Huawei Mate X: first look at a truly impressive foldable phone
The Huawei Mate X is shaping up to be the foldable phone that fixes our concerns over the yet-to-be-held Samsung Galaxy Fold, but expect to pay more for it.
We got to see Mate X smartphone and its folding Falcon Wing hinge in action, and although Huawei wasn't ready to let us touch it, we know a lot of details.
For one thing. it'll be expensive. It cost €2,299 (about $2,605, £1,996, AU$4,769) with 512GB of internal storage and 8GB of RAM. It's been in the works for three years, according to Huawei, and will launch in the UK via carrier EE this year.
It's poised to be one of many foldable phones at MWC 2019. But from what we've seen so far, the Huawei Mate X holds a lot of promise, claiming to be 'the world's fastest foldable 5G phone.' Here's what we saw.
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| first look at a truly impressive foldable phone |
The foldable 8-inch Huawei Mate X screen
The Huawei Mate X folds out into a 8-inch Android tablet, with a 6.6-inch screen on one side and a 6.4-inch (technically 6.38-inch) screen on the other when folded up. Its screen size seems just right for what we've envision from the future of foldables.
This OLED display is bigger than Samsung's Fold, which is 7.4-inch unfolded with a folded 4.6-inch bezel-heavy screen... on just one side. Huawei knows it has a winner here in terms of size, one that Samsung can't address until the Fold 2.
When the Huawei Mate X is unfolded, there's no notch or corner cutout for the camera, either. Huawei's first foldable phone has a bezel-reduced FullView display.
Dimensions and grip
Huawei calls its sophisticated-looking folding hinge the Falcon Wing hinge, and it allows the Mate X to lay completely flat, measuring just 5.4mm thin. The company says the hinge has 100 components inside of it.
For a comparison, this foldable phone is thinner than an iPad when it's laid out in tablet mode. Apple's only managed to get its form factor down to 5.9mm thin.
Specs and battery life
Huawei claims to have the word's fastest foldable 5G phone, and that's not a claim as to how fast you can unfold and fold this thing. That's what it sounded like at first.
No, the the company proudly claimed that "5G is on" in its super-charged Kirin 980 chipset, another knock to the fact that the Galaxy Fold will have a 4G LTE at its lofty starting price. Samsung didn't even mention the price of the 5G version.
It has the world's first 7nm 5G chip and sports a quad 5G antenna design, which can reach speeds of 4.6Gbps. You can download a 1GB movie in three seconds, says Huawei.
The company touts that these speeds are 10x current 4G LTE capabilities and it's able to pull them off in 2019 because it's in the middle of building 5G networks, so it's able to do live testing.
Here are more Huawei Mate X specs announced at the press conference: it'll come with 512GB of internal storage, 8GB of RAM, and support Huawei's smaller nano memory cards.
The camera system
Huawei didn't go into detail regarding how many cameras the Huawei Mate X has, but its camera system is located in down the spin hinge, which ends up with a USB-C port at the bottom.
The ideas behind the camera system on a foldable are impressive. You can finally see yourself when you take a selfie with the main camera; not having to choose between blindly snapping a pic with the the better rear camera and using an underpowered lower-megapixel selfie camera.