Huawei launches $3,660 trifold phone | Hacker News Reader

Huawei launches $3,660 trifold phone

cnbc.com

14 pointsbelter65 comments

The next Samsung Galaxy - 4 folds and a lubrastrip.

https://theonion.com/fuck-everything-were-doing-five-blades-...

it might be subjective, personally i can't stand a crease on screen at all

why not just use 2or3 hinged screens like surface duo? surface duo is ugly too, but it looks better than a creased screen

Why not make a phone that you can connect to a monitor and use like a computer? Like PinePhone but actually make it usable, with good battery, processing speed, cellular working on all carriers etc.

If you mean a more user focused sandbox OS on the mobile/dock, rather than like current ios/android docking.....this device would over time become relegated out of the stack cuz there's just better standalone/dedicated options that don't need to be manipulated every time. (though the nintendo switch obviously beat this assumption)

I think the way it is now is kind of perfect. 16:9 Mobile device for personal and some work comms, social media, media. Work computer for work, easy to move around if need to work elsewhere. Home computer for personal work, play, connectivity. really integrated into home stack, can't move.

That's what I do with my GrapheneOS phone sometimes. One day at work I connected a USB-C > keyboard/display/mouse adapter and realized it works terrifically well.

Just waiting for someone to make the inevitable "my phone has higher degree of freedom (DoF) than yours" meme.

IPhone 17 will be Origami?

The iPhone 6 already was, but not by design :p

12 years after Samsung showed their first concept device, and 7 years after the commercial launch of folding phones, folding phones are still a niche within a niche, with negligible sales.

Huawei is presumably betting that the market acceptance problem is that they don't fold _enough times_, and aren't expensive enough.

Id start with naming - its clearly a tablet sized device. Its not a single-hand device. Thus, its an expandable phone or a foldable tablet.

How many people buy tablets? This is the real reference point here.

Many orders of magnitude less than either "how many people buy phones" and "how many people have laptops".

about 5 times over last idk 10 years i've almost bought an ipad for a particular game I play that has a mobile equivalent to desktop.

Every time I then "settle" for; "I can just get a 50 dollar android tablet"

Then; "well my phone can do it if I really like had a long plane ride or something."

Finally coming to not doing anything at all and being happy I never acted on the initial urge.

For now. Current phones would be considered phablets 10 years ago.

Huawei is presumably betting that the market by making thinnest foldable smartphone possible

I want a stretchable phone. Starts as a 15cm diagonal screen, can be stretched to 30cm tablet size.

I want a phone that can be connected to external monitor and used like a desktop computer.

I also want that, plus the reverse:

When you attach the tablet via USB4, it becomes a screen. It also shares its CPU, GPU, storage etc with the main PC.

Can't basically all Samsung phones do that? https://www.samsung.com/us/apps/dex/

For now foldable devices are still super expensive and only interesting to hardcore tech enthusiasts, but I strongly feel foldable tech is what will finally bring some innovation to phones & tablets, whose form factor has been stagnant for quite a while now.

It's probably still a while away, but I for one am very excited for Apple to ship a regular size iPhone that folds down to a small square (people with small pockets know the pain), and an iPad Pro that folds down to the size of an iPad mini and can fit in my daily sling.

And as the tech keeps maturing and gets cheaper, we'll probably see interesting offerings from smaller players like Nothing. Nintendo making a foldable Switch 3 could also be super cool.

As someone who works in the hardware space, I'm excited :)

Speaking of innovation: There are people like me who just want a smaller and lighter phone.

That doesn't seem to be the popular view though. The largest iPhones are a bit large for me but the current iPhone Pro size is about my sweet spot. Probably if I felt the way you do, I'd use my Apple Watch more than I do. I find both my watch and tablet don't add enough incremental value to use much of the time.

Lucky for you, iPhone Air is rumored :)

I get you, iPhone Xs has been peak iPhone chassis for me. I had two iPhone Pros since and neither felt nearly as ergonomic and magical in my hand.

I don't think they are only for enthusiasts. I know multiple non-enthusiasts who decided to get the first form factor you described (regular phone size that folds in half) and love it. This style is also not way more expensive than other phones.

Personally I will likely get this tri-fold style for my next phone, being able to open up to a small tablet is very useful for me.

Your future is here. These devices have now proven themselves reliable enough for daily use by the average person. As long as you are ok with Android they are out of the enthusiast space.

I saw an old man yesterday use a foldable for the larger screen for larger fonts. Maybe he was a hardcore tech enthusiasts, but larger screens is an important use case for many.

There is this convergence space intersecting phones, tablets, and laptops that seems tantalizingly a bit over the horizon but feels like it should be achievable. Some people make it work to some degree today: the phone is big enough that you don't really need a dedicated tablet. A keyboard and pencil let you use the tablet as a laptop for many purposes. (Heck, many kids are fine with using a phone for everything as it is.)

