The Chinese network giant Huawei has presented at Mobile World Congress its first foldable smartphone: the Mate X. The novelty comes with super-fast 5G radio and may be regarded as a frontal attack on industry leader Samsung, from May also with a folding smartphone on customer catch goes. For his interpretation of the folding cell phone Huawei calls 2300 euros – 300 more than Samsung. The market is expected to arrive in the middle of the year.
A few days after Samsung trumps the Chinese rival Huawei also with a novel foldable smartphone. The Huawei Mate X can be folded up into a nearly square tablet with a screen size of 8 inches (about 20 cm) and supports the new mobile standard 5G.
Collapsible thanks to the special hinge
In contrast to Samsung’s Galaxy Fold, Huawei’s Mate X is designed to fold flat with a sophisticated special hinge. In the unfolded state, it offers a resolution of 2480 x 2000 pixels on an 8-inch diagonal with an aspect ratio of 8: 7.1. If the outside of the device mounted display folded, the user has a display on the front with 19.5: 9 aspect ratio and 2480 by 1148 pixels resolution, on the back is then the rest of the folding display – in addition to a bar in the Among other things, the Leica camera is housed – with 25: 9 format and 2480 by 892 pixels resolution.
The camera is housed in a kind of handle
The device has been made thicker on one side to accommodate the USB-C port, the camera and a finger scanner, moreover, the thicker side in the tablet mode as a handle. When folded, the Mate X at the thinnest point should be just 5.4 millimeters thin. When folded, it is 1.1 centimeters thick. In the processor Huawei relies on its own development Kirin 980 in combination with the in-house 5G-modem Balong 5000. Under ideal conditions, the Mate X is to provide a data transfer rate of 4.6 gigabits per second, so can be transmitted in the second more than 400 megabytes.
512 gigabytes of flash memory, dual-SIM option
The Mate X comes with eight gigabytes of RAM, 512 gigabytes of flash memory, dual-SIM option and – if no second SIM card is needed – proprietary Nano Memory Card expandable memory. A 4500-milliamp battery is to provide enough power to the tablet smartphone hybrid device. A quick charge function is supposed to fill the battery up to 80 percent within 30 minutes. At the Mobile World Congress, the Mate X was initially presented only behind glass, you could try out Huawei’s interpretation of the Falt smartphone yet.
Strong Chinese challenge against Samsung
For the South Korean rival and smartphone leader Samsung, the Mate X is likely to prove to be a dangerous rival for its own folding smartphone Galaxy Fold. Although you could not test Samsung’s device yet, but first pictures and videos of the device suggest that it can not be completely folded plan. Here Huawei has the first impression after the nose. Moreover, Samsung’s folding smartphone – final information on this is still missing – in all likelihood designed for the established LTE mobile, not for 5G. And considering that 5G will need to be upgraded and it will probably be a while before there are affordable rates, this need not be a disadvantage.
Samsungs and Huawei folding concept is different
Samsung’s folding smartphone Galaxy Fold has two displays: One is on the outside for use as a smartphone, the tablet screen on the inside, however, can open and close like a book. Huawei decided on a different concept: The tablet display is folded over at the outside of the device, so that it can be used folded on the front and back in about half the size. If you hold the folded phone in your hand, the screen on the bottom side will be disabled. At the same time, however, thanks to the second display, for example, people who are being photographed can see the live image of the camera.
5G router and new notebooks unveiled
With the Mate X, the hitherto unsuccessful US espionage claims battered mobile radio giant Huawei wants to establish not only in the top group of the smartphone market, but also in matters 5G. Other serious newcomers to the Huawei press conference – including a 5G router for the home and a mobile 5G access point with battery – showed that it is serious about the superfast new mobile phone. In addition to 5G technology and its folding smartphone Huawei also presented at its press conference, new notebook models of the Matebook series with improved smartphone coupling: Huawei’s new notebooks should share, among other things, the clipboard with the smartphone and images and text flies from a device can transfer to another.