Huawei has delayed the launch of its highly anticipated Mate X foldable phone from June to September. The US trade ban and the failure of Samsung’s Galaxy Fold are some of the reasons as to why this may be happening.
According to CNBC and The Wall Street Journal , Huawei is still doing rigorous testing to make sure the device was ready for consumers, and that the company was taking a “cautious” approach following the failed launch of Samsung’s own Galaxy Fold. The Fold debuted in April but shipment of the phone has been indefinitely delayed after several gadgets reviewed by many reviewers has issues in a matter of days.
“We don’t want to launch a product to destroy our reputation,” a spokesperson for Huawei told CNBC.
The bigger problem for Huawei, though, is not necessarily the reliability of relatively untested foldable technology — it’s the ongoing effects of the US trade ban.
The US government placed Huawei on the so-called Entity List, American firms have been unable to sell or license any technology to the firm. Due to this, the company has lost the ability to license the full version of Google’s Android operating system.
We are not sure if the Mate X foldable phone will even ship in September as Huawei has promised — or whether it will come with Android. CNBC says that the Mate X will ship with Android because the phone was “launched before Huawei was placed on the Entity List,” but the WSJ says that this issue is still being discussed.
It also possible for the phone to ship with Huawei’s own mobile OS, which it’s been developing for years. A spokesperson for the firm told CNBC that it would prefer to go with Google’s software but added: “If we are forced to do it by ourselves, we are ready. We can do in the next six-to-nine months.”
The Mate X foldable phone was originally unveiled launched in February it has a single 8-inch OLED panel that folds in two, 8GB of RAM, three cameras, 5G support, and costs roughly UGX 9.7m ($2,600) before taxes .
