Everyone kept waiting for Samsung. Everyone kept waiting for Apple. And then Huawei quietly walked in and said, “Actually, we’ll go first.”
Huawei has officially revealed the Pura X Max, a short and wide foldable with a triple rear camera system and a design that looks like a compact tablet when unfolded, and has already opened pre-orders in China ahead of its April 20 launch event. Pre-orders are live right now. No pricing announced yet, but the move itself is bold, and I respect it.
The design story here is what gets me excited.
Every foldable for the past few years has been the same thing: tall, narrow, awkward in the hand. The Pura X Max throws that formula out completely. When unfolded, the inner display measures around 7.69 inches with a 16:10 aspect ratio, offering a tablet-like experience closer in usability to an iPad mini, especially for multitasking, media consumption, and productivity. The outer screen measures around 5.5 inches for everyday tasks without unfolding.
I’ve always thought the tall foldable felt unnatural to hold, like someone stretched a phone and called it innovation. A wider format just makes more sense to me for how I actually use a phone, watching videos horizontally, running two apps side by side, and reading without awkward scrolling. This design solves all of that.
The announcement is significant, as per Gizmochina, because it gives the industry its first official look at what could become the next major foldable design trend, beating both Samsung and Apple to a wider folding format that has been widely discussed in leaks. That timing matters. Whoever defines the wide foldable form factor first shapes what everyone else has to respond to.
Under the hood, the Pura X Max is expected to pack the Kirin 9030 chip with a new 9-core architecture, along with Huawei’s Red Maple Quad Camera system with improvements to the telephoto lens.
Storage options go up to 16GB RAM with 1TB in a Collector’s Edition, and color choices include black, white, blue, gold, and orange.
My only concern? There won’t be any Google services, and there is no global availability confirmation. For most people outside China, this remains something to admire from a distance. But as a statement of design intent, the Pura X Max just fired a shot across the entire industry.
Now all eyes are on April 20, when this device will be officially launched.
