Its solid-feeling hinge allows this handset to fold up, transforming from full 8-inch tablet into a more-traditional-looking 6.6-inch and 6.38-inch smartphone with a screen on either side.
It feels like you're holding the future in your hand, just know that your trans-formative euphoria over this phone comes at a very high price.
The Huawei Mate X is the foldable smartphone that our sci-fi imaginations dreamed up years ago, and it's came to life at MWC 2019 where we got to play with it.
Our extended hands-on time proved that the Mate X has a solid-feeling hinge so that it can transform from a 6.6-inch and 6.38-inch phone into a full 8-inch Android tablet.
How did it feel? What's it going to be like to use? Richard Yu, Executive Director, CEO of the Consumer Business Group gave us the first hands-on time at MWC 2019 and we got more time with the foldable later on at the show. Here's what we think.
Huawaei Mate x at Amazon
Price and release date
Huawei’s Mate X dropped with gusto at MWC 2019, and with a price tag that makes the highest-specced iPhone look affordable ; Huawei, once synonymous with budget devices, is most definitely getting comfortable in the big league.
The Mate X costs €2,299, which converts to about $2,600, £2,000, AU$4,770 with 512GB of internal storage and 8GB of RAM, and Huawei has hinted there will be other variants down the line. This foldable phone will launch in the UK on EE, Three and Vodafone this year.
The official release date window is June, July, or August, Huawei told the media. That doesn't mean The Mate X will launch everywhere. As revolutionary as this foldable phone looks, there are no US release date plans, said Huawei reps, meaning you may have to import this 2-in-1 5G device to get it in North America.
Design and screen
One thing that wasn’t made clear in our initial briefing on the Mate X was how the clasp system used to keep the screen firmly flush when the phone is in its folded ‘phone state’ worked. It turns out that a button on the back of the phone can be pressed, releasing the back portion of the display so it can be unfurled into an 8-inch tablet.The front of the phone really is all-screen – 6.6-inches of it, in stark contrast to the Samsung Galaxy Fold’s humble 4.6-inch external display outlined with beefy bezels. This is where the Mate X really stands out. Samsung's single outer screen in folded mode takes us back to the days of heavy bezel outlines and small displays, just when we got to favorable screen-to-body ratios on phones. Huawei skips ahead with its FullView 8-inch display.
Turn the Mate X around and its back portion – the rest of the display, creates a secondary 6.4-inch screen that’s thinner – this could be cool for watching 21:9 movies, activating the smallest display, and potentially saving battery. The reason this could save battery comes down to the Mate X's screen technology.
As this is an OLED display individual pixels can be fired up, with unused pixels remaining pitch black; this is in contrast to LCD displays that require the whole panel – all the pixels – to be illuminated simultaneously. Huawei capitalizes on this power-saving feature innate to OLED tech in the core design of its Mate X.
Another key concern we have surrounding durability, especially with a wraparound phone like this, is scratch-resistance, or lack thereof. Flexible displays are plastic, which scratches more readily than glass – remember the original Moto Z Force that was touted to have an unbreakable screen to survive small drops, but scratched rather easily?
In this respect there’s a good chance the Samsung Galaxy Fold will be hardier than the Mate X, with less exposed flexible display and a glass outer screen.
The good news is that Huawei reps said the Mate X will actually go through more durability tests and some minor changes before it launches in a few months. The tease here is that it could actually look better than it did at MWC.
Camera
We know very little about the camera on the Mate X, other than that it’s a triple-module system. We weren’t allowed to open the camera app and try it out ourselves, but we did see a few tricks in action, and they seemed to be equal parts gimmicky and useful.
First off, there’s no front camera, just a primary triple camera around the back. All’s not lost for you Instagram stars and starlets though, as the rear screen doubles up as a viewfinder, which should actually make taking selfies an even better experience, given the fact that rear cameras are almost always superior in quality to selfie shooters.
The second screen can also be used to create a dual viewfinder – one on either side of the phone. This enables you to see a preview when someone’s taking your picture with the Mate X, adding a playful party trick to this pricey powerhouse.
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We got to test out the selfie camera functionality, and it worked well. A live view of what's in frame appeared on both sides of the folded phone, so both the picture taker and picky person who asked a stranger to take their photo can see everything.
We don't have camera megapixel sizes or aperture details for you just yet. There are many reasons Huawei be so tight-lipped about the exact camera specs. On the one hand, the camera may contain tech of the future – something the brand wants to announce with its upcoming Huawei P30 smartphone, expected at the end of March.
Alternatively, the Mate X may not have a best-in-class camera given the potential space limitations, while another possibility is that Huawei hasn’t ironed out the details when it comes to imaging
Battery and specs
One thing Huawei did want to talk about was power, because there’s a massive battery inside the Mate X – actually there are two batteries, combining for a total 4,500mAh.
It's packing a bit more juice than the Samsung Galaxy Fold, but the Mate X also has a bigger screen when in both phone and tablet orientations, so is likely more power-hungry.
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Huawei's 55W SuperCharge tech, which debuts on the Mate X, not only surpasses the 40W charging in the Huawei Mate 20 Pro, but it can also power up the Mate X to 85% from 0% in just 30 minutes.
Powered by a Kirin 980 processor coupled with a Balong 5000 5G modem, the phone doesn’t just charge quickly, it ‘5Gs’ quickly too, taking as little as three seconds to download a 1GB movie.
While we won’t be seeing those speeds when the phone drops in the middle of this year, as networks will unlikely support such zippy download rates, numbers like that do give us some comfort that the incredibly expensive Mate X is nicely future-proofed from a data transfer speed point of view.
You're going to be holding onto this phone for a while, so future-proofed specs are important here. To that point, there’s 512GB storage and support for expandable storage via Nano Memory, Huawei’s proprietary storage card that goes up to 256GB.
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