Huawei’s new $ 2,800 folding phone copies Samsung’s Galaxy Fold line

Huawei is not going to allow a minor inconvenience like US sanctions to stop it from designing new phones. Today, the company announced the following device in its flagship folding smartphone line: the Huawei Mate X2. While 2019’s Mate X (X1?) Was an innovative but impractical form factor with a single encapsulated screen on the outside of the phone, the Mate X2 follows Samsung’s lead and goes hand in hand with a book style that can be folded with a sturdy phone screen on the outside and a foldable tablet screen on the inside. It looks just like a Galaxy X Fold 2, but with some interesting design developments.

Huawei spent a lot of time saying that the Mate X2 was better than the Samsung Galaxy Fold 2, by pointing out larger interior and exterior screens, as well as a smaller hinge area with slimmer edges on the front. One thing Huawei did not compare is the price, with a whopping $ 2,784, while the Galaxy Fold 2 is $ 2,000.

The outer screen is a 6.45-inch, 2700 × 1160, 90Hz OLED, while the inner screen is an 8-inch, 2480 × 2200, 90Hz OLED. Both are larger than the Fold 2, which has a 6.2-inch outer screen and a 7.6-inch inner screen. Huawei’s work to thin thin edges looks impressive, and it feels like the company has the right aspect ratios. Huawei has managed to fit a bow-standard 21: 9 screen on the front – it looks like a normal smartphone from some angles. The interior display is composed of almost two 21: 9 screens, with what Huawei calls an “8: 7.1 aspect ratio”. It’s hard to say what the interior aspect ratio ‘should’ be, as Android tablet apps are almost non-existent, but it would at least be good for using a split screen.

The folding action of the Mate X2 looks like a cross between Samsung’s Fold 2 and the Moto Razr. From the fold we have internal, behind-the-screen gears for the hinge action. From the Razr we have a hinge that results in a tear display fold when closed, instead of a hard crease. Just like the Razr, there are two foldable support plates to the left and right of the hinge. They swing out of the way when the device shuts down, allowing the phone to lock without shattering the screen. Huawei says it closes without a gap.

One major downside to this is a Huawei device and not a Samsung device is that it will not have Samsung’s ultra-thin glass screen cover. Samsung is currently the only company to ship a foldable screen cover that is even slightly stiff to the touch, while all the others use a shrinking, curling, plastic cover that moves when you touch it.

During the presentation with a live unit, a light reflection briefly rolled across the screen, showing how uneven the screen surface is. As on the Moto Razr, there is no support at the top of the hinge area, so the flexible screen sinks over the top of the hinge and forms a substantial trench in the center of the screen. The light also emphasized all sorts of uneven wrinkles and distortions along the “flat” sides of the screen.

One interesting design choice from Huawei was to make the body of the Mate X2 a wedge shape. When open, the right side of the phone is 8.2mm, which decreases to the left side of 4.4mm. Huawei says the right side of the phone is thicker so that it can hold all the cameras in a normal phone case, which is about 8mm thick. The left side of the phone does not need as many components, so it can be thinned out as much as possible.

I’m not one who wants to strive for thinner smartphones with slimmer batteries and the removal of headphone jacks, but for foldable thickness is a big issue if you want to carry one in your pocket. Many of these early devices are as thick as two smartphones stacked on top of each other, and they just do not fit well in a pocket. Huawei’s tapered design and fold-flat hinge really looks like a winner here. The company installed a device with the same size battery as the Galaxy Z Fold 2, 4500mAh, but shaved off almost 2 mm of the 16.8 mm thickness and turned it into a 14.7 mm thick device when folded .

Before we leave, we should address the elephant in the room and ask ourselves if it is even possible for Huawei to build this phone in significant quantities. Huawei is still in the midst of a stifling US export ban, which has made it unable to obtain parts from international suppliers, and its market share has fallen. Huawei CEO Consumer Business Group Richard Yu began the Mate X2 presentation with some provocative words for the US government. “2020 has been an extraordinary and challenging year for Huawei,” Yu said. “We were simultaneously attacked by the COVID-19 pandemic and the second and third rounds of US sanctions, which caused major problems for our business and day-to-day operations. Thanks to the steady support of our partners, suppliers, and especially consumers around the world. , we survived 2020! ‘

Surviving 2020 is one thing, but Huawei’s market share is still declining rapidly, and things are only looking darker on the road to the future. There are already reports that Huawei’s smartphone production will be halved by 2021. Here’s just one of the most likely issues: the Mate X2 has a Huawei HiSilicon Kirin 9000 SoC, built on TSMC’s 5nm process, but TSMC halted shipping to Huawei. in September 2020. According to supply chain reports, Huawei produced 15 million chips, but TSMC was able to deliver just over half of them, 8.8 million chips, before the deadline. This offer should be stretched over the Mate X2, the flagship smartphone Mate 40 Pro, and probably another launch this year, the P50 Pro.

Remember that the Mate X2 will also have no Google apps. Speaking of Huawei’s software issues, the company closed the show with the announcement that ‘Huawei users of the flagship phone’ will be able to upgrade their phones to Huawei’s internal operating system, HarmonyOS from April, and the Mate X2 will be one of the first to do it. According to Huawei, the phone will therefore be shipped with Android and upgraded to HarmonyOS. For those who missed our previous report, Huawei claims that HarmonyOS is its own operating system, but after actually looking at it, there is no distinguishing difference between HarmonyOS and Android. It should be at least an easy ‘upgrade’.

With all the issues and the launch of the Mate X in 2019, it is difficult to treat it like a real phone, but Huawei claims that it will only be on sale in China on February 25th.

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