I think we will get trifold iPhone -> iPad form factor, just like this Huawei, first. It’s what Apple has been building towards with their UI frameworks and it has the biggest value add.

I wouldn’t bet on iPhone that folds to even smaller form factor, that’s quite unApple like. iPad that folds like a MacBook has been rumored tho.

Anyway, we have to wait for the tech to become mature enough for Apple standards first.

> only interesting to hardcore tech enthusiasts

I think that the HN crowd is exactly that and I doubt many would want this phone. Foldable phones are just flashy status symbols at this point without much use. I guess the actual target market is affluent people who want to show off, who want to have "something different", and who will not actually use the added screen space.

>Foldable phones are just flashy status symbols at this point without much use

I have a foldable phone, and the killer use case is watching videos (YouTube, Netflix) on the go, at the breakfast table, on a plane or train.

And better gaming (e.g. I played XCom Enemy Within a couple of years ago, blew my mind. A full PC game from my teenage years, in the palm of my hand). The game was so much more usable in the unfolded state with a pen/stylus.

The third great use case is filming myself lifting weights from anywhere flat e.g. a bench. Without use of a tripod or the waterbottle leaning trick (which requires a mostly full bottle, and a high friction surface and the angle is never right).

Also, for the first time since I was a teenager, strangers will actually ask you about it. It's rare enough that people are even interested in phones anymore. This is definitely YMMV

But I can assure you, it's no status symbol, unless identifying yourself as a tech nerd with slightly too much disposable income is a status you want. Which is what I am, but who aspires to this?

> I have a foldable phone, and the killer use case is watching videos (YouTube, Netflix) on the go, at the breakfast table, on a plane or train.

I do that on a non foldable phone. Could the screen be bigger? Yes. Do I need it to be bigger? Not as much as I need a durable phone.

I genuinely don't understand the durability concerns with foldables. I've been daily driving the Z Fold 3-6 and the only failure I've had was a software issue on the 4 that broke WiFi. Nearly 4 years of heavy daily use, countless drops, and the weak point has only been with software.

Well there's this https://www.reddit.com/r/samsunggalaxy/comments/10f0x0n/z_fl... which I'm also affected by. I've ducktaped the backside to prevent my muscle memory from constantly folding it. Nearly two years old; not big deal for me, but still.

Ouch, that's a brutal issue -- thanks for letting me know! I'm glad the Folds haven't been affected, given that having this thing open in my pocket is just not doable haha

Perfectly reasonable trade off, that. And for most people.

In its current iteration, foldable phones are a niche product but I believe that niche is bigger than current market penetration.

I want a trifold (albeit not this one). I switched to foldables with the Z Fold 3 and never looked back; I've upgraded each generation since, because they make my life substantially better. While I still spend a lot of time at my computer for dev work, I have some chronic issues that limit the hours I can manage; to me, my foldable is essentially a disability aid.

I wrote an entire novella on my foldable (only the editing was done on a computer), done countless meetings while splitting the screen for a doc review, etc. It has genuinely changed my quality of life and I'm thankfully in a position that the cost isn't an issue.

It also depends on the lifestyle a lot. For many people ruggedness is a high priority. That’s why today's phones tend to have a metal chassis all around and protruding curved edge screens have basically gone away.

Typical current smartphone form factor can be used in any conditions without worrying too much about it. Foldables of today can only be used worry free by non-outdoorsy urban people doing white collar jobs (I don’t mean any offense here, the same applies to eg a Porsche 911).

Looking at the replies to this comment, I'd not say tech enthusiasts are going to be into these foldables, only those that want something that can be an iPhone, an iPad and possibly a laptop combined into one without being good at any of them.

I still stick with my iPhone SE 2 as it doesn't fall out of my pocket.

I consider the trifold phone more of a technological flex than intended mass market product.

But significant than they are now exporting it; though Huawei still faces massive headwinds outside China due to the American restrictions. In particular on the software front - ie where is your European banking app or Google pay equivalent?

I hope I'll live to see the day we have a laptop, tablet and smartphone all in one.

You plug it into a desktop setup and it's a high end computer with which you can game and work, then you detach it and fold it into a tablet, and fold again into a smartphone.

Ignoring that a bunch of implementations of this already exist (docks, phablets, Surface, laptops, etc)

What problem would this fix in your day to day? For me it's hard to say. One "motor" doing to many nuanced things at the level of the lowest common denominator ie; comms device, high end gaming rig, media server, work and personal file server, plane/trane/car ride movie machine, 2FA, payment method, VPN, radio, pihole etc but all restricted by the small platform, lack of peripheries built in, massive requirements for networking/OS development for all these apps/integrations.

