Oh, time sure is a cruel mistress.
Huawei may be a tech company, but it seems to be living the life of a troubled teenage Hollywood superstar who’s about to discover that all that cocaine probably wasn’t such a good idea.
Rewind to February this year and Huawei was on top of the world. The company debuted it’s Mate X foldable smartphone to much fanfare, was on course to topple Samsung as the world’s #1 smartphone company and of course, about to release it’s flagship P30 series.
February now seems like light years ago. An arrest, accusations of spying and a trade ban later, you now have what is a prime example of just how quickly fortunes can change. That being said though, the Mate X still looks like one hell of a phone. The device blew Samsung’s Galaxy Fold straight out of the park (though you might argue that Samsung did that themselves). It’s just too bad that the release date keeps getting delayed.
Huawei are reportedly pushing back the release of the Mate X a good 5 months from it’s original release date. It turns out that making a foldable device isn’t as easy as Huawei makes it out to be. In the midst all the hoo-ha that is the failure of the Galaxy Fold, Huawei has played it’s cards rather well. Samsung shot itself in the foot by sending out early versions of its foldable to reviewers whilst Huawei kept it’s prototypes in-house and as such, avoided the media backlash that Samsung received.
However, the reality of the situation is starting to unravel and the spotlight is turning to Huawei. It would seem that both the foldables are simply not ready. But we already knew that about the Galaxy Fold. Samsung’s mobile chief DJ Koh admitted as much. He described the whole incident as embarrassing, admitting the device had been pushed out before it was ready.
As for Huawei, the phone was originally penciled in for a June launch but that was quickly scrapped and replaced with a September launch, which has now been scrapped and replaced with a—Well, we don’t even know and neither do they.
Speaking to TechRadar at a press event in China, the company conceded that there is “no possibility” of it making it’s September date. The device is also unlikely to be released before November though they are “certain” that it’ll be out at some point this year. “certain” it seems.
TechRadar claim that the company is still working on making enhancements to the Mate X. No news on what these enhancements are but if it’s enough enhancements to cause a 5 month delay, it speaks volumes.
Whether or not this is due to technical issues with the phone or Donald Trump’s insistence that the company is a national threat remains unclear. What we do know is that the Galaxy Fold will now beat the Mate X to the market. With the amount of L’s the company has taken this year though, what difference will one more make, right?
