This may go against your perception of the company, but one smartphone maker has done an absolutely amazing job. This company has overcome challenges that would have been insurmountable for most companies, and yet it continues to innovate. HTC? Apple? Samsung? No. The company I'm talking about is Huawei. Whether Huawei deserves the punishment from the US is another story for another day. Let's leave it at this: where there's smoke, there's fire.
While there are reasons for the US to view Huawei as a national security threat, that doesn't diminish Huawei's amazing achievements. Just when Huawei was about to take its place at the top of the smartphone world, overtaking not only Apple but also Samsung, the manufacturer was stripped of its use of the Google Play Services version of Android. Huawei responded by developing its own operating system, HarmonyOS. But that's just the beginning.
Unable to get its prized HiSilicon chips ready for production at TSMC, Huawei had to rush to source chips for its flagship phones. Qualcomm gets permission from the US Department of Commerce to sell Huawei Snapdragon application processors that are optimized not to work with 5G signals. Last year, the company shocked the world by releasing the Mate 60 series, powered by its own new Kirin 9000s chipset.
The Kirin 9000s was manufactured by China's largest foundry, SMIC, using an older 7nm process node, putting it two generations behind the 3nm A17 Pro found in the iPhone 15 Pro series. Although an older deep ultraviolet lithography technology was used to build the application processor, the chipset supports 5G and for the first time since 2020, Huawei sold a 5G phone. And this summer, Huawei's foldable models propelled the struggling company past Samsung and are now the world leader in global foldable sales.
The phone is expected to have a 10-inch display and use the new silicon-carbon battery technology used by other Chinese smartphone makers. It offers higher energy density but does not charge as quickly as conventional batteries.
The Huawei tri-fold phone will reportedly launch ahead of Huawei's next traditional flagship series, the Mate 70 series, which is slated to launch in November/December.