Huawei Pura X Max · The world's first wide-fold is a beautiful idea you cannot buy outside China

• The world's first wide-fold phone, the only one that opens into a wide, 1.4:1 7.7-inch tablet instead of the near-square screen of an ordinary book fold
• A genuinely new shape – 166.5 mm wide unfolded, just 5.2 mm thin, 229 g, with a 5.4-inch cover screen for one-handed use
• Two LTPO 2.0 OLEDs, both the 7.7″ inner and 5.4″ cover, running 1–120 Hz with 1440 Hz PWM dimming and a billion colours
• 50 MP variable-aperture main camera with a real 10-stop physical iris from F1.4 to F4.0, a continuously variable physical aperture rare among current rival flagships, on an RYYB sensor with OIS
• 50 MP periscope, 3.5× optical, up to 7× optical-quality and 100× digital, second-generation Red Maple (XMAGE) colour
• Kirin 9030 Pro, Huawei's in-house 2026 flagship silicon, roughly 30% faster overall than the Pura X
• 5,300 mAh, 66 W wired and 50 W wireless, plus reverse wireless and wired, with the SuperCharge brick still in the box
• HarmonyOS 6.1 (HarmonyOS NEXT), a pure Huawei OS with M-Pen 3 Mini support; the Collector's Edition adds BeiDou satellite messaging
• From ¥10,999 (≈ €1,400), China only – there is no global version, and it runs no Android apps and no Google services

Every other foldable opens into a near-square pad: a tall, narrow phone whose two halves swing apart sideways into a screen roughly as tall as it is wide. On April 20, 2026 Huawei did something different. The Pura X Max opens into a proper wide tablet instead, a landscape 1.4:1 screen shaped much like a small tablet rather than the near-square pad of a book fold. Huawei calls the category '阔折叠' (wide-fold), and it is the first phone of its kind ever sold. It went on sale across China on April 25.

This is the most original thing to happen to folding phones since the first book-style models, and Huawei deserves real credit for shipping a new idea instead of another clone that is one millimetre thinner. Closed, it is a compact slab you can use one-handed on its 5.4-inch cover screen. Open, it is a wide little tablet, far better shaped for video than the near-square pad of a book fold: films fill the wide screen instead of floating between thick black bars, and maps and two side-by-side apps feel natural too. It is worth pausing on how different this is from the other multi-screen phone here, the Samsung Galaxy Z TriFold – that one folds twice into a tall 10-inch tablet, while the Pura X Max folds once into a wide 7.7-inch tablet. Two different bets on where folding goes next, and both worth taking seriously.

There is, however, a catch the size of a continent. The Pura X Max is a China-only device. It runs HarmonyOS NEXT, Huawei's own operating system with no Android app support and no Google services, on an in-house Kirin chip, and Huawei has announced no international release. For buyers in China this is a flagship with a one-of-a-kind shape. For everyone reading this elsewhere, it is, for now, the most interesting phone you cannot have.

The numbers explain the format better than words do. Folded, the Pura X Max measures 120 × 85 × 11.2 mm – short, wide and, at 11.2 mm, frankly chunky, because it is essentially a wide slab folded in half. Open it and it spreads to 120 × 166.5 mm and thins out to just 5.2 mm, at about 229 g. So the trade-off is clear: it is thicker than a book fold when shut, but thin and very differently shaped when open.

Huawei built the folding mechanism around what it calls the Xuanwu folding architecture with a rocket-steel hinge, a second-generation Kunlun Glass cover and a UTG inner screen. Durability is a real highlight: the Pura X Max carries both IP58 and IP59 ratings. IP58 covers continuous immersion in fresh water beyond one metre, and IP59 adds resistance to high-pressure, high-temperature water jets. That is a remarkably complete water rating for a folding phone, let alone a brand-new format, because foldables are usually the least water-resistant phones you can buy. The one honest caveat is the '5': it means the phone is protected against dust ingress, but not fully dust-tight the way an IP6X device is.

Five colours launch together: Interstellar Blue, Vibrant Orange, Absolute White, Olive Gold and Phantom Black. Folded shut, the wide camera bar is centred across the top of the back, so the closed phone lies flat on a desk and does not wobble when you type on it.

The inner screen is a 7.7-inch foldable OLED at 2584 × 1828 in that distinctive 1.4:1 ratio, the same proportions as a sheet of A-series paper, which is exactly the point: documents, books and web pages look natural on it, and two apps sit comfortably side by side. It is an LTPO 2.0 panel running 1 to 120 Hz, with a billion colours and HDR Vivid.

