Huawei's tri-fold phone with 10-inch internal display to start mass production soon

Samsung Display is grabbing the attention of New Yorkers with a new ad campaign for its OLED displays. For the dog days of summer in the sweltering Big Apple, until September 5th, the iconic New York City tour buses will feature an ad for Samsung Display's OLED screens. The ad shows the image of a grinning shark holding a tri-foldable smartphone display with the message 'OLED Vibes' on the screen. Next to the shark, the ad says "Jawsome OLED."

An illusion makes it appear as though the passengers sitting on the upper deck of the bus are swimming in the water by the beach. The buses with the ad are being driven around major New York City landmarks downtown such as Times Square, the Empire State Building, and Wall Street. The buses also appear on uptown routes that pass the American Museum of Natural History, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and Central Park. Nearly three years ago Samsung Display unveiled its tri-foldable OLED display called "Flex In & Out" that folds into an S-shape origami-style. 

While a Samsung tri-foldable is not expected to be coming soon, Huawei is about to start production on a tri-fold phone and it could arrive before the eagerly expected Huawei Mate 70 flagfship line hits the market during the fourth quarter of this year. A photo shows former Huawei CEO Richard Yu on an airplane holding the device. You can tell that the phone he is holding is a tri-fold because of the centered punch hole for the selfie camera on the left display with two creases afterward. Yu is currently Chairman of the company's Consumer Business Group.

According to Weibo leaker Digital Chat Station, the phone will be the world's first double-hinge inside-outside tri-fold. Unfolded, the internal screen is considered to be super flat and weighs in at a huge 10 inches. Digital Chat Station says that the application processor running the phone will be a Kirin series 9 chipset which was originally expected to debut on the Mate 70 series. It is not clear whether the chip will be made by SMIC using its 7nm node or whether China's largest foundry has been able to develop a way to produce a 5nm SoC for Huawei using Deep Ultraviolet Lithography (DUV).