Between the security scanners and the water fountain outside Huawei’s venue for its MWC press conference, there’s a scrum. A dozen journalists and YouTubers with cameras and backpacks are jostling around a couple of execs, dressed in business suits. Why? Because one of them has a real-life Huawei Mate X folding phone in his hands.
Inside the venue, a bunch of Mate X devices rotate excruciatingly slowly behind glass cases. At a device briefing, up-close photographs are permitted, but no touching. Out on the street it’s every early adopter for themselves. The first thing everyone does with the Mate X? Take a selfie with it. They don’t have time to do anything else because it’s grabbed almost instantly from their hands. That’s when we realise Huawei has won MWC 2019.
When you see it in action and at close range, the foldable phone which has an 8-inch 2200 x 2480 AMOLED screen which folds into a front 6.6-inch 1148 x 2480 display and a rear 6.3-inch display, is very reflective and somewhat plasticky for a €2,299/$2,600 device. You can clearly see the fold in tablet mode at certain angles - is it raised? We can’t tell, we can’t touch it. The Mate X also certainly doesn’t look quite as polished as any high-end 2019 phone.
But it’s also kind of magic. The homescreen (which we saw a lot of) and videos look bright, vivid and sharp on screen. It doesn’t look retro-luxe like the Galaxy Fold, with its 4.6-inch front display, does from the front. It looks futuristic in a way everyone can get, no matter your tech credentials. It’s impressively thin (5.4mm, 11mm closed) and watching it fold and unfold borders on mesmerising. It’s new and there will be no mistaking this on the train. Think of the people who actually pay money to attend tech trade shows like MWC. The Mate X will be top of their lists.
Just to be clear, Huawei hasn’t let us touch the thing with our own hands yet - we’ll update this story if/when they do. Here’s (probably) the reason why - it seems that the device weighs 295g. That’s great for a tablet but over 100g more than any regular big-screened flagship - the Mate 20 Pro weighs 189g. We don’t know the Galaxy Fold’s weight yet. The Mate X looks light because it’s slim, but batteries don’t weigh nothing. So aside from the fact this is a large phone, this will obviously be the main challenge to the pocket/handbag test.
Still, even though the 5G Mate X isn’t set to go on sale until the “middle of 2019”, Huawei has given the press and industry analysts considerably more Mate X face time than Samsung has done with the Galaxy Fold, which is due to go on sale at the end of April in the US, early May in Europe.
Walter Ji, Huawei’s president of the Consumer Business Group West Europe, says that the foldable display itself has been in development for “two or three years”, versus Samsung’s close to a decade on its Infinity Flex tech. Also, it should be noted that Oppo's prototype foldable phone looks a great deal like the Mate X. Perhaps more interestingly, Oppo vice president Brian Shen admitted the company cancelled its initial plan to show the device during its keynote on Saturday, opting instead for a reveal on Weibo, because "it wouldn't have been meaningful". Why not meaningful? Shen says he doesn't think the folding design adds much value to the user experience yet, other than an enlarged display. Still, it is clear we will undoubtedly see more folding phones from Chinese companies, but Huawei has got there first.
Indeed, back with the Mate X, both Ji and Clement Wong, VP of global product marketing, point to the “bar” on the left-hand edge as crucial to its success. It acts as a grip - so in tablet-mode the Huawei Mate X doesn’t lie flat on a table - and it also houses the three cameras (10MP/8MP/10MP), the antennas, the processor, i.e. most of the electronics, aside from the dual 4,500mAh batteries.
This curved bar is precisely why the rest of the device is so thin and also no doubt why Huawei was able to get the display to “fold flat” - there is actually a gap, but because of the bar it’s built into the design. This also means the Mate X clicks into place in phone mode and there’s a button to release it - itself a reminder of flip phones and Sidekicks, but crucially that’s all on the back of the device in phone mode. What Huawei has really understood, especially compared to the Samsung Galaxy Fold, is that even though the innovation is all around the tablet-size, folding screen, this needs to first of all be a kick-ass phone. Because even with all the 5G promises of multi-tasking, video calling and cloud gaming, people right now care a hell of a lot more about phones than tablets.
Huawei also made specific comparisons to the Galaxy Fold, which we haven’t seen up close yet, on stage: there’s no notch on the main display of the Mate X, Huawei offers bigger phone and tablet displays. Samsung definitely has a headstart on software, from the looks of things. Huawei says it’s working with Google, of course, but it won’t name any app partners yet, and it doesn’t seem to have entirely worked out what to do with the rear screen in phone mode, aside from use it as a selfie viewfinder.
Huawei also won’t confirm what water resistance the device will have, but says it’s working to the standard IP ratings we’re used to seeing on its phones. It’s also not making any claims on battery life - it’s 55W fast wired charging, no wireless charging here. Plus the fingerprint sensor is on the side, not in-display, so there’s some choices to be made on these types of features.
What about Xiaomi? The other big Chinese company at the show announced a Mi Mix 3 5G and European availability of its Mi 9 flagship, but its double folding phone prototype, which looked extremely promising in the video posted by Xiaomi earlier this year, was nowhere to be seen at MWC. And sure, the Microsoft HoloLens 2 is big, but MWC is a phone show and Huawei has the most exciting phone.
Outside the European and US tech scene bubble, the Mate X could already be having more of an impact. Francis Lea, a managing director at Eleven International who splits his time between New York and Beijing, tweeted on Sunday: “Suddenly the Mate X became the ultimate status symbol in China. My wechat (sic) is blowing up.” Lea says that people in China “are finding it expensive but also desirable. They’re saying Apple is dead and Huawei’s time to go global is now.” He adds: “I think it’s a point of pride.”
One of the first slides Huawei CEO Richard Yu presented at the press conference listed Huawei’s ranking in brand lists from Forbes, Brandwatch etc. That’s why the telecoms company started making smartphones in the first place: to become “a global brand”. Amidst the genuinely important debates on geopolitics, spying and trade wars around Huawei at MWC and elsewhere, one Huawei rep was simply relieved that everyone thought the Mate X was cool.
This article was originally published by WIRED UK
