Huawei has announced the Mate Xs, its second foldable smartphone, through a video. The smartphone is basically a refined version of the Huawei Mate X, the company’s first foldable handset that never made it to the international markets. The company says that Mate Xs has an improved & unique mechanical hinge design and has a more powerful chipset at its core. The most noticeable thing about the phone is that it comes without a full Android OS experience.
‘The Huawei Mate X was our first foray into the foldable category and it set the standard for the industry. The Huawei Mate Xs is raising the bar further with even more powerful connectivity and integrated user experiences. It’s the fastest 5G smartphone of its class. Prepare to meet the unprecedented – again,’ Richard Yu, CEO of Huawei Consumer Business Group, said in a statement.
Huawei will sell the Mate Xs for EUR 2,499 (approx Rs 1,93,000), from March. There is no word on its release in other markets like India.
During a virtual press conference themed ‘TOGETHER, Connecting Possibilities,’ Huawei announced that the Mate Xs features the Kirin 990 5G chipset and an improved Falcon Wing Design. This design features more than 100 interlocking parts working in harmony to deliver smooth folding/unfolding experience. The Chinese tech giant says that the hinge is made of a zirconium-based liquid metal for extra durability.
In the folded state, the phone has a 6.6-inch main screen and a 6.38-inch secondary screen. When unfolded, the smartphone becomes an 8-inch tablet. The flexible display features a two-layer polymer structure, and is manufactured using a technique adhering two layers of aerospace-grade polyimide with an optically clear adhesive. Huawei claims that this material allows the display to produce great image quality, colour saturation and brightness along with a high degree of durability.
As mentioned, the smartphone is powered by the Kirin 990 5G chipset. The octa-core CPU comprises four Cortex-A76 cores and four Cortex-A55 cores. Graphics processing is handled by the 16-core Mali-G76 GPU. It has an 8GB RAM and 512GB storage. There is a Flying Fish Fin Cooling System that utilises flexible graphene with microscopic crevices for effective cooling of the device. The integrated 5G modem also supports 2G, 3G, 4G and full 5G spectrum. The phone ships with a 4500mAh battery.
Huawei has created the Mate Xs’ camera with Leica. A vertically-aligned ‘SuperSensing Leica Quad Camera’ setup is placed on the sidebar. It features a 40MP main camera (wide-angle, f/1.8 lens), a 16MP ultra-wide angle camera (f/2.2 lens), an 8MP telephoto camera (f/2.4 lens, OIS) and 3D Depth Sensing Camera.
The camera system delivers up to 30X hybrid zoom and also supports up to ISO 204800 for capturing well lit images in low light environments. The Huawei Mate Xs runs on EMUI10.0.1, an Android Open Source Project-based operating system.
