Hot on the heels of the reveal of Samsung’s Galaxy Fold, Huawei announced its foldable display smartphone, the Mate X.
Huawei launched the device at its Mobile World Congress keynote on Sunday in Barcelona, Spain.
On its front, the Mate X features a 6.6-inch display. Opening up the phone transforms the display into an 8-inch borderless screen with an 8:7.1 aspect ratio and 2480 x 2200 pixel resolution.
Yanmin Wang, the president of Huawei central east Europe and nordic region consumer business group, showing off the Mate X’s foldable screen.
Huawei was quick to compare the Mate X to the Galaxy Fold, pointing out that the Mate X is both thinner and features a larger display.
According to Huawei’s Richard Yu, Huawei engineers spent the better part of three years working on the Mate X’s ‘Falcon Wing’ hinge. With more than 100 components involved in its construction, the result is that the Mate X’s hinge allows for an ultra-thin design.
At its thinnest, the Mate X is 5.4mm. Folded, meanwhile, the phone is 11mm thick.
To make the device as thin as possible, Huawei had to include a variety of clever workarounds. For instance, the Mate X’s power button doubles as a fingerprint sensor. Moreover, the company placed the phone’s USB-C port opposite of its hinge mechanism; the rest of the phone is too thin to accommodate a USB-C port.
The phone includes the company’s 7nm Balong 5000 5G modem. It supports both NSA and SA network architecture, as well as both mmWave and sub-6GHz spectrum.
The modem is paired with the company’s Kirin 980 chipset. There’s also support for dual SIM.
Huawei claims the Balong is capable of 4.6Gpbs download speeds.
Like the Galaxy Fold, the Mate X features two batteries that combine to provide a capacity of 4,500mAh. Additionally, the phone includes the company’s 55W SuperCharge adapter. Using its charger, Huawei says the Mate X can charge to 80 percent in approximately 30 minutes.
When it came time to announce the price of the Mate X, Yu didn’t mince words. The Mate X, with 8GB of RAM and 512GB of internal storage, starts at €2,299 ($3,425 CAD at the time of writing).
That price makes it significantly more expensive than Samsung’s approximately $2,700 CAD Galaxy Fold.
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