The Chinese smartphone firm, Huawei, could be giving a run to rivals Samsung after they officially launched their anticipated foldable smartphone, the Huawei Mate X at the on-going Mobile World Congress (MWC) in Barcelona. It was unveiled by Huawei’s Consumer CEO, Richard Yu.
The Huawei Mate X foldable phone is a thinner 5G rival to the Galaxy Fold — the Samsung launched at their signature unpacked event in San Francisco on Feb. 20th, 2019. The Galaxy Fold announcement isn’t even a week old, and a competitor that is thinner, has a bigger screen, and folds flatter, the Huawei Mate X is been dropped.
Unlike the Galaxy Fold that has one small screen on the outside and a large screen on the inside, the Huawei Mate X uses one screen on the outside in three different ways. It shape-shifts depending on how the consumers holds the device.
The displays you’re getting from this tablet; 6.6-inch (19.5:9 aspect ratio, 2480 x 1148 resolution) main display, when folded, 6.4-inch (25:9, 2480 x 892) rear display, when folded, and 8-inch (8:7.1, 2480 x 2200) main display, when unfolded. Therefore, two OLED FullView display panels on the outer body help transform the hardware into an 8-inch tablet. Meanwhile, the Galaxy Fold when unfolded goes up to 7.2-inch display which is 0.8-inch smaller than the Huawei Mate X.
Richard confirmed that the Mate X comes with 5G support to deliver high-speed data access with low latency — powered by HiSilicon Kirin 980 SoC. He illustrated, and stated that you can download a 1GB movie in 3 seconds. Yes! people, 3 seconds. The Galaxy Fold is said to come in 4G and 5G options but that isn’t confirmed as yet. But Samsung does still have a 5G S10 phone.
Specifications and Features
The dual-SIM Huawei Mate X runs on Android 9 Pie topped with EMUI 9.1.1 and features two FullView Display panels in 6.6-inch and 6.38-inch sizes that jointly bring an 8-inch OLED FullView display panel when unfolded — without any display notch. The device, when folded, 6.6-inch (19.5:9 aspect ratio, 2480 x 1148 resolution), 6.4-inch (25:9, 2480 x 892) rear display, when folded, and 8-inch (8:7.1, 2480 x 2200) main display, when unfolded.
Huawei claimed that the Mate X has a patented hinge design with over 100 components. To bring the new foldable design, Yu at the conference mentioned that Huawei’s engineers took three years.
The Huawei Mate X comes with a HiSilicon Kirin 980 SoC that is paired with an 8GB RAM and 512GB internal storage under the hood. There is also the Huawei Balong 5000 5G chipset that comes as the world’s first 7nm modem, capable of delivering up to 4.6/ 2.5Gbps downlink/ uplink speeds on Sub-6GHz. On mmWave, the chipset can deliver up to 6.5/ 3.5Gbps downlink/ uplink speeds. Like we mentioned earlier on, 5G speeds are 10x faster than 4G and LTE. Richard noted that consumers will be able to download a GB file in less than 3 seconds.
The Mate X also comes with a quad 5G antenna. Huawei claimed that the Mate X is capable of supporting not just the initial NSA network architecture but also the SA architecture that would debut in the future.
In terms of cameras, the Mate X comes with four cameras while we saw its competitor the Galaxy Fold has six of them. Two front and Two rear cameras are powered by Leica optics. The camera setup includes a 40MP sensor (wide-angle lens), 16MP (ultra-wide-angle lens), and an 8MP sensor (telephoto).
In terms of connectivity, the Huawei Mate X features, a Bluetooth v5.0, Type-C USB 3.1, Type-C earjack, and Wi-Fi 802.11a/b/g/n/ac, 2.4 GHz and 5 GHz, NFC, and GPS.
The power switch is integrated with the fingerprint reader into one fast and secure button. Be recognized within a second and start your day with just one touch. The switch appears at the side right of the phone-tablet.
Powering the phone-tablet, the Mate X packs two battery packs that sum to 4,500mAh of capacity compared to the 4,380mAh on the Galaxy Fold. There is 55W Huawei SuperCharge technology that is rated to deliver 85% of power in 30 minutes of charge.
Note, that the 512GB on-board storage is expandable with NM card up to 256GB. The catchy thing is that it is shared with sim 2 slot.
Price and Availability
The Mate X is priced at EUR2,299 (roughly UGX9.5 million) and expected to go on sale in mid 2019. It will be available in a single Interstellar Blue color option.
