Editorials · Insider Reaction

I think the iPhone Duo is solving a problem Huawei already solved

Apple spent years on a hinge, and a wide phone with no moving parts is already topping the charts in China.

By · Senior News Writer
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Person watching video on the wide Huawei Pura X View screen.
A wider screen means video fills it instead of floating between black bars. | Image by Huawei
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The Huawei Pura X View sales are doing something the foldable category has chased for six years, and the phone never folds. Moreover, a Chinese tipster puts it above every other wide-screen phone on sale, the Galaxy Z Fold 8 included. If you have been watching the best foldable phones for the shape rather than the hinge, that matters.

Pura X View sold 280,000 units in five days, and not one of them folds


According to data posted on Weibo by the Chinese tipster Digital Chat Station, translated from Chinese, the Pura X View moved more than 280,000 units in its first five days. That was enough to make it the best-selling individual wide-screen phone from any brand during week 37 of 2026.



It should be noted that the figure traces back to a single tipster rather than to Huawei or an analyst firm, so I'd treat it as directional rather than audited. Still, the number is the reason we covered the launch in the first place.

If a wide, non-folding phone like this launched in the US, what would you do?
13 Votes


The 5:3 screen, and what the Galaxy Z Fold 8 already told us


Nobody bought this phone for the silicon. The Pura X View runs a 5nm Kirin 9030S, a node several generations behind what flagships elsewhere are using this year.

The camera is genuinely strong, with a 200MP main sensor and a 50MP periscope at 3.7x optical zoom, and a 7,000 mAh battery inside a 6.68 mm body is real engineering. But none of that is new to the category, and the only thing this phone does that nothing else at its price does is be wide.

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Screen size is quoted as a diagonal, which quietly hides what a change in aspect ratio actually does. A 6.39-inch panel sounds small next to a 6.9-inch flagship, and in surface area it simply isn't.

Run the numbers and both land at roughly 18 square inches of display. The difference is in how that area gets shaped, because at 5:3 the Pura X View is about 10 mm wider across the screen and roughly 20 mm shorter than a typical 19.5:9 flagship panel.

Those are close to the proportions of the original Kindle, and it's why the phone behaves like a reading and video device more than a scrolling one. Two apps side by side stop being a compromise, a web page stops being a narrow column, and video fills the frame instead of floating between black bars.

Samsung already proved half of this argument for us. Our Galaxy Z Fold 8 review found a passport-shaped, $1,899 foldable whose cover screen software was still rough in places, and our comparison against the Fold 8 Ultra landed on the wider body being the thing that finally made the phone make sense.

Then the sales followed. When Samsung published its early pre-order figures, the cheaper and lighter Fold 8 was outselling the Ultra outright, and we made the case at the time that shape was beating raw specs.



So if you own a Fold 8, or you have October 16 circled for an iPhone Duo pre-order, none of this takes anything away from your phone. You already have the wide canvas, and what it puts a question mark over is the premium you paid for the mechanism that delivers it.

Who the wide phone is actually for, and who it leaves out


Our own comment section answered the first half faster than any analyst could. TechWASGood has been on the Note line since 2011, says he stopped upgrading every year once the Note 8 moved to an 18.5:9 screen, and would hand over his S24 Ultra for a US Pura X View without thinking twice.

User meanestgenius is a step further along, since he already owns the original Pura X and has the View lined up as his next phone. That's a real owner reporting back, which carries a lot more weight than enthusiasm for a render, and it's the most useful thing in the whole thread.

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The catch is the one every Huawei story carries. There's no standard OEM warranty for US buyers, carrier compatibility is limited, and access to popular apps and services is not direct, all of which readers argued over at length.

For most of you, then, this is a signal about where the market could go rather than a phone you can order.

I want someone to build this without the hinge


Foldables still make up a small slice of global shipments, which we went through when Mark Gurman predicted they would take the majority within a decade. Six years of hinge engineering has bought the category a few percent of the market and a durability question that has never fully gone away.

I'm not calling the foldable dead, and I'd be guessing if I said 280,000 units in China predicts anything about Ohio.

So I'm hoping somebody with a US distribution deal is looking at that number and doing the math. I'd personally love to hold a wide, hinge-free slab at a normal flagship price, and I doubt I'm the only one.

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