At Huawei’s pre-MWC 5G launch event in Beijing, where they revealed the new Balong 5000 5G modem, Huawei announced it is bringing its 5G foldable phone to MWC 2019.
As we have previously reported, Huawei has had a 5G foldable phone in the works for many months and we’ve expected it to launch at MWC 2019.
If Huawei does release this phone, which is not only 5G but foldable as well, it would be a world’s first, unless Samsung’s foldable phone has 5G connectivity which is rumoured.
Huawei foldable prototype
Huawei’s upcoming 5G handset will use the Kirin 980 chipset in addition to the Balong 5000 5G modem, which Huawei claim is the world’s most powerful 5G modem and the main focus of the Beijing event.
Like many 5G modems, the Balong 5000 features a peak download speed of 4.6Gb/s, however, it also supports 4G/3G in a single chipset — other 5G modems do not support 4G/3G unless they include a separate dedicated chipset.
At the close of the event, Huawei Consumer Business Group CEO Richard Yu proclaimed: “We look forward to seeing you in Barcelona in February, where we will launch the world’s first 5G smartphones with foldable screen.”
We will have to wait for the Mobile World Congress in February 2019 to be certain. See the moment the 5G foldable phone announcement was made in the video below (queued up.)
