Huawei has launched a new flip phone that upends the form factor, opening sideways rather than vertically to create a wider device with a tablet-esque aspect ratio. It’s the first Huawei phone to ship without Android app compatibility, and debuts the company’s in-house AI assistant, Harmony Intelligence — something the industry shouldn’t ignore, Nvidia’s CEO admits.
The Pura X looks similar to a Samsung Galaxy Flip or Motorola Razr when it’s closed, with a palm-sized design and a square cover screen below its triple camera. The giveaway that something’s up is that the hinge is on the phone’s side, not its top — flip that and you find a 6.3-inch display in a 16:10 aspect ratio, wider than other flip phones and closer to tablets in its proportions. It seems to be a way of splitting the difference between flip phones and larger book-style foldables.
This is also the first Huawei phone to leave Android behind for good. It runs the new HarmonyOS Next, which doesn’t use Android Open Source Project code and isn’t compatible with Android apps. The OS launched in November 2024 alongside the Mate 70 series, but owners of those phones were given a choice between Next or the Android-based HarmonyOS, whereas the Pura X is only available with the new software.
The Pura X is also the first phone to ship with Harmony Intelligence, an AI assistant based on Huawei’s in-house Pangu model and enhanced by DeepSeek. Huawei is also developing its own in-house Ascend AI chips, and this week Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang admitted that Huawei’s “presence in AI is growing every single year,” adding that “We can’t assume that they are not going to be a factor.” He also noted that US trade restrictions on the company have “done poorly,” calling Huawei “the single most formidable technology company in China.”
The Pura X is only available in China for now, where it starts at 7,499 yuan (around $1,037). Early teasers for the Pura X highlighting its wider aspect ratio gave the impression that it might be Huawei’s first commercial rollable phone. Lenovo has confirmed that its rollable laptop will go on sale this year, but the wait for a rolling phone continues.
