Huawei is letting people experience their vision of the future

While there was a lot of stuff going on in the crazy halls of Mobile World Congress, one piece of tech had everyone talking.

Huawei’s unveiling of their Mate X foldable 5G smartphone was the talk of the show, and there were long lines to see the phone in action behind the scenes in Huawei’s gigantic booth in Hall 4 of Fira Barcelona.

Huawei wasn’t the only one that unveiled a foldable smartphone during the show: Samsung also showed off their Galaxy Fold a few days earlier, during their stand-alone Unpacked event in San Francisco, California and was also present in their booth during MWC.

Other companies showed off their foldable phone concepts in Barcelona, but only Huawei and relatively unknown Royole allowed journalists to touch and try the Mate X and the terribad FlexPai on the showroom floor.

The decision to let people actually touch their foldable Mate X smartphone was a crucial one for Huawei. Originally the company wasn’t allowing anyone (not even journalists invited to the launch preview event) to touch their foldable smartphone concept, a fact that was made abundantly clear in the experience zone right after the official announcement. Taking a photo of the phone behind glass and with overly aggressive security was a challenge – forget about actually touching the thing.

This changed the next day, when Huawei execs invited media to a controlled, 30-minute session with the phone. We were fortunate enough to have had the chance to touch and try the device during that session and to have shared our thoughts with our Facebook fans during that time.

We were expecting Samsung to do the same behind closed doors, but sadly the Korean company didn’t schedule any public viewing of their Galaxy Fold even after videos of people handling the Mate X started getting published. It’s a sad, missed opportunity for the Korean company, considering the hype surrounding their product ever since it was leaked a few years ago.

While we still don’t know which of the two foldable devices is actually the better one, Huawei’s won the first round of the foldable battle. People in the industry have a solid idea what to expect from the new tech, with most comments about the Mate X being overwhelmingly positive.