Another tri-folding phone is coming soon, with a catch

Huawei is gearing up to unveil its next triple-folding smartphone, the Mate XT 2, at an event in China on September 7. The company will also debut HarmonyOS 7. Huawei hasn't published a full spec sheet yet, but a video teaser has given the clearest look so far at the device, according to GSMArena.

The teaser confirms earlier rumors that the Mate XT 2 will switch to an inward-folding, U-shaped design, a departure from the Z-shaped fold used on the original Mate XT and the Mate XTs. Other rumored specs include a 6,000 mAh battery and either a Kirin 9050 Pro or Kirin 9030S chip, while the camera setup is expected to closely resemble that of the Mate X7.

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Can I buy Huawei in the U.S.?

Huawei devices, including its foldables, have effectively been locked out of the American market for years — the result of a national security dispute between the company and the U.S. government that stretches back nearly two decades.

The roots of that dispute go back to the mid-2000s, when networking giant Cisco accused Huawei of stealing its intellectual property, an early sign of the friction that would eventually escalate into formal government action.

Things came to a head in 2019, when the Trump administration signed an executive order effectively banning Huawei from U.S. communications networks and added the company to the Commerce Department's Entity List, restricting American firms from exporting technology to Huawei without a license.

That same year, the Justice Department charged Huawei with financial fraud and sanctions violations. In 2020, prosecutors added allegations of racketeering and trade secret theft. The U.S. also tightened restrictions on Huawei's access to foreign-made semiconductors built with American technology, while Congress provided $1.9 billion to help remove and replace Huawei and ZTE equipment in domestic networks.

The fallout extended well beyond politics and into Huawei's actual device lineup. As CNET has chronicled extensively, Huawei's CFO, Meng Wanzhou, was detained in Canada for nearly three years before striking a deal with the Justice Department in 2021 that allowed her to return to China. Around the same time, Huawei lost its license to use Google's Android services on new phones, and countries including the U.K. and Sweden banned Huawei equipment from their 5G networks entirely.

The Biden administration largely kept those restrictions in place and, in some cases, tightened them further. They remain in force today. The result is a company that remains one of the world's largest telecom equipment and smartphone makers, with a presence in more than 170 countries, but without an official smartphone retail presence in the U.S.

So while the Mate XT 2 may generate plenty of buzz when it launches next week, don't expect to find it at your local carrier store. For now, seeing Huawei's latest tri-fold in person will likely require a trip to a market where it is officially sold.