable display.

“We don’t want to launch a product to destroy our reputation,” a Huawei spokesperson told CNBC in an interview.

The company is especially “cautious” after multiple build-quality issues surfaced with initial review units of the Galaxy Fold. Although we totally believe that the Galaxy Fold saga has an effect on the Mate X delays, we cannot help but wonder if the trade ban also has something to do with this.

It looks like Huawei will launch its foldy device running on Android, and not Huawei’s custom OS, because it was announced before the ban. If this is the case, we’d be more worried about rolling out Google’s security updates than any hardware issues. We’ll have to see how the trade ban pans out and what the tech landscape looks like closer to the Mate X’s September 2019 launch.

Source: CNBC