Huawei is folding privacy into a three-screen phone. The company announced the Mate XT2 on September 7, 2026, calling it the world’s first tri-panel foldable with a built-in privacy display. The phone will go on sale starting September 12, giving buyers a few days to consider whether their pockets can survive the price.
The Mate XT2 also marks a design change for Huawei’s foldable line. Its new hinge folds both sides of the flexible display inward, adopting the form factor used on Samsung’s Galaxy Z TriFold instead of the accordion-esque design used by the original Mate XT.
A larger screen with a narrower audience
When folded, the Mate XT2 has a 6.5-inch display. Open it fully and the tri-folding phone expands into a 10.2-inch screen with a 3K resolution, turning the device from a conventional smartphone into something closer to a compact tablet.
The first Mate XT launched in China in late 2024 and reached international markets a few months later with its accordion-esque folding design. Follow-up XTs retained that approach, but the XT2 folds both sides of the 10.2-inch flexible screen inward. Samsung’s Galaxy Z TriFold used the same inward-folding form factor, although Samsung discontinued that phone shortly after its release last year; leaks suggest the company is still working on a follow-up.
Huawei’s privacy display works through OLED pixels that emit light at narrower angles. From the sides, the screen appears almost black, while the person looking straight at it can still see the content. That gives the feature a practical advantage over a privacy filter, which is a nice change from attaching another layer to an already expensive folding screen.
The privacy screen is an optional extra rather than a standard feature on every configuration. Buyers must choose 16GB of RAM and 1TB of storage, then pay ¥1,000, or about $150, for the privacy display. Huawei is claiming the title of the first foldable smartphone to offer that feature.
More power, cameras, and an increasingly serious bill
The Mate XT2 runs Huawei’s in-house HarmonyOS and uses the new Kirin 9050 Pro chip. Huawei promises 42 percent faster performance compared with the Mate XT, while the phone also adds improved water resistance with an IP59 rating.
Huawei packed four cameras into the device: a 50-megapixel main camera, a 40-megapixel ultra-wide camera, a 50-megapixel periscope camera with 3.5x optical zoom, and an eight-megapixel selfie camera. The rear setup remains a triple-camera system, with the selfie camera completing the four-camera total.
The base Mate XT2 starts at 19,999 yuan, around $2,980. Its China launch price is also given as ¥19,999, or $3,000, while the version with 1TB of storage and the privacy display costs at least 24,999 yuan, around $3,725.
Huawei is also offering a collector’s edition with 2TB of storage starting at 29,999 yuan, roughly $4,470. At that level, the Mate XT2 is not competing for casual upgrade money; it is competing for buyers who want a folding display first and a sensible budget somewhere far behind.
Huawei has released its third tri-fold phone in China, but a US launch is not expected soon because the company is still deemed a national security risk. For now, the Mate XT2’s inward-folding design, privacy display, HarmonyOS software, and Kirin 9050 Pro chip make it a substantial hardware statement in China—assuming the hardware statement comes with 19,999 yuan.
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