Honor is reportedly working on a foldable phone of its own after splitting from Huawei

As foldable phones grow in popularity, it appears that every smartphone manufacturer wants a slice of the pie. The next manufacturer jumping in on the craze is Honor, which is apparently working on its own foldable phone too in the form of the Honor Magic Fold after its split from Huawei earlier this year. With Xiaomi having just released their Mi Mix Fold, and even Google seemingly working on one, it appears inevitable for every phone manufacturer to at least be toying with the idea of releasing a folding smartphone. We also know that Samsung is supplying panels to OPPO, and that’s another company with a foldable that we don’t know anything about yet.

The report from the Display Supply Chain Consultants (DSCC) states that the Honor Magic Fold will feature in-folding panels from BOE and Visionox, though any other information is scarce. Honor’s CEO, George Zhao, said in 2019 to CNET that it was Honor’s intention to release a foldable phone in the future, but that the cost was prohibitive. In fact, Zhao even suggested a release in 2020, “For Honor I think we will find a way to make this so our target customer can have a foldable phone. I think next year; next year … should be the moment”. Given the pandemic and the subsequent delay of manufacturing and design processes, it’s possible that it was pushed back to 2021 as a result.

The best part about the Honor Magic Fold is that it should be completely unencumbered by the U.S. government when it releases. Honor will be launching a smartphone with a 5G Qualcomm chip (something Huawei can’t do), and it appears that the next Honor device will also have Google Mobile Services pre-installed in the west. It’s also possible that we won’t see a western release for some time anyway, as many Chinese-based companies launch their products in China first, then a global release comes later. Even the Mi Mix Fold has yet to be launched outside of China. We’re likely going to be seeing a surge in foldables over the course of the next year, making it even more enticing for companies to get in on the foldable smartphone craze.

Featured image: Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 2

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