Huawei launches Mate X FOLDING smartphone – but it’ll set you back £2,000
The era of the folding phone is upon us...
HUAWEI has launched a high tech folding smartphone to take on the Samsung Galaxy Fold.
The Huawei Mate X, which costs an eye-watering £2,000, folds like a book via a flexible ‘hinge’ that runs down the middle.
It allows you to carry around a tablet-sized gizmo with a massive display that can fold into something that fits in your pocket.
The Chinese phone-maker announced the handset today during a press event at MWC 2019 in Barcelona.
In tablet mode, the Mate X sports an 8” flexible OLED display that stretches to the very edges of the gizmo.
Unfolded it’s just 5.4mm thick – thinner than most tablets you can buy today.
When folded, it has a 6.6” screen on the front and 6.38” screen on the rear, and is 11mm thick, which is hefty compared to the average smartphone.
All of your volume buttons, camera, fingerprint sensor and more are stored on a bar on the side of the device.
Unlike Samsung’s Fold, the Mate X has a screen on both sides of the device when folded.
That means it can do a whole host of neat tricks, such as allowing you to watch your own portrait in real time as someone takes a photo of you.
With all of that screen power, Huawei has had to include a powerful battery, opting for a chunky 4500mAh power cell.
It has also upgraded its 55W SuperCharge system, meaning the phone can gain 85% charge in half an hour - six times faster than the iPhone XS Max.
The Mate X also comes with 5G, and Huawei claims it’s the world’s fastest foldable 5G phone.
With a high tech new 5G antenna, the handset can hit network speeds of 4.6GB per second, meaning you can download an HD movie in seconds.
The gadget will ship some time by August for around £2,000, making it even more expensive than the £1,800 Galaxy Fold.
It will initially only ship in one colour, "interstellar blue", with more coming later on.
It comes only days after Samsung announced its own folding smartphone, dubbed the Galaxy Fold.
That bendable handset works in both 7.3” tablet and 4.3” phone-sized configurations.
In tablet mode, it can run up to three apps simultaneously.
Asked what made the Mate X stand out against the Fold, Walter Ji, who heads up Huawei's Western Europe branch, said the phone's appearance gave it the edge.
"The Mate X has a much better design," he told The Sun at a press conference after the launch event.
"It has a bigger screen and bigger views, with no notch on the display.”
The Fold is selling for an eye-watering £1,800, and is out in the UK in May.
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