Huawei's $1K Pura X Flip Phone With HarmonyOS And DeepSeek AI Is Here To Challenge Android

Huawei just launched a new smartphone that combines a foldable and flippable into one. The Huawei Pura X may look like a normal flip phone when it's closed, but instead of opening upwards, it unfolds like a book, basically turning itself into a mini tablet. Not quite iPad Mini territory in terms of display size, but it's the best of both worlds and we wonder why no one has thought of this until now. Unfortunately, if you want one here in the United States, you'll have to import it plus live with the Android app-free HarmonyOS.

Huawei's Pura X marks at least two milestones in the history of smartphones. It's the first Huawei device to fully adopt the company's HarmonyOS Next, which is an operating system that claims to be free of any Android source code.

This means no access to the Google Play Store and that the phone (at least in stock, unrooted form) won't be compatible with Android apps. Last year we reported that HarmonyOS had a paltry 15,000 apps, and the company hopes to reach 100,000 by this year. While recent Huawei releases like the Mate 70 series allowed customers to choose between HarmonyOS Next or HarmonyOS-skinned Android, the Pura X potentially limits the numbers of usable apps out of the box.

Then there's the form factor. We hope this idea gets picked up by other brands, because merging a flipping and folding phone form factor is ingenious. It's not going to be as large as a dedicated foldable when opened, but we think it's a fantastic compromise of pocketability versus display real estate.

When closed, the Pura X, with a 3.5-inch OLED display looks like a regular old Razr or Galaxy Flip. The blackened horizontal camera bar hides a 50-megapixel main shooter, 40MP ultrawide, and  MP macro (booo!). However, to access the inner display, users flip it open like a book rather than like a clamshell. The panel within is a 6.3-inch unit with a 16:10 aspect ratio for respectable media consumption in landscape mode.

Elsewhere, the Pura X sports a Kirin 9020 with a Maleoon 920 GPU, up to 16GB RAM and 1TB of internal storage. Adding to the we-need-this-now factor is the compact 91.7 x 91.7 x 15.1 mm size (closed) and low 195-gram weight. There's also IPX8 protection, so good water submergence protection. The phone also is first to use the company's own AI assistant, called Harmony Intelligence build on Pangu and DeepSeek models.

The Huawei Pura X is available only in China right now for about $1,040.

Photo credits: Huawei