Huawei Teases 5G Foldable Phone For February 24th Reveal

This year's Mobile World Congress event in Barcelona is now just a few weeks away, and that typically means that leaks and rumors will start flowing in faster and more furiously than usual. Even the companies themselves are starting to get in on the action around this time of year. That's the case with Huawei, which teased a looming announcement of a folding smartphone at the event.

Huawei's mobile team posted an image on Twitter that points to a press event on February 24 at 2 pm CET (8 am ET / 11 am PT).

"Come with us to explore #ConnectingTheFuture LIVE from #MWC @GSMA. Are you ready to reveal the unprecedented?," Huawei wrote.

The image appears to show a smartphone in a V-shape, presumably because it is a foldable handset. Whether there is ultimately a market for folding smartphones remains to be seen, but from the various leaks and rumors up to this point, both Huawei and Samsung aim to find out.

Huawei's teaser comes a week after the company unveiled its 5G multi-mode chipset called Balong 5000, which is the company's answer to Qualcomm's competing Snapdragon X50 5G modem. At the end of the nearly hour-long presentation, the CEO of Huawei's Consumer Business Group, Richard Yu, said his Huawei is planning to launch the world's first 5G smartphone with a foldable screen at Mobile World Congress.

So, we know it's coming, and we know it will feature 5G connectivity. It's also possible that it could be equipped with Huawei's Kirin 980 processor. The Kirin 980 is built on a 7-nanometer manufacturing process and is an octa-core chip consisting of two "super-big" Cortex-A76 cores (2.6GHz), two "big" Cortex-A76 cores (1.92GHz), and four "little" Cortex-A55 cores (1.8GHz). Huawei previously touted this design as being superior to existing big.LITTLE configurations.

Other details remain to be seen, though there is plenty of speculation out there. For example, back in July of last year, it was rumored that Huawei's foldable phone would be based on its Mate 20 X, which boasts a giant 7.2-inch OLED display. It's also worth noting that Huawei has previously submitted a series of trademark applications for model names Mate Flex, Mate Flexi, Mate Fold, and Mate F.

Stay tuned, folks!