Just days after Samsung revealed the Galaxy Fold, Huawei has jumped on the flexible phone bandwagon with its own bendy device. Dubbed the Mate X, it's essentially a slick 8-inch tablet that can fold in half.
Folding the Mate X splits it into a 6.6-inch display on the front, and a 6.38-inch display on the back. When folded, both screens are exposed (if you're concerned about this, there's a case that will protect the back without affecting foldability).
Huawei's approach is a little different to Samsung's Galaxy Fold, which has more of a book cover design. There's a small screen on the front, and opening up the device reveals a larger display. For what it's worth, we think the Mate X is the more elegant device - at least in terms of aesthetic.
When opened, the Mate X display is virtually edge-to-edge with no bezel due to a lack of any front-facing cameras. Instead, there's a triple camera array (again, co-developed with Leica) built into a "wedge" that doubles as grip for when you're using it as a tablet. If you want to take a selfie when you've got the Mate X in phone mode, you need to turn it around.
In terms of dimensions, the Mate X is 5.4mm unfolded and 11mm folded up. For comparison, the Huawei Mate 20 Pro is 8.6mm thick.
Notably, the Mate X is also Huawei's first 5G smartphone. Huawei says it will be able to download at speeds of up to 4.6Gbps on sub-6GHz bands. That means you could theortically download a 1GB file in just three seconds. The phone itself is dual SIM, but only the primary SIM slot supports 5G connectivity.
Other key specifications for the Mate X include a Kirin 980 processor, 8GB of RAM, 512GB of storage, a fingerprint-reader-power-button, and two batteries with a total capacity of 4,500mAh. The display runs at a resolution of 2480x2200. There's no headphone jack though.
Of course, all this new tech won't be cheap. The Mate X will set you back €2299 when it launches in the middle of this year. That's almost $3,700 based on currency conversions.
Ooooof.
Alex Choros
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