Foldable Huawei Mate X smartphone officially announced

Samsung was not the only company to feature a foldable smartphone this year. The Huawei Mate X was also made official during the company's media event at MWC 2019, with a slightly different take on the design from Samsung.

Design

The Huawei Mate X folds into itself, meaning that unlike a book, the display wraps around the outer sides of the handset when it is in its folded state. When unfolded its a 5.4mm (0.21 inch) thick tablet with an 11mm (0.43 inch) grip on its rightmost side. This grip works like a handle, giving the user something to hold on to, and also housing the phone's triple camera setup.

In its folded state, the folding display meets the grip, giving the phone an overall uniform shape with an 11mm (0.43 inch) thickness.

Huawei has employed a highly-sophisticated hinge mechanism in the middle of the device, allowing both slabs to snugly fit into each other, without a gap in its folded state. This hinge consists of over 100 different components and is referred to as a 'Falcon Hinge' by Huawei.

Display

When opened, you will be presented with a rather generous 8-inch AMOLED display with a 2480 x 2200 pixel resolution. Once folded, you can still use either side of the display. The larger part measures 6.6-inches, while the smaller side measures 6.38-inches. The user will be able to use either side of the device based on their need.

Hardware

Huawei's new smartphone is powered by the Kirin 980 chipset, which is built on a 7 nm process and capable of hitting 2.6GHz clock speeds. This chip is known to be capable, fast and energy-efficient and should serve its users well.

The Huawei Mate X comes with 5G inbuilt, offering top download speeds of up to 1GB in three seconds. Huawei prepared for future protocols by making the Mate X compatible with both NSA and SA architectures. The latter is not yet implemented but will be the one we will eventually jump on when 5G comes about. It even supports dual SIM cards.

Similar to the Galaxy Fold, there are two separate batteries on either side of the device with a combined capacity of 4500mAh. Huawei will even include a 55W fast charger in the package, which is capable of charging the phone up to 85% in 30 minutes.

Camera

The Huawei Mate X features a triple camera setup on the back, which it has developed with Leica. The setup includes a 40-megapixel wide-angle primary sensor, an 8-megapixel telephoto lens which offers 3x optical zoom, and a 16-megapixel ultra-wide sensor. You should be able to achieve all the usual features like Portrait Mode to action cam-like wide-angle shots.

In its folded state, the triple cameras can also be used for your selfies.

Release and Availability

Huawei is expected to release the Mate X sometime in the middle of 2019 and has priced the device at €2,299 (around $2600).