Five Chinese 5G phones from this year’s Mobile World Congress

China had a bunch of 5G stars at MWC this year, including Huawei, Xiaomi, and ZTE

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Huawei is still trying to get buyers to accept it into the big boys club and the Mate X is certainly helping its case. (Picture: Reuters/Sergio Perez)

Masha Borak

Published: 10:26pm, 26 Feb 2019Updated: 8:57am, 20 Sep 2019

This article originally appeared on ABACUS

5G networks aren’t quite here yet, but that’s not stopping companies from showing off their 5G handsets. Chinese smartphone makers came out in force at this year’s Mobile World Congress in Barcelona to show off handsets that you won’t be able to use for ages.

Why 5G isn't just faster video streaming on your smartphone

Of course, the biggest barrier to using these phones probably won’t be technology, but politics. Still, let’s not let international relations get in the way of drooling over some new phones, right?

Huawei

The Huawei Mate X may not be the first foldable phone. It’s not even the first foldable 5G phone, since the 5G variant of the Samsung Galaxy Fold will go on sale in South Korea in May.

That’s probably why Huawei has chosen to dub the Mate X the “world’s fastest foldable 5G phone” instead. They’re promising a download speed of up to 4.6 Gbps (based, of course, on Huawei’s own testing with its own 5G network gear).

But throwing 5G into a phone that’s already foldable is going to have an impact on the price tag -- and as Chinese social media users have noted, the US$2,600 price tag is really, erm, something.

“Over 20,000 (yuan)… too bad that my kidney is only worth 8,000,” said one Weibo user.

The real question now is: Who is going to sell it first? Samsung is planning to start selling its foldable 5G in May. Huawei’s CEO of consumer business Richard Yu said they will launch the phone when 5G networks are ready for commercial use... which technically could be before Samsung, or way after. We don’t know, but we do know it’s not likely to hit the US soon for pretty obvious reasons.