Huawei just launched the world's first tri-fold smartphone, the Mate XT Ultimate. It folds in three. And yet, even with all of that folding and three panels to account for, it manages to almost match Samsung's latest Galaxy Z Fold6 in thickness when folded.
The following picture shared on Reddit today speaks louder than a thousand words.
On paper, the situation is like this: the Mate XT is 12.8 mm thick, while the Fold6 is 12.1 mm thick, so - on paper - Samsung wins this war.
But - just look at the image above. 0.7 mm is almost imperceptible of a difference to the human eye. And then there's the fact that the Huawei folds in three! Its screen is 10.2", compared to the Fold6's folding display that's 7.6". It's just no comparison.
Now, here's what's going to happen in the comments. Samsung fans will insist that the Korean company is much more diligent about robustness and durability when it comes to foldables, and that's why it seems like its last innovation in the space was actually the original Galaxy Fold from 2019. It's spent all this time improving the minutiae, making sure every single detail about its foldables is perfect.
The other camp will point out how Samsung's Folds have been looking the same for many years now, and how they're only receiving minor improvements each year, and how most of those improvements are Samsung actually (very slowly) fixing an issue it caused itself (the narrow form factor when folded), and how Chinese smartphone makers like Huawei with this tri-fold and Honor with the Magic V3 (and how thin that is) have been the real innovators in the space recently.
So, have at it! The people on the aforementioned Reddit thread definitely went back and forth a lot on the topic.