Forget The Galaxy Fold, It’s All About Huawei’s Folding Phone

by admin

Feb 24, 2019

Damien McFerran 24/02/2019 – 10:28pm

Say hello to the Mate X

Samsung caused quite a stir with its Galaxy Fold smartphone, a premium device which – you guessed it – has a folding screen. It's a glimpse of the future and is likely to be the first serious folding phone design to hit the market – but it would seem that Samsung's rival Huawei has other ideas.

At Mobile World Congress, Huawei has shown off the Mate X, its take on the whole folding phone concept. Unlike Samsung's phone, which has a screen on the inside, the Mate X's folding display is on the 'outside' of the case, which actually looks a lot more elegant. Sure, it also means that the screen has less protection, but no one really seems to know how these displays are going to fare under heavy use – not yet, anyway.

Powered by the same Kirin 980 processor that is found in the Mate 20 Pro and the Honor View 20, the Mate X features a 'Falcon Wing' hinge (Huawei's words, not ours) and even when folded only measures 11mm in thickness.

When you unfold the phone, you're getting a whopping 8-inch screen with a 2480 x 2200 resolution When folded, the front screen measures 6.6-inches (2480 x 1148) while the rear display measures 6.4-inch (2480 x 892). It's all powered by a 4,500mAh battery, and Huawei's new SuperCharge tech promises to get you up to 85 percent in 30 minutes. The camera is a triple-sensor design and should, according to Huawei, be on par with its other flagships. The fingerprint scanner is located on the power button, and there's no 3.5mm headphone jack.

Like the Galaxy Fold, the Mate X isn't going to be cheap. It's expected to sell for €2,299 (almost £2,000) when it arrives in the middle of this year, which is an insane amount of cash for a smartphone. Is it really worth paying that amount of cash to have a larger display on your phone – especially when most phones these days have screens which already feel gargantuan to the average user?

That's the question that will no doubt be answered later this year, when we'll see if folding phones are the next 3D phones – or not.