Huawei’s Pura X Is An Intriguing New Foldable — If You’re Outside the US
Review: The clamshell device is the company’s first flagship phone to launch with its new operating system to challenge iOS and Android.
In most of the world, the smartphone market is dominated by two players: Alphabet Inc.’s Android and Apple Inc.’s iOS. But China's Huawei Technologies Co. is looking to challenge that long-held reality with its in-house mobile platform, HarmonyOS. Since launching late last year, the software has already become the most credible contender to that duopoly in China. The company has even unveiled a companion laptop-grade operating system to replace Windows.
Huawei's new phone embodies Beijing's efforts to reduce its reliance on the US tech industry. But its efforts to establish independence in the software realm won’t mean much without cutting-edge devices that can serve as vehicles to showcase its new platform. The recently launched Pura X foldable isn’t just a hardware novelty; it’s also the company’s first flagship smartphone to run HarmonyOS out of the box, making it an early test of how willing users will be to jump ship for a largely untested — and still incomplete — ecosystem.