Huawei Mate X2 Debuts With New Folding Design, Prices Start At ₹2,02,000

Karamchand Rameshwar - Feb 23, 2021

The Huawei Mate X2 features a similar folding design to the Samsung Galaxy Z Fold2 for a higher price.

Huawei has officially announced its next foldable smartphone called Huawei Mate X2, after the Mate X / Mate Xs. This phone is a big upgrade with a “brand new” design, a more powerful hardware configuration, and a camera cluster with up to 100x zoom. However, the price of Mate X2 and the lack of Google apps and services might be deal breakers to lots of users.

Huawei Mate X2 Colors — Huawei Mate X2's color variants.

Huawei Mate X2: Price & Availability

At first, I thought that Huawei would try to attract users with an attractive price, but the brand is going in the exact opposite direction. In China, the Mate X2 price will start at CNY 18,000 (around Rs. 2,01,500) for the 256GB version, and CNY 19,000 (around Rs. 2,21,800) for the 512GB version. This price is higher than Samsung's Z Fold2, when this device was initially sold for CNY 16,999 (around Rs. 1,90,400) in China.

The Mate X2 will officially go on sale in China from February 25.

Huawei Mate X2: Specifications & Features

In contrast to the first generation Mate X, the Mate X2 features a complete transformation in design. Instead of an outward folding design outward, the new Mate X2 features a two-screen design that includes an external screen and a large foldable screen inside, similar to the Samsung Galaxy Z Fold2.

Huawei Mate X2 Design — Huawei uses a new folding design on the Mate X2.

The Mate X2's external screen measures 6.45 inches, has a resolution of 2700x1160 and an aspect ratio of 21:9, while the main screen is 8 inches in size, with a resolution of 2480x2200 and an aspect ratio of 8:7.1. Both displays use an OLED panel with a 90Hz refresh rate.

In fact, the Mate X2 has solved some problems that Samsung has not been able to solve on the Galaxy Z Fold2. Specifically, while the Z Fold2 still has a small gap when folded, Huawei said that the Mate X2 will be able to fold completely. The main screen of the Mate X2 will have a crease in the center, similar to the Z Fold2.

Huawei Mate X2 Vs Galaxy Z Fold2 — There won't be any gap when the Mate X2 is folded.

Besides those advantages, the Mate X2 also has a few disadvantages compared to the Z Fold2. The screen of the Mate X2 only supports a 90Hz refresh rate compared to 120Hz of the Z Fold2. Moreover, Huawei’s foldable phone also has no selfie camera on the internal screen. This will be relatively inconvenient when users want to take selfies or video calls as they will be forced to use the small screen outside.

While the camera specs of the Galaxy Z Fold2 are somewhat inferior to smartphones like the Note20 Ultra or S20 Ultra at the time of launch, Huawei offers the best camera hardware on this new phone. This is the first foldable smartphone that has a periscope lens, allowing it to offer up to 10X optical zoom and 100X digital zoom.

Huawei Mate X2 Feature — The device supports 10x optical zoom and 100x digital zoom.

The specific camera specs of the Mate X2 camera are as follows:

Main camera: 50MP, f / 1.9, OIS
Ultra-wide-angle camera: 16MP, f / 2.2
Telephoto camera: 12MP, f / 2.4, OIS
Periscope zoom camera: 8MP, f / 4.4, 10X optical zoom, 100X digital zoom
Selfie camera: 16MP

Being Huawei's flagship device, it is not surprising to see the Mate X2 possesses a relatively powerful hardware configuration. The device is integrated with Kirin 9000 chipset, 8GB of RAM, 256GB / 512GB internal memory (can be expanded by Huawei’s NMCard card), and 5G connectivity. The Mate X2's battery has a capacity of 4500mAh and quickly charges with the 55W Super Fast charging technology.

Despite rumors that Huawei will use its own operating system called HarmonyOS on its smartphones this year, the Mate X2 will still run on Android 10 with EMUI 11 interface on top. As expected, with the US Government ban still in effect, users won't find Google apps and services on the Mate X2.