Huawei's foldable Mate X phone goes on sale on November 15 at a staggering price

Well, that took a while.

Huawei Mate X, the Chinese giant's first-ever foldable smartphone, will go on sale in China on November 15 for the price of 16,999 yuan ($2,403). By comparison, the 256 GB model of the iPhone 11 Pro Max starts at 10,899 yuan ($1,540).

Huawei announced the news at an event in China Tuesday, according to Chinese outlet Sina Digital (via The Verge).

Huawei Mate X was originally announced in February this year and scheduled to launch in June, but the launch was delayed multiple times, likely due to the U.S. trade ban imposed on Huawei and a handful of other Chinese companies.

Now that it's finally arriving in stores, what's different? Quite a bit, actually.

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First, the Mate X is a foldable smartphone whose screen folds outwards, unlike Samsung's Galaxy Fold, whose screen folds inwards.

Second, the phone's original specs were to include Huawei's Kirin 980 chipset, 8GB of RAM, 512GB of storage, a quad rear camera (that doubles as the selfie camera), a 5G modem, and a 4,500mAh battery.

But a later report said Huawei might upgrade the cameras — similar to the ones in the Huawei P30 Pro, which produces amazingly good photos for a smartphone, especially in low-light conditions — as well as utilizing its new Kirin 990 processor. It's unclear whether that has happened.

Credit: Raymond Wong / Mashable

The price is different as well; originally, it was supposed to be slightly more expensive at $2,600, though Chinese and international prices often differ by quite a bit.

SEE ALSO:Huawei Mate 30's camera is rated super highly by experts. Shame you can't have it.

More importantly for everyone outside of China, it doesn't really look like the Mate X will get a wide international release. Huawei told The Verge that the "global launch plan is under review," which doesn't seem particularly promising.

Huawei's latest smartphone, the Mate 30 Pro, was launched without access to Google services (due to the aforementioned trade ban), and it's unclear whether the Mate X will be Google-less as well. If the answer is yes, it likely won't do very well internationally, anyways.

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