Crucially, the 5.4-inch cover display is an LTPO OLED too (1848 × 1264, again 1.4:1), protected by second-generation Kunlun Glass and also adaptive from 1 to 120 Hz, so the outside screen feels like a proper phone rather than an afterthought. Both panels dim with 1440 Hz PWM, which keeps them flicker-free and easier on the eyes at low brightness. Huawei, as usual, does not print peak-brightness figures on its spec sheet, so we are not going to invent any. On paper, though, this is one of the more complete dual-screen setups on any foldable.

Inside is Huawei's in-house Kirin 9030 Pro, which the company says lifts whole-device performance by around 30% over the Pura X. Here is a Huawei quirk worth flagging: the chipset is nowhere to be found on Huawei's own spec sheet, a habit left over from the sanctions era, even though Huawei confirmed the 9030 Pro on stage. We have listed it, but you will not find it printed next to the rest of the specs, which is its own small statement about the times.

Memory splits along two trims. The standard Pura X Max pairs 12 GB of RAM with 256 GB or 512 GB of storage; the Collector's Edition (典藏版) steps up to 16 GB with 512 GB or 1 TB. There is no microSD slot. Benchmarks are not really the story here, the format is, but for a domestic flagship the Kirin 9030 Pro is a confident, modern platform.

For a device that is 5.2 mm thin unfolded, the 5,300 mAh battery (5,150 mAh rated) is a genuinely good result, bigger than what several thinner book folds manage. It is not the biggest cell among current foldables, though: the global book folds run larger, with the HONOR Magic V6 at 6,660 mAh and both the OPPO Find N6 and Motorola Razr Fold at 6,000 mAh, so the wide-fold shape does cost it some capacity. Charging is properly fast: 66 W wired Huawei SuperCharge, a strong 50 W wireless SuperCharge that beats the wired speeds of plenty of rival flagships, and reverse charging that works both wirelessly, for earbuds or a watch on the back, and over a cable.

And because this is a Chinese-market phone, the SuperCharge brick still comes in the box, with no hunting for a separate charger the way EU buyers now have to.

This is a Pura, so imaging is the whole point, and it shows. The rear system is built on Huawei's second-generation Red Maple (红枫) original-colour sensors with XMAGE processing, and the headline lens is special.

The 50 MP main camera uses a true 10-stop physical variable aperture, continuously adjustable from a very bright F1.4 all the way to F4.0, a real mechanical iris rather than a software trick, on an RYYB sensor with OIS. This is the standout: the Xiaomi 17 Ultra, OPPO Find X9 Ultra and vivo X300 Ultra all use a fixed aperture, so the Pura X Max is the only one of these with a continuously variable physical iris. It lets you open right up for night shots or stop down to F4.0 for genuine optical depth-of-field control, and it is the most impressive single component on the spec sheet.

The 50 MP periscope telephoto (F2.2, RYYB, OIS) covers 3.5× optical, extends to 7× optical-quality and reaches 100× digital at the far end. A 12.5 MP ultra-wide (F2.2, also RYYB) rounds out the rear trio. Stills go up to 8192 × 6144, and video tops out at 4K, capable but not the 8K some rivals now chase. For selfies there are two cameras, 8 MP on the cover (F2.4) and 8 MP on the inner screen (F2.2), and the wide-fold trick is that you can flip the phone and use the big cover screen as a live viewfinder for the far better rear cameras.

The Pura X Max runs HarmonyOS 6.1, which is HarmonyOS NEXT, Huawei's clean-sheet, microkernel operating system. This is the single most important thing to understand about the phone. HarmonyOS NEXT has no Android underpinnings at all – it runs only native HarmonyOS apps, with no Google services, no Play Store and no ability to side-load Android APKs.

Inside China, where the HarmonyOS app catalogue is now deep and the system is fast and tightly integrated, that is a strength, and Huawei layers on its Xiaoyi assistant, on-device AI image creation, a travel assistant and full HUAWEI M-Pen 3 Mini stylus support across the big screen. Outside China, it is the dealbreaker: without Google services or Android apps, an imported unit would be far less useful to most readers here, and we are not going to pretend otherwise.

One neat regional difference worth knowing: the Collector's Edition adds BeiDou satellite messaging (Huawei messaging plus carrier BeiDou satellite SMS), so you can send texts with no cellular signal, while the standard model has no satellite features at all.

The Pura X Max started at ¥10,999 in China, roughly $1,510 / €1,400 at today's exchange rates, before any local taxes, for the standard 12 GB + 256 GB model. Imported into a market where Huawei doesn't sell it, that price also picks up import duty and local VAT, so the real cost outside China lands higher. The Collector's Edition, with 16 GB of RAM, up to 1 TB of storage and the satellite-messaging hardware, sits above that.

The important line is the short one: there is no global version. Huawei has announced no international launch, and HarmonyOS NEXT, with no Android apps or Google services, makes a Western release unlikely in any case. We will update this article the moment Huawei says anything about taking the wide-fold abroad. And we genuinely hope it does, because a format this original deserves a bigger audience than one country.