Huawei’s first folding smartphone, the Mate X, will launch before the end of November this year. But, before you get too excited, that launch is limited to China at present. Huawei announced the details at a launch event, giving out the timeline and pricing for the device.

Sure about that, Mate?

The 15 November launch is in line with what we’ve seen about the device in recent months. Pricing, which is about the newest info, is also in line with what we’ve seen from folding devices of late. The handset will cost buyers about 16,999 yuan, which comes to around R35,000. But that’s overseas pricing, in the country where the device is made. We’d expect a larger price if it turned up on our shores.

That doesn’t seem especially likely at the moment, though. The Mate X is a 5G device, running Huawei’s Kirin 980 processor, 8GB of RAM and 512GB of storage, plus a dual-cell 4,500mAh battery. It’s the first part of the sentence that may cause issues for a local launch since we’re not really ready for 5G devices. Yet. It’s unlikely we’ll lay hands on the Mate X in 2019. 2020… maybe. Depending on how the rollout goes.

Huawei’s only got Mate X plans afoot for China at the moment. November will see the folding Android device launch in that country (which doesn’t bother with any of Google’s services, incidentally). A broader launch is “…is under review”, according to the company.

Source: via The Verge