This reminds me of Rubik's Magic. [0]

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rubik%27s_Magic

But would you really want to risk your transforming your phone by using the 'squish and twist (flip, flip, flip)' maneouver?

It would be fairly unfortunate if you couldn't answer a call because you can't untangle your phone, agreed.

What's the Huawei OS policy towards... uhm rampant piracy?

I guess that's one way to carve a niche from Android in international markets.

The same in China, and many Asian countries, probably. Their solution to profit from new things is not legal gatekeeping, but rapid iteration. By the time someone gets a decision on a copyright demand, the market has long moved on. Bigger companies might get speedier treatment, though.

$3660 phone running neither iOS nor Android... Is there much known about their OS?

It runs a later version of this:

https://www.harmonyos.com/en/

It's pretty much running Android.

> “Lack of Google still is a ‘gaping hole’ for mainstream international market especially those who will pay top dollar for a tri-fold hardware but which want to run Netflix or Google’s Play Store"

Yeah I can see that being an issue.

> "or the latest cutting edge GenAI Google Gemini features,”

Uh... really? I can't imagine that gemini is a showstopper for the average phone user in 2025. Maybe they're just saying this to make Google feel happy?

Huawei: "Here's a compact phone that unfolds into a large tablet just like in sci-fi movies, so you can multitask and consume content."

Samsung and Apple: "Here's the exact same phone as last 3 generations with just a chip update and a price increase. Did we mention it has more AI now whether you want it or not?"

See what the ban on Huawei accomplished? Complacency and stagnation due to lack of competition among western aligned companies. I foresee this is what will happen in the EV sector as well.

Samsung was the first out with foldable phones 5-6 years ago I think?

I don't think it's complacency I think the existing form factor is just overwhelmingly popular and good enough for most people.

Yeah. The Galaxy Fold was genuinely innovative, and surprisingly practical. Huawei did an early folding phone too.. before the sanctions.

Chinese companies do far more innovative stuff than they're given credit for by Americans, but putting one more fold and an even sillier price tag on their premium phone than the competition isn't it

the first commercially available one was https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Royole_FlexPai (chinese startup) and the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Huawei_Mate_X released almost concurrently with the samsung

Huawei also doesn’t have to worry about manufacturing a quarter billion+ phones. It’s easy to throw the latest unproven tech at a low volume device.

What stops the larger manufacturers to run a smaller production like the one in the article?

Sure their process is set up for larger volumes but if they wanted they could do smaller, experimental ones (which of course would be more expensive as is this device).

They could if they wanted, they just rather stick to their high volume, high margin approach instead of truly innovating

And they have to build support into the operating system and try to convince third parties to support it. Third parties will not support a low volume device - see the Vision Pro.

Why spend engineering resources on something that doesn’t have a market? Everything you say yes to means you’re saying no to something else.

What you're omitting from your reply is how popular this device will actually become; the fact that people still buy the chip update/price increase phone is a strong datapoint that they don't actually want gimmicky features like folding screens.

It was never meant for everyone. I guess the original audiences were those need ultra mobile devices with extra large screens and do not care much about the price.

Sales numbers disagree that people are buying those.

It looks you might have reversed the result and the cause. The ban was there simply because US peers could not compete already, rather than the ban led to less competition. Mobile devices are really just a relatively small chunk of Huawei's business.

> See what the ban on Huawei accomplished

Without the Huawei ban, Huawei may have taken 70% market share and killed most local competitors now, same as BYD

I'm on the side of China but I have to say it's good for american industries

the one you should really question is the chip sanction

>Without the Huawei ban, Huawei may have taken 70% market share and killed most local competitors now, same as BYD

I don't see the problem. What about the free market? What about the consumer? Why should geopolitics be used to hold back progress just protect the bottom line of two lazy companies?

i don't want a foldable phone anymore than i want AI in it

https://youtu.be/H2RhIdf0MXo

Oof, even in that carefully curated video, in a couple shots the fold creases are visible.

Maybe it's just me but a screen with bumps and/or dips is distracting as hell.

As someone who’s tried the high end Chinese phones and really appreciate that they’re innovating and trying new things, I’ve come to the conclusion that Apple and iOS is simply a more stable and reliable platform and better ecosystem (better quality apps, hands down). And the end of the day, I need a device that simply works.

The largest problem with Apple is not that they are “behind” feature wise, but their pathetic battery power - I’d pay a lot more for a phone that lasted a day or two on a charge. Maybe add memory options to that wish list.

I find my iPhone gives a pretty reliable day unless I'm using it really heavily. The removable magnetic battery is pretty useful for a bit more oomph without cables being all over the place.

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