Extended hands-on time with our foldable future Not yet rated By Basil Kronfli , Matt Swider February 26, 2019 Mobile phones ...
Early Verdict
The Huawei Mate X isn't going to be the first foldable phone to launch, but it might be the first you seriously consider paying gobs of money for in 2019. 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 transformative euphoria over this phone comes at a very high price.For
- Folds with two large outer screens
- Expands into an 8-inch tablet
- Hinge feels solid in hand
- High-powered specs
Against
- Mid-crease occasionally reflects light
- Very expensive
Huawei Mate X deals
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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.
It's Huawei's FullView bezel-reduced screen that makes this foldable phone look better than the Samsung Galaxy Fold, which we only got to see at a distance. Only Samsung reps got the privilege of going hands-on with that phone.
The Huawei Mate X also has some serious horsepower backing it up, with 5G, the new Kirin 980 chipset, and a hefty 4,500 battery capacity backing it up.
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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.
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 leagues.
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 TechRadar.
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.
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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.
Back
to that design, and to the left of the rear screen is a vertical bar.
This houses the brains of the operation, from the triple-camera system –
which Huawei was very tight-lipped about – through to the power
button/fingerprint scanner combo, and at the base, the USB-C port for
charging. The sidebar is also where the internals are squished into –
more on that later.
Moving
parts scare us – especially when they’re in gadgets that cost over
$2,000. We were hesitant to fold one of the few sample Mate X devices on
hand at MWC. In our minds, we were snapping a tablet in half.
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Huawei
reassured us that its bendable screen has endured 100,000 folds in
lab-condition stress tests, and it also showed us how it has developed a
case to keep it protected; but most importantly, it feels like a solid
bit of kit, despite how thin it is.
A bigger fear for us is that
the clasp that keeps the phone flush will wear out. Huawei mentioned to
us that the clasp is needed for the completely flush fold at this stage,
but perhaps in the next evolution of its proprietary Falcon Wing hinge
system it'll be able to lock in place clasp-free.
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.
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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.
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.
Imagine
a world where no one ever again says "Umm... can you take that again?"
Both people in this situation can see what's in frame and adjust at
will.
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 on this thing, and
doesn’t want to commit before it’s ready to bring it to market.
This is all guesswork of course, and with any luck Huawei will shine a light on things sooner than later.
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.
How it works
The
Mate X runs a customized version of Android, and, ever aware of folds
and unfolds, the interface optimizes itself for tablet or phone
orientation in milliseconds. Our experience with the UI was very smooth,
especially considering that the phone is some way off actually
retailing.
EMUI,
Huawei’s custom skin that sits atop Android, is likely at the heart of
the experience, and there were some entirely new features that shone
through, specifically around split-screen multitasking, with the OS
oriented for the bigger, almost square tablet display really well.
Huawei’s
CEO Richard Yu mentioned that the tablet would be ideally suited to
mouse and keyboard accessorizing for document editing, potentially even
hinting at an EMUI Desktop-style experience down the line – or, dare we
say it, full Windows?
Early verdict
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Spending
time with the Huawei Mate X made the once-wild idea of a foldable phone
more founded, with a smartphone-tablet hybrid that looks like it's
ripped from the future.
Here
we have a well constructed, foldable phone, incredibly thin and with
minimal bezel. What’s more, it features a design we can imagine pulling
out of our pocket and turning into a tablet for some reading on the go,
without looking ridiculous.
Of
course, there are some red flags, specifically around durability and
moving parts, and nothing will dispel these other than a month or two of
real-world use, and the price is prohibitive for most people. It's not
for everyone's two hands in 2019.
It's
a tad more expensive than the Samsung Galaxy Fold, which also has a
shockingly high price, but Samsung's device looks like a V0 foldable
phone. The Huawei Mate X builds off the one fantasy idea with a proper
V1 look – and most importantly, we could touch it.
MWC (Mobile
World Congress) is the world's largest showcase for the mobile
industry, stuffed full of the newest phones, tablets, wearables and
more. TechRadar is reporting live from Barcelona all week to bring you
the very latest from the show floor. Head to our dedicated MWC 2019 hub to see all the new releases, along with TechRadar's world-class analysis and buying advice about your next phone.
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