Huawei Mate XT 2 Design Revealed: First U-Type Tri-Fold, Adds an Outer Screen, Debuting HarmonyOS 7

Huawei has officially pulled back the curtain on the design of its new Mate XT 2. The tri-fold abandons last year’s Z-fold layout in favor of a U-type folding mechanism, packs in a brand-new outer screen, and is set to be among the first phones to ship HarmonyOS 7 out of the box.

From Z-fold to U-fold

The biggest design change on the new Mate XT 2 is the switch from a Z-fold to a U-type tri-fold. When fully closed, the flexible inner display is now fully wrapped inside the chassis rather than exposed at one end as on last year’s Mate XT/s. The new mechanism resembles Samsung’s G-style tri-fold, but the panel-folding sequence is different.

That move trades versatility for durability. On the original Mate XT/s, the Z-fold let users flip between three distinct postures — single-screen, dual-screen, and full tri-screen — and that flexibility has been one of the line’s biggest draws. The U-type design can’t match all three postures; instead, it gains robustness. As the source notes, a replacement screen assembly for the previous Mate XTs cost around 4,999 RMB — roughly the price of a standalone flagship phone.

Outer screen and an octagonal camera island

The new Mate XT 2 also gets a proper outer screen this time around. The front camera sits in a pill-shaped punch hole, the same layout Huawei has been using on its flat flagships, which strongly suggests 3D face recognition is on board — and with it, support for face-based payment.

The rear camera island is largely carried over from the first generation: an octagonal Deco with the HUAWEI ULTIMATE DESIGN branding, paired with what looks like a quad-camera array around a central flash. It is a more conservative look than the new fold, but it is recognizable on sight.

Kirin 9030S, shared with the Pura 90 line and the Pura X View

On the performance side, the Mate XT 2 is expected to run the same Kirin 9030S that Huawei will pair with the Pura X View launching alongside it. The Kirin 9030S first debuted on the Pura 90 Pro and Pura 90 Pro Max and is now the chip Huawei is using across its current flagship tier. The CPU is laid out as 1x super-core @2.69GHz + 3x big cores @2.15GHz + 4x mid cores @1.62GHz, paired with a Maleoon 935F GPU running at 933MHz with 3 compute units.

First phone to ship HarmonyOS 7

The new Mate XT 2 is set to be among the first Huawei devices to ship HarmonyOS 7 out of the box, with Huawei claiming a 15% performance lift and no more than 10% annual degradation. The new version debuts the "Ark Performance Engine" with an on-device performance model that has been trained on more than 2 billion scenario samples.

Both the Mate XT 2 and the Pura X View are slated to debut at Huawei’s full-scenario launch event on September 7.