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The Huawei Mate X2. It looks like a Galaxy Z Fold 2.
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Huawei did an excellent job with the frames and aspect ratio. That's a regular 21: 9 front display, and the inside screen is made up of almost two 21: 9 displays which are great for split screens.
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A live image of the front. When you blink, it looks almost like a normal smartphone.
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A live picture from the inside.
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Split screen looks great. These are two normal sized windows.
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A close up of the front camera. Note that this looks like a dual camera cutout, but there is actually only one camera.
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Just like with a Moto Razr, part of the display frame swings out of the way when closed, so that the display forms a teardrop shape and is not wrinkled.
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The hinge mechanics use a couple of tiny gears.
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It folds flat.
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The back colors.
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Huawei has put some special work into the keyboard that is fully resizable and has double middle keys so you can still press it with both fingers.
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Huawei doesn't let minor inconveniences like US sanctions stop Huawei from developing new phones. Today the company announced the next device in its flagship line of foldable smartphones: the Huawei Mate X2. While the 2019 Mate X (X1?) Was an innovative but impractical form factor with a single wraparound display on the outside of the phone, the Mate X2 follows Samsung's lead and features a foldable book style with a rigid phone screen on the outside and a foldable tablet screen inside. It looks exactly like a Galaxy X Fold 2, but with a few interesting design developments.
Huawei spent a lot of time saying the Mate X2 was better than the Samsung Galaxy Fold 2, pointing out larger indoor and outdoor screens and a smaller hinge area with narrower bezels on the front. One thing Huawei hasn't compared is the price, which starts at a whopping $ 2,784 while the Galaxy Fold 2 costs $ 2,000.
The outside screen is 6.45 "OLED at 2700 × 1160, 90 Hz, while the inside screen is 8" OLED at 2480 × 2200, 90 Hz. Both are larger than the Fold 2, which has a 6.2-inch outdoor display and a 7.6-inch indoor display. Huawei's work on shrinking bezels looks impressive, and it really seems like the company has the right aspect ratios. Huawei has managed to fit a standard 21: 9 display on the front – it looks like a normal smartphone from some angles. The interior display consists of almost two 21: 9 displays with an aspect ratio called "8: 7.1" by Huawei. It's hard to say what the interior aspect ratio should be as there are almost no Android tablet apps, but at least that's good for using split-screen apps.
Enlarge /. Real pictures of the display show how uneven it is. The top row highlights the trench that runs down the center of the phone. The bottom row shows uneven reflections of the waves in the rest of the display.
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The folding movement of the Mate X2 looks like a cross between the Samsung Fold 2 and the Moto Razr. From the fold we have internal gears behind the screen for the hinge action. From the Razr we have a hinge that, when closed, creates a teardrop fold instead of a hard fold. Just like the Razr, there are two fold-away support plates to the left and right of the hinge. They swing out of the way when the device is closed, allowing the phone to close without damaging the display. According to Huawei, the device closes without a gap.
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A major disadvantage with this Huawei device, rather than a Samsung device, is that it doesn't have a Samsung ultra-thin glass display cover. Samsung is currently the only company that ships a foldable display cover that even feels slightly stiff, while everyone else uses a wrinkled, wavy plastic display cover that moves with every touch.
During the presentation with a live unit, a light reflection rolled briefly across the display, highlighting how uneven the display surface is. As with the Moto Razr, there is no support above the hinge area, so the flexible display sags above the hinge, creating a sizable trench that runs down the center of the display. The light also emphasized all sorts of uneven waves and distortion along the "flat" sides of the display.
Enlarge /. It's a wedge! The right side is thicker than the left and the phone case tapers gently from side to side.
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An interesting design choice: the Mate X2's body is wedge-shaped. When open, the right side of the phone is 8.2mm, which tapers to the left of 4.4mm. According to Huawei, the right side of the phone is thicker, so all the cameras can be housed in a normal phone case that is roughly 8mm thick. The left side of the phone doesn't need as many components, so it can be thinned out as much as possible.
I'm not the one pushing for ever thinner smartphones with leaner batteries and removing headphone jacks, but with foldable smartphones, thickness is a major concern if you actually want to carry one in a pocket. Many of these early devices are as thick as two smartphones stacked on top of each other, and that just doesn't fit well in a pocket. Huawei's tapered design and flip-flat hinge really look like a winner here. The company ships a device with the same size battery as the Galaxy Z Fold 2 (4500 mAh), but has reduced the thickness of 16.8mm by almost 2mm and, when folded, has a 14.7mm thick device.
But is it even possible for Huawei to build this phone in significant quantities? Huawei is still in the midst of a stifling U.S. export ban that has made it impossible for the company to source parts from international suppliers and its market share has fallen. Richard Yu, CEO of the Huawei Consumer Business Group, opened the presentation of the Mate X2 with a few defiant words for the US government. "2020 has been an extraordinary and challenging year for Huawei," said Yu. "We were attacked by the COVID-19 pandemic and the second and third round of US sanctions at the same time, which has made our business operations and daily work very difficult. Thanks to the solid support of our partners, suppliers and especially consumers around the world have Survived 2020! "
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Surviving 2020 is one thing, but Huawei's market share is still falling rapidly and things will only look bleak in the future. There are already reports that Huawei's smartphone performance will be halved in 2021. Here's just one of the likely many supply issues: The Mate X2 has a Huawei HiSilicon Kirin 9000 SoC based on TSMC's 5nm process, but TSMC stopped shipping to Huawei in September 2020. Ordered according to supply chain reports Huawei produced 15 million chips, but TSMC was only able to deliver just over half of that, 8.8 million chips, before the deadline. That offer needs to be expanded to include the Mate X2, the flagship Mate 40 Pro smartphone, and likely to include another launch this year, the P50 Pro.
Note that the Mate X2 doesn't have Google Apps either. Regarding Huawei's software issues, the company ended the show by announcing that "Huawei flagship phone users" will be able to upgrade their phones to Huawei's in-house HarmonyOS operating system from April, and the Mate X2 will be one of the first to do so does. According to Huawei, the phone will come with Android and be updated to HarmonyOS. For those who missed our earlier review, Huawei claims that HarmonyOS is the internal operating system, but after actually looking at it, there is no noticeable difference between HarmonyOS and Android. At least it should be a simple "upgrade".
With all the supply issues and the barely-unveiled 2019 launch of the Mate X, it's hard to treat this like a real phone, but Huawei claims it will only be for sale in China on February 25th.
Listing picture from Huawei
