Huawei may be about to change the shape of its cheapest foldable. A fresh leak out of China suggests the next nova Flip will arrive in 2027 with a 6.3-inch folding display that is wider and shorter than the tall screen on the phone you can buy today, trading the long, narrow clamshell look for something closer to a small square when opened. It would change how the phone feels in the hand and how videos fill the screen.
The report comes from a tipster on Weibo. According to the leak, the new model will pair its 6.3-inch folding panel with a Kirin 9-series processor, a step up from the Kirin 8030 in the current nova Flip S. Beyond that, the details thin out quickly. The exact chip has not been named, the screen’s aspect ratio is unknown, and there is no word yet on the cover display. Huawei has said nothing, so for now this is a rumour, and the company has not confirmed which phone line the device will belong to.
That uncertainty matters because Huawei has more than one candidate for a wide foldable. In July, tipster Digital Chat Station said Huawei was working on a compact wide foldable for 2027, and most people assumed a Pura X successor. The latest leak points instead at the nova Flip, which would bring the wider shape to a cheaper, more mainstream phone. The direction, though, is clear.
A Wider Flip
The phone this would replace is the nova Flip S, which went on sale in China on 25 October 2025, a year after the first nova Flip. It kept the original’s basic design while adding new colours, a lower starting price and a different chip. Its main screen is a 6.94-inch LTPO OLED panel at 120Hz, with a small 2.14-inch cover display outside, 12GB of memory, a 50-megapixel main camera, a 4,400mAh battery and 66W charging, running HarmonyOS 5.1. It has sold as the affordable way into Huawei’s foldable world, but its tall, narrow screen makes videos play small.
The rumoured replacement would be smaller on paper and bigger in practice. A 6.3-inch panel sounds like a downgrade next to 6.94 inches, yet a wider screen could show more of a video, a game or a web page side to side. A shorter, broader screen should feel less cramped when open, while the body stays compact enough to fold in half and slip into a pocket, which is the whole point of a clamshell.
Huawei has already tested this idea in its own shops. The Pura X, launched in China in March 2025, was the company’s first passport-style foldable, opening sideways into a 6.3-inch inner display with a 16:10 aspect ratio, a 3.5-inch outer screen, the Kirin 9020 chip and HarmonyOS 5.0. The shape worked well for reading, video and running two apps side by side. It never went on sale outside China. The nova Flip would be the next step, taking a design that began in Huawei’s premium Pura line down to a phone more people can afford.
The Trend Goes Beyond Foldables
Huawei is not alone. It has already brought broader proportions to an ordinary phone, the Pura X View, with a 6.39-inch screen at 16:9.5, and Coolpad has followed with the Cool X Wide, a non-folding Android phone with a 6.38-inch display at 16:10. Xiaomi and Vivo are reportedly looking at wider regular phones, while book-style foldables such as Apple’s rumoured iPhone Duo and Samsung’s Galaxy Z Fold 8 have also moved towards wider proportions. After years of taller, thinner phones, makers are asking whether extra width serves people better.
A wider screen gives videos, games and apps more room from side to side without making the phone taller, and on a foldable the gain is doubled, because the screen you unfold is the one you watch things on. Reading feels less cramped, split-screen multitasking stops feeling squeezed, and video fills more of the display. For a clamshell like the nova Flip, the appeal is the combination: a display that is genuinely wide when open, and a body that still folds down to half its size.
None of this is settled. A leak from a single tipster is not a product announcement, and the details buyers care about most, from the cover display to the battery and the price, are still unknown. Huawei has changed course late in development before, and a wide nova Flip in a laboratory today may never reach a shop. Even so, a 6.3-inch screen may look like a step back from 6.94 inches to buyers comparing numbers in a store.
Still, the leak fits a pattern too consistent to ignore. Huawei started the wide-foldable conversation with the Pura X, developed it with the Pura X Max, and has carried the idea into regular phones. Bringing it to the nova Flip would complete the circle, putting the company’s most interesting screen shape into its most affordable foldable. If the 2027 date holds, buyers will soon choose between the tall, narrow clamshells that defined the category and a shorter, broader alternative. For now it remains a rumour.
