Huawei's Mate X is a seriously impressive folding 5G smartphone... but you'd hope so for $2,600!
If you balked when the price of the Samsung Galaxy Fold was revealed ($1,980, in case you missed it), the price tag attached to the newly revealed Huawei Mate X may trigger heart failure. At $2,600, the 5G folding smartphone is, the words of Huawei's Richard Yu, "very expensive", but you will get a lot of phone for your money.
The Mate X is scheduled for release in the middle of the year, and it differs from the Samsung Galaxy Fold in an important way. While Samsung's offering opens up to reveal a large screen on the inside, Huawei has instead opted to wrap the foldable screen around the front and back using the unique Falcon Wing Mechanical Hinge. In folded mode, this is a 6.6-inch smartphone; opened up, it is an 8-inch tablet. The price may be extraordinarily high, but you get some impressive hardware.
See also:
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In folded mode, the Mate X features a 6.6-inch front screen, and a 6.38-inch one on the back. This is larger than the Samsung Galaxy Fold, but when it comes to thickness, Huawei's offering is thinner. When folded, it is just 11mm (or 0.43 inches) thick, while unfolded it is a mere 5.4mm (or 0.21 inches). The hinge system enables the Mate X to be folded completely flat.
This is a 5G phone, but Huawei has gone much further than just making it 5G-compatible. A total of four antennas gives a theoretical download speed of up to 4.6 Gbps which Huawei points out could let you download a 1GB movie in just three seconds.
When folded, there is a vertical bar to the side of the narrower screen, and this is home to the USB port, the cameras, speakers, volume control and fingerprint reader. It also functions as a handle.
Huawei shares the following specifications for the Mate X:
COLOR
- Interstellar Blue
DISPLAY
- Type: OLED
- Size: Unfolded: 8 inches, Folded: 6.6 inches for front panel, 6.38 inches for back panel
- Resolution: Unfolded: 2480 x 2200, Folded: 2480 x 1148 for front panel, 2480 x 892 for back panel
CHIPSET
- HUAWEI Kirin 980 + Balong 5000
- HUAWEI Kirin 980
- CPU: 2 x Cortex-A76 Based 2.6 GHz + 2 x Cortex-A76 Based 1.92 GHz + 4 x Cortex-A55 1.8 GHz
- GPU: Mali-G76
- NPU: Neural Network Processing Unit
- Balong 5000
- 2G / 3G / 4G / 5G Multi-mode
- Support SA&NSA
OPERATING SYSTEM
- Android 9
MEMORY
- 8 GB RAM + 512 GB ROM
- NM card: support up to 256 GB
NETWORK
Primary SIM card:
- 5G NR TDD: N41 / N77 / N78 / N79
- 4G LTE TDD: B34 / B38 / B39 / B40 / B41
- 4G LTE FDD: B1 / B2 / B3 / B4 / B5 / B6 / B7 / B8 / B9 / B12 / B17 / B18 / B19 / B20 / B26 / B28 / B32
- 3G WCDMA: B1 / B2 / B4 / B5 / B6 / B8 / B19;
- 2G GSM: B2 / B3 / B5 / B8 (850 / 900 / 1800 / 1900 MHz)
Secondary SIM card:
- 4G LTE TDD: B34 / B38 / B39 / B40 / B41
- 4G LTE FDD: B1 / B2 / B3 / B4 / B5 / B6 / B7 / B8 / B9 / B12 / B17 / B18 / B19 / B20 / B26 / B28
- 3G WCDMA: B1 / B2 / B4 / B5 / B6 / B8 / B19
- 2G GSM: B2 / B3 / B5 / B8 (850 / 900 / 1800 / 1900 MHz)
DUAL SIM SUPPORT
Card slot 1: nano card
Card slot 2: nano card or NM card
GPS
- GPS (L1 + L5 dual band) / AGPS / Glonass / BeiDou / Galileo (E1 + E5a dual band) / QZSS (L1 + L5 dual band)
CONNECTIVITY
- 11a/b/g/n/ac, 2.4 GHz and 5 GHz
- Bluetooth 5.0, BLE, SBC, AAC, aptX, aptX HD, LDAC and HWA Audio
- Type-C, USB 3.1 GEN1
- Type-C earjack
SENSORS
- Gravity Sensor, Ambient Light Sensor, Proximity Sensor, Gyroscope, Compass, Fingerprint Sensor, Hall sensor, Barometer, Infrared sensor, colour temprature sensor
CAMERA
- Leica camera
- 40 MP (Wide Angle Lens) + 16 MP (Ultra Wide Angle Lens) + 8 MP (Telephoto)
EMUI
- EMUI 9.1.1
BATTERY
- 4500 mAh
CHARGING
- 55 W HUAWEI SuperCharge
NFC
- Read Write mode / Peer to Peer mode / Card Emulation mode (payment by *SIM card, or HCE) is supported.
You can check out the Huawei Mate X over on the company's website.