A year on from their first foldable device and Huawei have already launched the sequel to the Mate X smartphone…and it looks exactly the same as the Mate X! No, really. Externally, there’s hardly any difference. However, the devils’ in the details when it comes to the Mate Xs and Huawei says that the phone gets a more durable display and features a redesigned hinge.
Breaking down its display, the device gets a “quad-layer” 6.6″ (8″ when unfolded) screen made up of two layers of polyamide film stuck together with a clear adhesive, a flexible OLED display and a softer polymer layer designed to act as a cushion layer. Huawei says that the combination of these four layers should make the screen a lot more robust. At the end of the day however, it’s still not a glass screen so it remains to be seen just how valid Huawei’s claim is.
One of the many spillover effects of the MWC being cancelled is the various virtual launch parties the company organized around the world. Huawei brought out all the big guns for the media to play around with, and one of them was the Mate Xs. Seeing as I wasn’t scheduled to head on over to Barcelona for MWC anyway, this was a nice surprise.
While I managed to get my hands on Huawei’s first foldable early this year, I wasn’t allowed to actually fold it so it’s hard to really do a comparison here. Regardless, the brand new Mate Xs does feel like it should be a lot more sturdy, given that the phone is noticeably heavier than any other smartphone i’ve ever handled.
The company also enforced the hinge. Dubbed as the “Falcon Wing design”, the number of parts that make up the hinge went up from 100 to 150. One push of the release button on the back of the phone and the phone unfurls itself. You’ll have to pull it all the way up to flatten the screen though and there’s actually more resistance in this motion than I would’ve expected, but I’m guessing that translates to a more durable hinge.
Under the hood, the phone packs a real punch with Huawei’s top of the line Kirin 990 5G chip and a 4,500mAh battery giving you the juice. The presence of the Kirin 990 5G chip means that it now has an integrated 5G modem rather than a separate component. The hardware upgrades on the phone are impressive, but so are the software upgrades. One of the things I really liked was the fact that the Mate Xs can show up to three apps simultaneously, which makes multitasking a hell of a lot easier, really.
I’m a huge fan of heavy phones and the Huawei Mate Xs is really looking like the real deal here. This is all based off a first hand look in a controlled environment though, so it’s hard to make any conclusive judgement. Whether its the real deal or not however, is secondary at this point. The phone costs €2,499 and with Huawei still on the US entity list, doesn’t come with any Google apps. RM11,000 on a phone is bad enough as it is but once you throw in a side of a Google-less experience, it’s hard to imagine the device being anything more than a showpiece.
