Huawei has announced a new foldable tablet laptop hybrid, and everything I can imagine is: why didn’t an Android tablet manufacturer come first?
The Huawei Matebook Fold Ultimate has been unveiled in China, and it is one thing of real beauty.
If you have the shape of an 18-inch tablet that can fold half to become a neat 1.16 kg 13-inch laptop (with virtual tests on the lower part), it seems the ultimate form-changing productivity and media device.
The key to foldable tablet success
Not that my first reaction to this new device was completely positive. In fact, it was closer to “that’s cool, but you will pry my tactile keys of my cold, dead hands”.
Nobody really gets really work on a touchscreen. Not this geriatric millennial, at least.
But I didn’t have to be so early. It appears that the Huawei Matebook fold Ultimate can be used as a powerhouse of full productivity, unravel to full 18-inch size and the instructions with its built-in standard. You can then remove the adjusted 5 mm-thick one, 290 g wireless keyboard and use it to type.
And what a beauty that seems to be a 18-inch display. It is a Dual Layer OLED, which we have seen before on the iPad Pro M4, which means it is super clear (1,600 nits) and lively. It also has a sharp resolution of 3296 x 2472 – that is not much shy for 4K.
Huawei
Why we need an Android version of the Matebook -Fold Ultimate
We know nothing about the chip that feeds this hybrid device (although there is 32 GB RAM and a 1 TB or 2 TB SSD), and that could prove the bottleneck. Huawei is heavily impeded by Western sanctions when it comes to the implementation of his devices in recent years.
That simply reinforces the feeling that a top -sandroid manufacturer – Samsung or Google maybe – may have really had to come up with a similar product.
Imagine a foldable version of the Google Pixel tablet that runs on the Android-Skin from Google’s Tablet-optimized, or even Chromeos. It could have been the device that Google eventually brought in a meaningful way to the Android tablet market.
Even mysterification is the lack of a Samsung equivalent. We know that the company has been experimenting with such a foldable tablet technology for years, and it has had the Dex Hybrid Desktop OS in place for longer.
Huawei
Enter Apple (ultimately)
It is of course not too late for such a manufacturer to arrive with their own view of a foldable tablet. Despite all the attraction of Huawei’s hardware, the constant problems with American authorities mean that it will never make a dent on Western markets with such a device.
An important player who could offer a compelling view of this form factor is Apple. The rumor is that the company simply has such a product in the schedule of the release.
As we have started to appreciate, where Apple is going, other large manufacturers often follow. With a rumor release date of ‘by 2028’, however, it can take a while before the concept of Huawei reaches its full potential, and that is a pity.
