Chinese manufacturer Huawei has announced a version of its Mate X foldable smartphone—the Mate Xs—will be moving from China to the global market.
Between the original Mate X and the Mate Xs, Huawei has reportedly made the 8-inch folding display more robust with layers of polymer above and below the OLED display, which should hopefully avoid the same pitfalls faced by the Samsung Galaxy Fold and the Motorola Razr.
Huawei says it has improved the hinge mechanism, too.
Much like the original, the Mate Xs has a 6.6-inch screen on the front when folded, with a 6.38-inch screen on the back.
There’s a new cooling system inside, which reaches across the device in order to account for the fold, as well as the Kirin 990 5G chipset that was launched last year and is currently used in the company’s flagship Mate 30 Pro.
There are two batteries, with a combined power of 4,500mAh, paired with a 55W USB-C charger in the box.
With regards to the camera, the Mate Xs uses a combination 40MP main camera lens, a 16MP wide-angle lens, an 8MP telephoto lens with a 30x digital zoom, and a time-of-flight sensor.
As this is a foldable device with a screen on the back, that camera array also works as a front-facing camera.
Huawei is yet to announce territories or pricing for the Mate Xs and, of course, the device will launch without Google’s suite of apps or Google Mobile Services because of the continued trade war between China and the US.
Nevertheless, the long-awaited launch of the Mate 30 Pro in the UK implies that the Chinese company is confident this will not be a dealbreaker for customers, suggesting that other app stores such as the Amazon Appstore be used to install popular apps like Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp.
MatePad Pro 5G Tablet
Alongside its new foldable, Huawei also announced the MatePad Pro 5G, the company’s competitor to Apple’s iPad Pro, complete with stylus.
It has a 10.8-inch 2,560-by-1,600 screen with a 16:10 ratio and a small holepunch selfie camera in the top-left corner.
The bezels around the screen are 4.9mm thick, which Huawei claims makes them the smallest on the market.
Much like Huawei’s other Mate devices, the MatePad Pro will have the Kirin 990 inside and a 7,250mAh battery with reverse wireless charging.
It can therefore charge other smartphones or wireless headphones when they’re placed on the back of the tablet—something the company claims is the first for a tablet.
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For the stylus, which charges magnetically from the MatePad Pro’s magnesium alloy frame, Huawei claims that a 30-second charge will allow the stylus to work for 10 minutes, while an hour charge will get 10 hours of use.
Finally, Huawei has updated its MateBook laptop range, including a new emerald green version of the MateBook X Pro, and a verison of the MateBook D 14 and 15 that will have AMD’s Ryzen 5 processor alongside the existing Intel i7 chipset that’s currently inside the range.
Prices and availability are yet to be confirmed.
