Huawei prototyped a phone similar to Samsung’s Galaxy Fold but “killed it” because it was so bad

Huawei has recently revealed its first foldable phone, the Huawei Mate X. And you can call it a real foldable phone.

Huawei consumer CEO Richard Yu, told Business Insider that Huawei had originally prototyped a folding phone with a similar design to Samsung’s Galaxy Fold but the company killed the idea because it was “not good.”

“I feel having two screens, a front screen and a back screen, makes the phone too heavy,” Yu said, referencing the Samsung Galaxy Fold design. “We [Huawei] had several solutions, but we canceled them. We had three projects simultaneously. We had something even better than that [the Samsung Galaxy Fold], killed by me.”

“It was bad,” he added.

Huawei eventually settled on the design of the Mate X, which features a single display that folds out into a pseudo-tablet.

“Huawei’s folding tablet looks better at first glance simply because it’s thinner, and has a larger screen in phone and tablet mode,” he told Business Insider. “And it’s likely the fold-out design stresses the screen less than Samsung’s fold in display, though only time will tell.

“It’s too early to argue about which one is better until we can all try out production units. These were clearly prototypes, which never look as good as they will later.”

“[These devices won’t last as long as today’s smartphones, because the hinging display and mechanisms simply won’t last as well a today’s candybar smartphones,” he said.

Huawei Mate X costs a whopping €2,299 ($2,600), while Samsung’s Galaxy Fold costs €2,000, or $1,980.