But it might not be its most high-profile phone, the Mate X, that catapults Huawei ahead of Samsung and into No.1 spot.

The folding 5G phone, which will compete head-to-head with Samsung's soon-to-be-released Galaxy Fold, will only be available in "limited" quantities when it comes out around August, due to how difficult it is to manufacture, officials now say.

That might be just as well. At a price that could be upwards of $3500 based on its European price of €2299, it will be difficult for most consumers to afford.

"The challenge is not the price. The challenge is the quantity. There will be limited production worldwide, maybe up to half a million worldwide for this year,"  Walter Ji, president of Huawei's consumer business for Western Europe (which includes Australia) told The Australian Financial Review.

The manufacturing difficulty, he says, is the screen, which folds out to be eight inches (20 centimetres) in size when the phone is opened, and which has to be both flexible, and able to withstand knocks and scratches, at the same time.

(It should be pointed out, though, that the Mate X's nominal screen size dramatically understates how very large it is. Folded up, Mr Ji's Mate X is nearly identical in height and width to my 6.4-inch Galaxy Note 9, and unfolded it's roughly double that size. Eight inches might be the true diagonal measurement across the screen, but that number doesn't capture how square the Mate X is. It's more like two six-ish-inch screens side-by-side.)

Being an "out-fold" phone, with the screen on the outside of the hinge, Huawei's first difficulty was creating a hinge that doesn't stretch the phone's flexible OLED display when the phone is being closed. And, indeed, closing Mr Ji's phone does give one the feeling that the screen is being pulled so taut it could crack.

But it doesn't crack, and it seems Huawei really has invented a magical hinge that doesn't expand its length as it closes.

That magic doesn't stop the hinge taking a toll on the screen, though. As with the Galaxy Fold, there's some creasing in the screen at the fold, though (as with the Galaxy Fold) the creasing is far more visible when the screen is turned off than when it's turned on.

The Australian price tag for the Mate X has yet to be announced, but it's going to be big, just like the screen itself.

The second difficulty arising from the out-fold design is durability.

Since the screen forms both the back and the front of the phone, and since it can't be made of Gorilla Glass because it has to be flexible, it's more prone to nicks and grazes than Samsung's Galaxy Fold, which has the screen on the inside.

Mr Ji's Mate X, which he says he's been carrying since February, does have around 10 tiny scratches on the screen, though as with the creases, the screen has to be turned off and scrutinised from an acute angle for them to be visible.

In the end, though, it won't be quality of the screen that determines the fate of the Mate X. Nor even will it be the size, which is surprisingly compact and pocket-able when it's folded shut, if something just a little thicker than a Note 9, but otherwise the same size, can ever be thought of as "compact".

It will be the price tag. The Australian price tag has yet to be announced, but it's going to be big, just like the screen itself: too big to give Huawei much tailwind in its race to be No.1.