Huawei on Friday announced the upcoming release of its first 5G handset in its home market. Following on the heels of its U.K. debut, the Mate 20 X is currently up for pre-order, with an expected China arrival of August 16.
The handset beats the foldable Mate X to market, in spite of that handset having made its debut way back at Mobile World Congress in February. Of course, companies are understandably cautious about foldables in the wake of the mess with the Samsung Galaxy Fold, which finally got an approximate release date last week.
China Mobile flipped the switch on its Huawei-powered 5G transport network late last month, with commercial rollout expected to begin in October. In June, China Telecom and China Unicom were also granted licenses to operate commercial 5G networks, after some delay. Last week, ZTE’s Axon 10 Pro 5G went up for pre-sale in its native China, as well.
Until 5G rollout begins, those purchasing 5G handsets will have to rely on older networks like the rest of us, putting the U.S. and China in similar boats on that front. Of course, security concerns have put both Huawei and ZTE in the cross-hairs internationally, particularly North America.
Huawei has reportedly been looking to build much of its own hardware and software in-house, particularly in the wake of a ban on its use offerings from U.S. companies. Notably, it also announced a $436 million investment in building out an ecosystem around its Arm-based Kunpeng server chip.